Talk:Frederick H. Fleitz

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Material added by Quentimastis about this individual is inappropriate. This is a private person and there is no reason to publish information about his family and personal life. Numerous aspects of this item are also incorrect and biased. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 143.231.249.141 (talk • contribs). 21:20, 28 August 2006 UTC

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Wholesale deletions about a political appointee who has thrust himself forward into the political debates of the day are not appropriate. Frederick H. Fleitz is no longer a "private person," and the fact that his actions are discussed in numerous newspaper articles and blogs indicates that whatever role he has played in the Plame Affair and debate over Iraq is of general interest. It's also ludicrous to impugn neutral recountings of allegations as "biased." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Quentinmatsys (talk • contribs).

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Even if the facts are correct, you must give sources according to Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Since you did not do this, I removed the disputed material again. Han-Kwang 07:57, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

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Numerous aspects of the statements by Quentinmatsys are inaccurate. Fleitz is a private individual. He has been a Congressional staffer for just a few months, arguably not a political appointee. Before that he was a civil servant with the Federal Government and never served in a Schedule C post. There has never been a press item on allegations of Fleitz's involvement in the Plame affair, only leftwing blog allegations. These rumors are without foundation, which is why the press never published them. The allegation that Fleitz's work at State had something to do with Plame is a new and false allegation. What is Quentinmatsys' source for this? Moreover, why Quentinmatsys insists on publishing personal information about this individual's family is hard to fathom. First of all, most of this information is incorrect. More importantly, however, these people deserve their privacy.

The Wikipedia editors are to be commended for acting to enforcing the Wikipedia rules on Living Persons. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.162.155.135 (talk • contribs). 30 Aug 2006

[edit] Biased account

The changes to the Fleitz article cite fairly biased and partisan sources, Dafna linzer and Doug Jehl, both of whom are well known for their hostility toward the Bush Administration and Fleitz's former boss, John Bolton.

While I did not remove this information, I have added additional material to make this a balanced entry.

Adding lengthy excerpts like that makes the article completely unreadable, so I've trimmed it back significantly. I'm afraid we can't editorialize about the sources in that fashion within the article itself (if the other sources are biased, is National Review supposed to be a paragon of objectivity?). Also, sources are needed for the positive press about his book, discussed in the second paragraph. --Michael Snow 05:21, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unfair edits

Your edits removed all but one of my sources but kept the biased NYT and WP sources. You also removed references to the e-mails Fleitz produced that refuted claims that Bolton retaliated against a State Department employee. This is hardly "adding balance" to the story. Either this stuff is added or the biased material and account you added should come out.

Moreover, if this is an encyclopedia, why are you trolling for dirt on this guy?

I removed the National Review editorial because it's an editorial and because it's redundant. Editorials are designed as opinion pieces, not reporting, and are thus generally poor choices to cite for factual propositions. In this case, the relevant passage is largely duplicated in Lowry's piece. Lowry is more in the nature of a column than a news story, but columnists have been known to do reporting - given the context, Bob Novak comes to mind - so I used that with some trepidation as a source for what he testified. If somebody can dig up Fleitz's actual testimony and provide a proper cite for it, that would be even better.

The emails weren't removed, they were moved to the external links section. That's for two reasons: 1) They've only been used to make inferences and interpretations that go beyond a neutral point of view, and 2) Lack of establishing authenticity for something purporting to be primary source material. PNAC doesn't report news, they do think-tank style lobbying and advocacy, and they don't strike me as an appropriate source to be using for the content of emails between government employees, in the absence of information about how they came into possession of this information.

Also, charges of bias are not particularly productive. Pointing out factual inaccuracies would be much more useful, if you're capable of demonstrating any. --Michael Snow 23:32, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Your changes are OK. Thank you for the work you put into this.