Talk:Edward Jay Epstein

This Article Needs Clean Up
Even the stub without references contains many errors, e.g. in the titles of the books. Suggest should not be a low priority entry. Epstein is a figure of some importance because he cast the first stone at the Warren Commission and then later became a Boswell to legendary CIA counterspy James Jesus Angleton. Timoleon212 (talk) 20:08, 4 September 2010 (UTC)Timoleon212

For future reference
Reviews of Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald -Location (talk) 20:48, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Edward Jay Epstein. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20130121192133/http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/The_critics/Epstein/Epsteinbio.html to http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/the_critics/epstein/Epsteinbio.html

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 09:13, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Is this man too close to the people (and government) upon whom/which he reports?
It appears that - as stated by an earlier commenter - he was a little too close to Angleton at the CIA. More recently, he has published an 'opinion' piece at the Wall Street Journal titled 'The Fable of Edward Snowden', in which Epstein appears to have closely followed the discounted arguments of the NSA. Refer for instance to Barton Gellman's Twitter feed and the articles to which it links, including a post at Errata Security, and Barton Gellman's own article about the House Intelligence Committee's Snowden report. Mr Epstein appears to have relied quite extensively on the HIC report, which is comprehensively debunked in the Gellman article.

Epstein's lack of curiosity regarding the facts behind his 'opinion' certainly seems in conflict to his claims to be either 'investigative' or indeed an independent 'reporter'. Even before his Snowden take-down commences, Epstein uses the sub-title to make a bald statement that "the NSA thief has told multiple lies". Not exactly a 'cautious toe in the water' - especially since most of these alleged 'lies' have been disproven in the other articles to which I have linked, while Snowden has not 'stolen' anything.

Presumably there are others with better knowledge about Epstein's ability to string words together, and willingness or otherwise to work independently, but I suggest that at the very least this smear campaign he has decided to jump into requires at least a brief mention in his Wikipedia entry under the title 'Controversy'. There are presumably many more pieces of information that rebut Epstein's claims, but I have been lazy.

I am happy to be advised by those who have better knowledge of the subject, before making any changes to the main article. Ambiguosity (talk) 14:14, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

The article version I see is the barest description of a living author's work. His latest book, the only one concerning Snowden, is only listed in the bibliography. A "criticism" section would be extremely inappropriate when there is no description of the book. The link you give is to a progressive think tank, with an article by Snowden close confidant & compatriot, Gellman. This all might be appropriate for the Snowden page, if it were presented NPOV, not like your comments. How you can think Snowden "has not stolen" anything is beyond me. Copying and removing large amounts of classified data, whether subsequently given to people like Gellman & Greenwald, or Putin, or just erased, is absolutely stealing & illegal, and usually requires some lying to pull off. That's not a smear; it's just factual. 69.161.82.65 (talk) 05:21, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Hey 69.161.82.65|69.161.82.65, maybe there should be a description of the book, as well as the controversy section. I never heard of Epstein before today, but his list of publications suggests he has been influential going way back to Warren Commission days. One of the reasons I look journalists up in Wikipedia is to get a feeling for their point of view in general, and that is the reason I went to this page today. Since Ambiguosity would like to take on that task as he indicated, I think he should, but first taking into account your suggestions and of course also overcoming his admitted laziness. And you 69.161.82.65|69.161.82.65 could add edits too, while taking care to be objective yourself. Oh, and of course, it's allowed to edit anonymously but really you should create an account so we know who you are. Jeaniac (talk) 18:35, 18 February 2017 (UTC)