Talk:Andrew Leslie (Canadian Army officer)

Due to poor reporting from CTV and CBC, the VCDS released the following statement on behalf of the CDS
This is very POV.--(GriffinSB) (talk) 11:23, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

He was a Prosecution witness in a war crimes trial in the Hague of Ante Gotovina et al. During the Croatian Operation Storm, as UNCRO COS he brought to light the Croatian Army's indiscriminate shelling of civilian targets in Knin.

CTV broadcast excerpts of his testimony before the ICTY where Leslie responded to evidence of how he allegedly instructed a Canadian officer to collect evidence of such alleged indiscriminate shelling in order to back up his claims; this after UN investigators concluded that the shelling of Knin was concentrated against military targets. Media reports aired at the time confirm Leslie's version of events (e.g. ABC Evening News for Thursday, Aug 03, 1995).

CTV published Leslie's testimony about the fighting in Knin in August 1995 which was the basis for the Meritorious Service Medal he received in 2004. He had saved 40 Serbian civilians; something which angered militant Croats.[citation needed]

This whole section is POV.--(GriffinSB) (talk) 11:33, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

1.he only testified about the "indiscriminate" shelling of civilian targets,but the UN rapport that was made after the Operation Storm denied it.

2. His collegue testifed against him and claimed that he wanted illegal evidence against the Croatian Amry

3.During the court he admitted that there were military targets in Knin(something he denied untill last year.

4. as i said.... it's POV because it accuses CTV and CBS of poor reporting on no grounds and with no proof whatsoever.--(GriffinSB) (talk) 11:33, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

5. The description about his Medal said that he rescued 40 UN workers,not civilians.--(GriffinSB) (talk) 11:40, 28 April 2008 (UTC) So something is very wrong here.

And i think that a source is needed about the claim that the Croatian militants were angry about him saving people. Second, clarification is needed because there were no militant Croats in the area,it was the Croatian Army.And calling the Croatian army militant Croats is very POV.--(GriffinSB) (talk) 11:46, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree. Aside from the very poor use of English this is all very POV, and no citations are provided. Thus we have no way of knowing if any of this is true, and we can't have it in the encyclopedia.  Please find some citations that show that any of this is real, and we can certainly work it in.  Loren.wilton (talk) 13:07, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I belive it was like this...

He was a Prosecution witness in a war crimes trial in the Hague of Ante Gotovina et al. During the Croatian offensive STORM to regain its occupied territories, as UNCRO COS he made grave allegations about the Croatian Army indiscriminate shelling of civilian targets in Knin.

CTV broadcast excerpts of his testimony before the ICTY where Leslie responded to evidence of how he instructed fellow Canadian officers to illegally collect evidence of alleged indiscriminate shelling of the Croatian Army against civilian targets in Knin in order to back up his claims after UN investigators concluded that the shelling of Knin was concentrated against military targets.

CBC published Leslie's testimony on how he in fact did not participate in a rescue of UN personnel during the fighting in Knin in August 1995 which was the basis for the Meritorious Service Medal he received in 2004.

The Governor General of Canada's website states the following event as the basis for Leslie having received the medal for Meritorious Service Award:

„During intense artillery fire, Colonel Leslie organized and participated in several missions to rescue approximately 40 United Nations employees trapped in their residences and bring them to the United Nations camp, using armoured personnel carriers. Throughout the worst of the shelling, he moved from bunker to bunker offering encouragement to those in distress and was instrumental in convincing them to continue doing their job. His performance during the operation and its aftermath saved many lives and brought great credit to the Canadian Forces.“

Leslie admitted to not having participated in any such rescue of UN personnel let alone any Serb civilians. During his testimony before the ICTY Leslie stated: „When I discovered the error I spoke to the vice chief of Defence staff and said, "I think you got it wrong. I think you're talking about 30 to 40 civilians from the hospital being moved to the UN compound." And after a bit of discussion he told me, "That's good enough. It's going to stay." Leslie was unable to identify a single person who could corroborate his claims.


 * Governor general for Canada explanation. http://www.gg.ca/honours/search-recherche/honours-desc.asp?lang=e&TypeID=msd&id=12705  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.191.146.126 (talk) 05:39, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that's good. You can include that in the article.It's NPOV and correct.--(GriffinSB) (talk) 10:02, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks good, but...
I would suggest that where possible some inline citations are suppllied. For instance the quoted sections at the bottom probably came from some web site. It should be possible to find the page it came from and include a reference citation at the end of the section. Probably some of the earlier sections about UN allegations can be sourced back to CBC or possibly even a UN transcript.

