Talk:Valerie Plame/Archive 7

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Archive 1 Archive 5 Archive 6 Archive 7

Political Identification

There seems to be some on this page that thinks being a Democrat (or Republican for that matter) is relevant to the story. I don't think you label her as a Democrat above everything else. It's not as if she has ran for office as a Democrat or anything, she has given to a few candidates and identified herself as a Democrat. This, however, does not belong at the top of the article. A new section should be created dealing with her political loyalties. Agreed?

What is the relevance of her being a Democrat? Do we tag every American bio on Wikipedia with their political affiliation if we can verify it?--agr 00:50, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
It is of some relevance to the article topic. See Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, LA Times Jul 18, 2005. pg. A.1: The Nation; Top Aides Reportedly Set Sights on Wilson; Rove and Cheney chief of staff were intent on discrediting CIA agent's husband, prosecutors have been told:

A source directly familiar with information provided to prosecutors said Rove's interest was so strong that it prompted questions in the White House. When asked at one point why he was pursuing the diplomat so aggressively, Rove reportedly responded: "He's a Democrat." Rove then cited Wilson's campaign donations, which leaned toward Democrats, the person familiar with the case said.

64.160.39.153 02:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
The information was revealed in a high profile forum (public Congressional hearings) attended by the international press. (In fact there was so much coverage that the BBC noted " Representative Lynn Westmoreland...began by saying even the baseball stars who testified about steroid use in the sport had not drawn such a big crowd. [1])
If the information was entirely irrelevant, Valerie Wilson could have refused to answer the question.
The British Broadcasting Corporation, which has no partisan leanings on either side of this case, thought it was relevant to include this information in their overview coverage of the Congressional hearings. Notice that the BBC article did not cover EVERYTHING in the hearings; likewise, the editors of the BBC could have excised that information.
Finally, it should be noted that people who have deleted this information from the article have either provided no reason, or have provided false reasons (eg falsely claiming that this information was never said, or that this information was inadequately sourced). Those edits are considered vandalism, and future deletions of this information will also be considered as such.
TickleMeBilbo 02:36, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
I can't see much reason to leave that stuff in the lead paragraph of the article, and there certainly was no vandalism involved in removing it when there was no clear reason to have it. WP:AGF. 64.160.39.153 02:59, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Removal of the entry (along with its included citation) using the claim that it is unsourced or that it didn't happen invalidates an assumption of a good faith edit. In addition, the citation from the BBC article was removed again by Wrdmegle, without justification of any kind.
TickleMeBilbo 04:07, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The problem isn't that it is incorrect. The placement of political identification of someone who isn't an officeholder should not be at the top of their resume. I am arguing that it should be at the bottom, which is where I put it when I created a new subtopic, complete with a reference to the TRANSCIPT of the hearing instead of a BBC article. Examples of political figures who do not have their party identification at the top of their wiki are Al Franken, Ann Coulter, Rob Reiner, Gary Bauer, Barbara Bush, Nancy Reagan, and Karl Rove. Now, if none of those people have their political affiliation listed at the top of their wiki, why do you insist on putting it on Valerie Plame's? Wrdmegle 03:09, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Wrdmegle, the fact that the Wikipedia entries on Franken, Coulter, Reiner, etc are incomplete is no justification that this article should be incomplete as well. If you have sourced information from reliable sources that explicitly identifies their party affilitation, you should add it to those articles. (One should not assume that married couples share the same political party; James Carville, a former political strategist for the Democratic Party, was married to Mary Matalin, a well known Republican, when both were active campaigners for their respective parties.)Wikipedia:Proseline also is a good source to read in general about adding current events info, and needs to be applied to this article (as well as others).
TickleMeBilbo 04:07, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Tickle, it's obvious that you find it to be relevant to the article for whatever reason, but you are definitely in the minority here. However, after looking at your other editing, and the fact that you only edit on the Valerie Plame article causes me to question your motives. I cannot even believe you are suggesting that Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan may not be Republicans because of James Carville and his spouse. The main point of my editorial question is the placement of party affiliation. Why do you insist on putting it at the top in the FIRST LINE OF THE ARTICLE OR UNDER THE PHOTO?
75.137.240.236 07:40, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
It's reasonable to put this info somewhere in the article, however, describing the identification as an admission under pressure is original research so I removed that. Really the reason it's an issue is because of insinuations of partisan motivations on either the Wilsons' part or on Rove's, so the Rove quote above should also appear in that section. 64.160.39.153 03:23, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree, but in that quote, Rove was discussing Joseph Wilson and not Valerie Plame. 75.137.240.236 03:31, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
The thesis behind one side of the uproar was that Valerie was outed because Rove wanted to retaliate against Joseph. Per the LA Times article, Joseph's party affiliation was (at least part of) Rove's motivation for wanting to retaliate. So Joseph's affiliation is part of the outing story, and that story is a big portion of the article. The article desperately needs a big cleanup though, and maybe most of this stuff should be moved to the Plame affair article if it's not already there. 64.160.39.153 03:59, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
The political contributions by the Wilsons are already in the public record and mentioned in other articles re: Plame affair and Joseph C. Wilson; her party affiliation is not germane at all to her own unintended role in the leak of her CIA covert identity in the press. (She did not make the leak happen; others did. She is the victim of the leak. Who or what she votes for is a red herring. Such factors are not relevant to the encyclopedia article per se; except perhaps to mention that they have been discussed by others. The lone fact of whether or not she is a Democrat would need to be related to a neutral discussion of the contexts for why it is part of the controversy; otherwise, it should not be included.) See the section on the hearing, which covers more relevant aspects of it and gives plenty of citations and the Oversight Committee website as a source, where one can watch the official video of her testimony if one wants to do "original research" on one's own. "Original research" and the points of view and opinions of editors in Wikipedia are not permitted: WP:NOR. --NYScholar 05:24, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Current party affiliations of a CIA agent

