Talk:Benjamin Wittes

Self-Authorship Concerns
What makes this guy notable? He is a journalist who wrote a few books. He is not a legal scholar. Why are minor reporters notable? 96.231.127.20 (talk) 13:04, 15 July 2011 (UTC) gk

Who wrote that article? Ben himself? I don't care enough, but for future editors:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.14.208.206 (talk) 04:10, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I read it. It's just a Glenn Greenwald hatchet job. Valerius Tygart (talk) 17:52, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Does seem very possible to likely the page's author was Wittes himself. Citations are nearly all from his institutional publications and match the writing style of his content and personal website's 'about' page.

BLP concern
I don't have time to pull it apart at the moment, but the issues and controversies section has major WP:BLP issues; it claims controversial status for various things without showing any controversy, and it suggests he wrote controversial essays without sourcing to say that he did so. --Nat Gertler (talk) 18:20, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Vague claims of COI...
added a COI tag to this article, over three years ago. I looked at the revision history. I didn't see any overt indications of COI, so I looked here for an explanation.

I didn't find that explanation, but I see some other concerns, about Wittes's notability. I think a few minutes of web searching is all it takes to establish that journalists and scholars routinely read Wittes, and refer to his opinions in their own published documents. Is frequent reference to his work, by RS, sufficient to establish his notability?


 * 1) NSA Cheerleader Ben Wittes Takes A Written Swing At The Anti-NSA Crowd And Misses His Target Entirely
 * 2) This Is How #MuslimAmericanFaces Went Viral
 * 3) When you stop smoking, the cigarettes don’t get together to figure out how to kill you anyway — Benjamin Wittes, on a panel at the National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society, responding to the observation that smoking and traffic accidents cause more deaths in a year than 9/11.
 * 4) Brookings Scholar to Vladimir Putin: Fight Me!

Anyhow, I initially planned to leave a note here, saying I planned to remove that tag, after a reasonable period of time, if no one offered a defense of it. I think that should still be my plan. Geo Swan (talk) 01:28, 27 August 2016 (UTC)


 * ✅ Geo Swan (talk) 16:30, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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I have just modified 11 external links on Benjamin Wittes. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080705191636/http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/experts/wittesb/wittesb_bio.pdf to http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/experts/wittesb/wittesb_bio.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130402174121/http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2010/detentionanddenial to http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2010/detentionanddenial/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20121021195324/http://www.brookings.edu/events/2008/06/23-long-war to http://www.brookings.edu/events/2008/06/23-long-war/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20121020075540/http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2012/campaign2012 to http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2012/campaign2012/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20121024073121/http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2011/constitution30 to http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2011/constitution30/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130115072930/http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2009/legislatingthewaronterror to http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2009/legislatingthewaronterror/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150223035058/http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/09/21-platform-security-wittes/ to http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/09/21-platform-security-wittes/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20121024061354/http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2011/05/guantanamo-wittes to http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2011/05/guantanamo-wittes/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130603051833/http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/04/01-databuse-wittes to http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/04/01-databuse-wittes/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150223034833/http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/01/07-rationalizing-surveillance/ to http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/01/07-rationalizing-surveillance/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20121024062252/http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2010/01/22-guantanamo-wittes-chesney to http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2010/01/22-guantanamo-wittes-chesney/

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Lawsuit against Trump over terrorist claims
Needs coverage. https://www.lawfareblog.com/friendliest-lawsuit-ever-filed-against-justice-departmentWikipietime (talk) 12:59, 15 August 2017 (UTC)