I suspect that several of the references at the bottom support the text in the article, but it is always best if we can have a direct link from the sentence or paragraph to the source. Otherwise a reader is left wondering which of the references supports any particular claim. Loren.wilton (talk) 13:13, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I sourced the article,but somehow the titles of the refferences are not shown on the bottom of the page.Will you fix that? 'cause I don't know how to fix it myself.--(GriffinSB) (talk) 16:08, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, so I see. I added a references section so that they will show up next time, although they are gone at the moment as CivilAffairs explains below.
 * This is easy to fix: all you have to do is add a tag at the bottom of the article, and all of the collected references from the article will appear there.  I should have noticed that myself yesterday and added the tag, sorry. Loren.wilton (talk) 02:44, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Citation is refrerenced in link above "Governor general for Canada explanation", it should be placed with other links. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.134.131.23 (talk) 20:04, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Looks like references are in good shape now. Loren.wilton (talk) 08:49, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Removed defense attourney allegations
Per WP:LIVING I have removed from this article the recent additions of defense attourney allegations against General Leslie made during the ongoing trial of Gotovina, Cermak and Markac in the Hague.

Please take note of the following from WP:LIVING: "Editors must take particular care adding biographical material about a living person to any Wikipedia page." Further, "Material about living persons must be sourced very carefully. Without reliable third-party sources, it will violate the No original research and Verifiability policies, and could lead to libel claims."

The only source here is a defense attourney. Defense attourneys are in the business of discrediting witnesses for the prosecution, even honourable people. In addition, General Leslie is under a court order not to speak about his testimony and is therefore unable to defend himself.

The bit about the mix-up with the medal might be admissible, but the rest relies soley on this one dubious source.Civilaffairs (talk) 01:06, 30 April 2008 (UTC)Civilaffairs

I think that we should add something about the Medal contraversy,because it was covered by the national media in Canada.--(GriffinSB) (talk) 09:18, 30 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I already put that question to an admin. Let's wait for an answer.  It is better to err on the side of caution in these cases.  Another problem with the medal mix-up was that it produced more content in the article than the general's long and illustrious career.  See WP:BLPSTYLE about giving a disproportionate amount of space to criticism.  If the admin thinks the part about the medal-mix-up can go back in, I will put it back in. Civilaffairs (talk) 14:00, 30 April 2008 (UTC)Civilaffairs


 * I've only seen that one TV report that was linked, and which seemed indeed to be relying pretty heavily and uncritically on material brought up by the opposing side in that court case. How much other coverage was there about the medal thing, independent of the court debate? After all, that part is really inherently independent from the other allegations. Would it be a correct summary to say that it is uncontroversial he did in fact help saving some people, but there's been some confusion over who those people were? Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:12, 30 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, that would be a correct summary. The Canadian Department of National Defence issued a statement explaining the mix-up and this part of the controversy made it into the national media. So far as I know, nothing about the medal controversy has been independent of the court debate.  On the other hand, the medal mix-up really has nothing to do with the court case (only used in an attempt to discredit the general.)  The rest of the defense attourney allegations have not been reported in other media (there is only that one CTV excerpt).  I checked, and all other sources I found left those allegations out of their reports (as they should IMO).  Civilaffairs (talk) 14:26, 30 April 2008


 * Want to add it back in? Seems that bit should be unproblematic in terms of BLP. We don't need all that many details. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:29, 30 April 2008 (UTC)


 * That's fine. Would you like to do it yourself, Future Perfect, or would you like me to do it?  Civilaffairs (talk) 14:32, 30 April 2008 (UTC)Civilaffairs

I am working on getting the summary suggested by Future Perfect into the article. You guys will have to be a bit patient, as I am having to fix some pre-existing problems with the reference templates. (I think someone already mentioned this problem on this talk page.) I'll get it finshed as soon as I am able to sort this problem out. Civilaffairs (talk) 16:33, 30 April 2008 (UTC)Civilaffairs


 * Okay, done.Civilaffairs (talk) 17:22, 30 April 2008 (UTC)Civilaffairs

More info that could be added if available...
I juggled a few paragraphs around into chronological order and added a couple of section headings. This made it pretty obvious that we are thin on a good bit of his life.

We could have an "early life" section that mentioned he was born somewhere and went to school and played football somewhere. There is a reference that he went to college, since the lead says he went from college to the military, but that is a pretty quick overview for 22 years or so of his life! I shouldn't imagine that any of that could be considered disputative or tied up with the current legal case.

I also added a section on "family" because there was a sentence saying he had grandchildren. This implies to me that he probably had children, and from that there is an even bet he had one or more wives over the years. A few sentences could be added saying something about these people, at least names and numbers. :-)

Loren.wilton (talk) 08:48, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Unexplained removals?
There were several additions I made (re: Leslie being offered a job at the RCMP or the Civilization Museum) and more context about his expense scandal. All were well-referenced. Why were they removed? Gentek16 (talk) 00:26, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I have restored the text for you and inserted the reference at the end of the paragraph. It was not properly referenced before but it certainly is now. Best wishes. Dormskirk (talk) 20:07, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

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More info added in under Military Career
I made a few additions for Leslie's military career. It looked like it was a bit sparse since most of it was concentrated under the Manitoba floods section (like the ice storm disaster which was a separate operation). A bit more detail could have also been added for his career in Afghanistan, so I've added those there too. Grilledtandoorismoke (talk) 14:23, 29 July 2023 (UTC)