The fact of her expressing a current affiliation to the democratic party could of course be included. (its not somehow unique of course, after all that has gone on many now express affiliation with the democratic party, and the demons in fact "thumped" the reepers in the last election after all, and many people now support them). Of course one needs some context when expressing her current affiliations, such as "In a congressional hearing Mrs. Plame expressed her current identification with the Democratic party. This is not somehow unusual for a CIA agent to be affiliated with one party or other at some time or another, as the CIA is in fact a team of several thousands of republican leaning and several thousands of democratic leaning professionals, in addition to those who might be affiliated with some other party or that are rather centrist". It is not especially noteworthy, as most CIA people would either have answered that question as being a republican or a democrat, if she had stated some other party besides these two it would be more interesting and noteworthy and unusual or unique, but of course if an editor wishes to include it I dont see why not, and it should likely go in the section about the hearing that she presently identifies herself as a democrat. In fact we have little information from her answer to that question except her current identification, we actually have more info about her husbands political identification and background (upbringing in a republican family etc.), and the question was clearly an attempt to discredit her by suggesting she is somehow compromised by an affiliation to one party or the other, and it wasnt on the list submitted to her either and was somewhat of a low blow it sounds like, her hesitation is of course interesting, but more so for foreign intelligence people I suppose than for wikipedia, to see how a trained CIA reacts to an unexpected low blow hostile (action), of course taken into context with the several other hostile questions from those on the right displeased with this whole situation/incident of the Plame affair and the scandal over the leak of exposing a covert CIA, (and one's own specialized secret team member), for (what turned out to be temporary) political gain and public favor. There indeed was hesitation on this question, on many others she answered or deflected quite smoothly and instantaneously. One gets the sense of an american CIA that is smooth and savvy, generally competent, yet not perfect all the time and that could be momentarily thrown by a novel/unexpected occurence/situation, and that perhaps has its own worst enemies coming from its own country's politicians, with the biggest true threat or hampering to "american intelligence" likely stemming from George Bush and the current executive administration-CrystalizedAngels 10:43, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Treason?

can any person with legal expertise give an opinion, if people can get arrested for teason for this sort of thing? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.38.152.63 (talk) 04:08, 25 March 2007

Treason has traditionally been very difficult to prove... as I recall a trial last year of an al-Qaeda sympathizer has the first treason convinction in over a half-century. It's not a blanket term for "doing something that harms national security". Article III of the Constitution defines "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or, in adhering to their Enemies, giving them aid and comfort". The Supreme Court will demand evidence of an overt, specific intent to betray the US to a specific enemy... Cramer v US, Haupt v US: "innocence of intention will defeat even a charge of treason".LordKadghar 23:25, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Possible spelling error for web site

THe article makes note of a site "TMPCAFE.COM" as a source for Larry Johnson's article - I suspect this is supposed to be TPMCAFE.COM, an offshoot of TalkingPointsMemo.com. I can't prove that TMPCAFE.COM was not a valid site at the time of the article so I don't want to edit the main page (if it is in fact editable.) 2liberal 10:55 MST 3/23/2007

Questionable reliability of source someone added

[Someone had originally added version of this source to the external links section; I moved it to references section (and added a note based on it), but, after consulting the talk page of Brewster Jennings & Associates and due to questionable web location of the source, I now question its reliability and notability with respect to WP:BLP and Wikipedia:Reliable sources. I'm moving it here for that reason. (I will also remove the note citation in a moment (parallel citation).) It adds no valuable information to the more reliable news source(s) already documenting the same points. --NYScholar 19:08, 5 May 2007 (UTC)]

Talk archived

So it took about two hours to make the talk archives make sense. Would that it were so easy for this article, which is a pile of rambling, unreadable sludge. Chris Cunningham 21:22, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

Move to "Valerie Wilson"

Shouldn't this page rightly be at "Valerie Wilson"? Isn't "Valerie Plame" just bad reporting that we're perpetuating? -- Thesocialistesq/M.Lesocialiste 02:12, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Valerie Plame uses her maiden name professionally, and it seems to me that most journalists have honored her choice. This article is not about her private life, so why use her husband's name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Realtat (talkcontribs) 17:53, 5 July 2007
Used. This is a biographical article, so it should really end up at Wilson eventually. Chris Cunningham 12:06, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Valerie Plame does not use her maiden name per se professionally anymore. "Valerie Plame" was her classified covert identity. Obviously, however, if her name was listed as "Valerie Plame" (as the person he married) in publications like a Who's Who searched by Robert Novak (and accessible by subscription online), that name was listed in his biography for that publication by Joseph Wilson. Later, documents cited list her name as Valerie E. Wilson (Valerie E[lise] Wilson); but even in the recent Congressional hearing, she was referred to as "Valerie Plame Wilson"; the latter is a legitimate reference to a married woman, though, in this case, according to her husband's book, her name is "Valerie Wilson" or "Valerie E. Wilson" (according to her political contributions name used in an online search site--reference in article). In the past, I have tried to rename this article and/or correct the way her name is presented in line one of it; at times, those changes have been reverted by others. I suggest doing a Google or other search engine search for the prevalent hits on each name. The idea in Wikipedia is for people to be able to find the article. If searching for "Valerie Wilson" is not logical to most people searching for this person, they will not find the article. Right now, in a Google search for "Valerie Plame," Wikipedia is listed first in access results. A few items down, one will find the NY Times index of articles for her listed under the name "Valerie Plame Wilson." Search for "Valerie Wilson" or "Valerie Plame Wilson" or "Valerie E. Wilson" and see what one finds for evidence of prevalent usages in the internet. --NYScholar 00:23, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
In Google" "Valerie Wilson": 2,280,000 hits (many of which are probably not this person, given the common names "Valerie" and "Wilson").
In Google: for "Valerie E. Wilson": 2,080,000 hits (though those will include others with the name "Valerie E. Wilson" ("Wilson" is a very common surname; and "Valerie" a common given or first name).
In Google: for "Valerie Plame": 1,840,000 hits (most of which are probably this person). --NYScholar 01:22, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Her speaker's bureau official biography (the one that she would have to okay) is listed under the name "Valerie Plame Wilson" last time I checked. --NYScholar 00:24, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
For notability purposes--Wikipedia concerns?--her name is "Valerie Plame"; I checked and I see that "Valerie E. Wilson" is still in line one; it's clearly the case that Valerie E. Wilson is also known as (aka) "Valerie Plame." In terms of her actual notability, she is notable for being "Valerie Plame" (the classified and once-covert CIA operative named by Novak in his column as leaked to him by Armitage and others) not for being "Valerie Wilson" or "Valerie Elise Wilson" or "Valerie E. Wilson" or Mrs. Joseph C. Wilson IV--at least thus far in her life. --NYScholar 00:29, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
I used to be in favor of renaming the article "Valerie E. Wilson" (to avoid ambiguation problems so as not to have a disamibiguation page, though one might still have one; esp. if it is "Valerie Wilson"), but I did not perceive support from other editors for that. --NYScholar 01:22, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
I'd support that, absolutely. NYScholar's concern can be addressed with a redirect: the common and imprecise name Latin Mass disambiguates to the correct but more arcane name Tridentine Mass. Since there are no other notable "Valerie E. Wilson"s, it'd be harmless and simple to move it.-- The_socialist talk? 13:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Quickly glancing over the discussion in this section, I don't see any consensus for any particular title; am I mistaken in this? I do see legitimate arguments, however. My personal feeling, without having done any research, is that she is better known as Valerie Plame, whether that is her desire or not. And moving this to Valerie E. Wilson would potentially be slightly confusing to some. It seems logical to me to split the difference and list this at Valerie Plame Wilson, which would both immediately trigger recognition in anyone coming to the article, yet at the same time also recognize her married status. My 2¢. Unschool 19:02, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
I think the name of the article can stay as is without creating confusion. "Valerie Plame" is an "alias" that is clearly identified as such in the lead to the article. She currently uses two names (as far as I can tell): Valerie E. Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson. I think that her legal name is Valerie E. Wilson, as she is referred to that way in court affadivits filed by Patrick Fitzgerald in the CIA leak grand jury investigation and United States v. Libby, though in Plame v. Cheney documents for the civil lawsuit and in some Congressional hearings, she is referred to as "Valerie Plame Wilson". She uses the name "Valerie Plame Wilson" in her biography in her Speaker's Bureau listing, but she has used "Valerie E. Wilson" in making political contributions (which would appear to listed in her legal name that she used in making them). This Wikipedia article is about the subject "Valerie Plame" as well as the person Valerie E. Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson, Mrs. Joseph C. Wilson, IV. It is an article relating to a living person notable initially and mostly due to the alias "Valerie Plame"; I am still not sure which name Wikipedia favors (if any) in its listing of names for living persons; perhaps "Valerie E. Wilson" is the most proper; aside from the speaker's bureau listing, the civil lawsuit, and some government hearing documents, I have not seen a public government document listing her with "Plame" as the middle (maiden) name; the most format references by Fitzgerald and others refer to her often as "Mrs. Wilson" and not as "Ms. Plame." Perhaps more discussion would help with references to Wikipedia policies on naming of articles on living persons? [Note: When this article is renamed, it seems to be reverted. See Plame affair for related renaming controversies pertaining to related articles: e.g., those with "CIA leak scandal" in title; people seem to edit-war over the naming of those related articles. If one wants to do a new Google search for numbers of hits (prevalence of occurrences), first scroll up to where an earlier editor already did one. Lack of prevalence of items listing "Valerie E. Wilson" in Google and similar search engines compared to "Valerie Plame" and "Valerie Plame Wilson" would argue against changing to it. The change would make this Wikipedia article less likely to come up early in a Google search of the person at least for quite some time. (Keep in mind too that there are many other Wikis that repost this article with the current name.) --NYScholar 20:27, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
The relevant section of the naming conventions policy isn't clear on situations like this, where a woman has been widely identified by her maiden name but prefers to be called by her married name. The Wilson's legal support website identifies her as "Valerie Wilson", SourceWatch calls her "Valerie Plame", the BBC insists it's "Valerie Plame Wilson", and Vanity Fair called her "Valerie Plame". The plurality of sources, certainly, use Plame and Plame alone, but the closer you get to Valerie herself, the more likely it is you'll see just Wilson. There's certainly no case to be made that any name is predominant. In this ABC transcript, Joseph Wilson says "I only have one wife and her name is Valerie Wilson so when he says 'Wilson's wife' he's saying 'Mrs. Wilson,' and as I say, her name is Mrs. Wilson.", and then goes on to say "And her name, again, is Valerie Wilson." The first line of her article and the "wife" part of Joseph Wilson's infobox use "Wilson". There are 32 references to a "Valerie Plame", "Plame", "Mrs. Plame", or "Ms. Plame" in this article, many of which are references to her before her marriage in 1998, and 46 references to "Valerie Wilson", "Mrs. Wilson", "Ms. Wilson", "the Wilsons" or "Wilson", referring to Valerie. The media might not be able to make up its mind, but her legal name is "Wilson", her husband calls her "Wilson", and she asks to be called "Wilson". I see no reason why the page should be left at "Plame", then. A redirect from the less correct name should be enough. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thesocialistesq (talkcontribs)
Two-thirds of the way through your last paragraph, and not knowing who was writing it, it appeared to me that you were building a case for the use of "Plame" in the title. I'm having trouble following the flow of your reasoning, which above appears to me to endorse a use of both "Plame" and "Wilson", such as writing "Valerie Plame Wilson". I'm just puzzled by your arguments. Probably I'm missing something, but I just don't get it. Unschool 23:54, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Sorry for not signing, and sorry for not being more clear about what I was responding to. It's not the best writing I've ever done. NYScholar asked for relevant information from the Wikipedia:Naming conventions page. I found very little, so I decided to do some looking on Google for more useful facts to clarify the situation. I was hoping the phrase "the closer you get to Valerie herself, the more likely it is you'll see just Wilson" would make my POV clear. Oh well. unimportant. -- The_socialist talk? 02:35, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I think that you both may be missing reading the comments in the context of this full discussion (prior to your coming along); the upshot is that there is no compelling reason to change the name of this article as you wanted to do. "Valerie Plame" is a reasonable title for this article; every time a user comes along to change it to some version of "Wilson," someone else comes along and reverts it back (redirects it to "Valerie Plame"). Before making a "move" suggestion involving renaming the article, you need to read the previous discussions of the matter and to consult "moves" that may have previously been done (see if there are archived discussions) via the history of the article and its talk page. Without doing any research into the relative prevalence of the occurrence of these names in available literature (publications) and online, there is no way for you or others to know if your proposal to change the name of the article makes any logical sense for readers. I was presenting various points of view on the matter, not just one. Currently, I see no compelling reason to change the title of the article. Doing so would most likely make it difficult for more people to find the article. If "Valerie E. Wilson" or "Valerie Plame Wilson" or "Mrs. Joseph C. Wilson, IV" later becomes better known as those names than as her former maiden name and alias "Valerie Plame," then perhaps at that future time, one might want to change the article for the convenience of readers seeking information about this person. (Cf. Valerie Plame and Mata Hari....) --NYScholar 00:12, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Note the six pages of archived discussions, some of which probably do involve changing the name of the article. One needs to consult such discussions prior to proposing a major change such as renaming/moving an article on a controversial and contentious subject such as this one. "Quickly glancing over" discussion on a current talk page will not suffice when large changes like renaming/moving an article are involved. That is a major change and requires consulting prior discussions to see what consensus thus far has been about it. (Speaking for myself, I was originally for "Valerie E. Wilson," as it seems to be her legal name, but I don't think that is best for Wikipedia's majority of readers at this point in time. I just don't know. I've consulted previous discussion and think it's best left as is as "Valerie Plame" (parallel to Mata Hari). In some ways, Valerie Plame is one of the 21st century's Mata Haris as far as notoriety goes. --NYScholar 00:17, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
One might want to keep in mind that we are still pre-memoir and pre-movie at this point in time; in 100 years is "Valerie Plame" the name one might recognize or "Valerie E. Wilson" or "Valerie Plame Wilson"; one might try to strive for an historically-relevant perspective. This is not the same as a directory like Marquis' Who's Who in America etc.; it is an Encyclopedia; and the entry in an encyclopedia is most often a person's real name (whichever one that is in this case--Valerie E. Wilson, Valerie Elise Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson, probably not Valerie Elise Plame Wilson (as line one reads now). Her legal name appears to be Valerie E. Wilson based on Valerie Elise Wilson, and Valerie E. Wilson is one she and her husband appear to favor, as opposed to the Speaker's Bureau "Valerie Plame Wilson"; but the book author name is Valerie Plame Wilson (to sell books no doubt; to be recognizable to prospective readers [consumers]). One could follow regular encyclopedia in format of living persons names, or the Mata Hari example, which is also likely in printed encyclopedia. One might want to examine this issue with some more examples: someone else with a CIA covert alias and multiple other aliases? Even the court documents vary in versions of the name. "Valerie Plame" is the most recognizable; "Valerie E. Wilson" or "Valerie Elise Wilson" what one might expect to find in a Who's Who or telephone directory, if she were listed. :-) --NYScholar 00:33, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I've just checked her forthcoming book's presentation of her name as its author, which is "Valerie Plame Wilson" (like her Speaker's Bureau listing); I have added a book-stub for later dev. after the book is released, and I have changed the name in the infobox here to match it: as "Valerie Plame Wilson." I see no problem with this article being called "Valerie Plame" and the information in the infobox and lead. But that's just my view of it. There may be others who have different points of view still. I think that the name that she has chosen as an author is a reasonable name for the infobox in this article, and that is why I changed "Valerie E. Wilson" (which I previously favored as I thought it her legal and preferred name) to "Valerie Plame Wilson," which now appears to be her name of choice for public purposes. --NYScholar 01:36, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I totally agree with you, NYScholar; if you check the history you will see that I reverted this page back to Valerie Plame a few days ago, doing so, indeed, without any review of the discussion, because, like most people, "Valerie Plame" seemed so clearly to me to be the most sensible title for this article. Frankly, my interest in this is minimal, but I leave off of these discussions endorsing keeping the name at Valerie Plame and vehemently opposing moving back to Valerie E. Wilson. Unschool 01:56, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Good point, NYScholar. I've looked, and a move to "Plame Wilson" or "Wilson" was discussed twice before. [[The first time, User:Asbestos proposed a move to "Wilson", which was opposed by User:Anonip. Asbestos never responded to him. User:Kgrr commented in favor of the move. No action was taken.
the second time was in November of 2005. That discussion garnered a grand total of three short comments by two users, one of whom argued for a move to "Plame Wilson". The other argued for "Wilson". No action was taken.
So we're not exactly stepping on the toes of an old compromise here. The issue's come up before and hasn't been solved. I didn't expect Unschool's vehement opposition to the move when I made it, though... If there's that much opposition, I'm content to drop the subject and leave it to future generations to decide. But I still don't see the objection to using her correct, legal, preferred name and making Valerie Plame a redirect. -- The_socialist talk? 02:11, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for these responses both of you. One rule of thumb re: consensus is that when [an] article or the name of an article stay[s] one way for a pretty long time (months let's say), that longevity is a sign of consensus that it's okay the way it is. That is a main reason why I would just leave as is for the moment at least, until a lot more people with views about one name or another express their opinions (if they have any). Another thing is that a "rename" proposal has a kind of format that editors post (in some kind of box I think)--there may be a template for that--as with a "split" or "merge" proposal. One places the template on the talk page and discusses it in a format. (I forgot the "split" procedure when I moved a section to an article of its own (the Senate Reports sec.) but there was consensus for shortening the article at that time, which that split partially accomplished. --NYScholar 02:48, 12 August 2007 (UTC) [I added the template re: the requested move and altered the section heading to match it so that people can locate the discussion more easily in the future. --NYScholar 21:20, 12 August 2007 (UTC)]