Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lansing Bennett

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to the new article 1993 CIA shootings per Thomjakobsen's suggestion at the bottom of this discussion. The subject is notable only for his involvement in that event (see also WP:BLP1E). Sandstein 19:35, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lansing Bennett

Lansing Bennett (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

CIA doctor killed by a foreign nation. This seems to be as far as his notability extends. Other than that he was just one of many other Government employees of similar anonymity. This article doesn't appear to meet the criteria for WP:BIO. 1060ghits mostly of news reports of the assassination though most only mention him in passing and discuss the wider issues. Some of those hits relate to the name of a Forest. WebHamster 11:12, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Note: The Forest was named after him because he was considered an important person.
Note: Other CIA employees, such as Valerie Plame, have less claim to notability, yet they have an article.Mrs.EasterBunny 23:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
  • As has been pointed out several times to you: WP:WAX. As an editor it is your right to visit these articles you are pointing out and bring them to AFD if you believe they shouldn't be articles. --WebHamster 20:31, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete Fails WP:BIO, murdered Westerners invariably generate news mentions as "the victim was..." but need notability outside of getting shot. Otherwise it's just a memorial. Thomjakobsen 16:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per WP:NOT#NEWS - No real notability outside the one incident Corpx 18:52, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Mir Aimal Kansi has no notability except his murders. Hinkley has no notability except his attempted murders. Both have article.Mrs.EasterBunny 23:35, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
  • No, it would be a perfectly succinct answer to a large proportion of your argument. --WebHamster 20:28, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge and redirect to Mir Aimal Kansi. This certainly was a notable incident -- two analysts were machine-gunned in their cars as they drove into work. I know 1993 was a long time ago, but this and the first WTC bombing were considered pretty important news at the time and the victim's names are plausible search terms. --Dhartung | Talk 19:34, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
  • redirect Mir Aimal Kansi to Lansing Bennett???Mrs.EasterBunny 18:10, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep
  • The 1993 terrorist attack was the first incident of Islamic terrorism on US soil (later followed by the 1993 WTC attack, September 11th WTC and Pentagon attack, etc.) As such, it is notable.
  • Reason why not to merge with Mir Aimal Kansi; for the same reason that Reagan is not merged to the Hinkley article and the September 11th article is not merged with the bin Laden article.
  • Reason why not to delete. Bennett is one of the few people memorialized in the CIA wall of stars. He is not just a murdered Westerner.
  • I am not related to Lansing Bennett.
  • Another reason why not to delete. His death made him notable. Teacher astronaut Christa McAuliff has an article yet she did nothing except was a passenger on a fatal bus accident (albeit bus to space, i.e. Space Shuttle). Others with articles include Daniel Pearl and William R. Higgins. McAuliff, he has had things named after him after his death. There is also a memorial outside the CIA for Bennett; it's a garden and a bench and plaque. Tim McCarthy has an article and he doesn't even have a memorial, wasn't even killed.
  • Note: Some may hate the CIA and want to punish Bennett by deleting the article.
  • Meets criteria. "The person has been the subject of published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject." None of the 14 of so sources in the article are Lansing Bennett websites or websites of friends and some other articles exists but are not used in the article. There's even more stuff in print since he was murdered before the internet era.
  • The article has been improved!

comments revised slightly Mrs.EasterBunny 19:04, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment These are all memorial sources. I don't want to sound insensitive as it would appear you're a relative of the deceased, but biographical subjects need a certain degree of prominence. The examples you give are all of very famous people, which is why we recognize the names instantly: Hinckley will go down in history as an attempted presidential assassin, McAuliff was famous before she died as the (planned) first teacher in space, has had films made about her... We're don't "hate the CIA", we're not "trying to punish Bennett", we're just pointing out that this is not the place for articles which are basically memorials, however well-loved he was by his family, colleagues, local community. There have been lots of articles deleted relating to 9/11 for the same reason: victims of newsworthy events don't immediately qualify as "encyclopedia notable", even though their names may have appeared in news items on those events. It's not personal, we're not attacking this man's memory. Thomjakobsen 00:16, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep per Mrs. Bunny's reason 1 (was a notable event) and 2nd to last reason (does meet criteria). If merged, a new article should be created entitled "1993 attack at CIA headquarters" or something like that, not under the terrorist's article. People under 40 probably don't remember the attack.UTAFA 21:01, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. Please note that blogs are not reliable sources. There are plenty of mainstream media sources available; no need to rely on blog anecdotes. Chick Bowen 23:04, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - well written article about a notable, albeit minor, historical figure.E343ll 16:21, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment left on another AFD but applies here

Comment: generally the phrase "notability is not temporary" means that if someone is notable at some point that does not go away and they may have an article as an historically notable person (say, a minor figure in the Watergate scandal). --Dhartung | Talk 07:23, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

This guy/article was very notable in 1993. E343ll 16:41, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - The event/atrocity/assassination/killing (delete as appropriate) was notable, the victims weren't other than the fact that they were killed. What I can't figure out from the reports is; were they killed for who they were or were they just in the wrong place at the wrong time? If it's the latter then that further degrades any notability. Like it or not, and it's a vagary of our society, killers are always perceived to be more notable than their victims. I have no idea why, perhaps it's something to do with the celebrity mentality that has been building for decades. --WebHamster 16:52, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
  • The shooter was firing randomly at targets using an off-ramp leading to CIA headquarters. A couple of links I found trying to source this suggest it was a tribal revenge for the death of an uncle working for the CIA, and the initial suspicions of terrorism seem to have been dropped when they couldn't link him to any such organizations. It's all very murky, which complicates proper sourcing. Given the present situation, it's not likely that documents on Afghanistan/Pakistan are going to be declassified any time soon, which makes memorial sources even less reliable. Edit: The second link has some unreliable editorializing, I thought it was a Washington Post article but it isn't, just quotes heavily from it. Thomjakobsen 17:20, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Edit: striked the comments about lack of reliable sources for the shootings themselves. Did some digging, wrote an article, see new comment near bottom of this page for redirect suggestion. Thomjakobsen 15:47, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
  • So basically it's likely that Bennett wasn't the/a specific target and was just unfortunate to be a random casualty... wrong place, wrong time. Or in other words, pending further information, his murder was not as a direct result of his importance, just that he was in the CIA building. This does not point at personal notability before the incident? --WebHamster 17:29, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Here's a pretty comprehensive collection of reports on the incident. It appears he waited for the red stop-light, then walked from car to car, firing into them. In other words, no specific selection of who he shot at, just that they were CIA employees, and he refused to shoot at women. Thomjakobsen 17:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks, that's what I thought. I'm still trying to figure out where "died in the line of duty" came from. Sounds like he was on his way home/off to lunch etc. But once again I fail to see how notability comes into this. Do we have an article on each of the other victims? Do we have an article on the women he didn't shoot? Do we have an article on every victim of an LA drive-by. I get the impression that there's a degree of patriotic spin going on here (not from Mrs.EasterBunny I should point out). What makes Mr Bennett any different from the rest of the victims? I'm sorry but from my (neutral/non-US) vantage point this does nothing to further the claims of notability. --WebHamster 18:07, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
  • It was the morning rush-hour, and the shooter knew that the cars were headed towards CIA headquarters (due to the road layout; it doesn't head anywhere but the main gate there). The CIA have a "wall of stars" at the Langley HQ for all employees who "die or are killed in the line of duty", and the two fatalities in this incident both have named stars (there are unnamed stars when the deceased can't be identified for reasons of classification). I agree that military deaths don't confer automatic notability - there'd be a problem if someone decided to create 7 million bios on WW2 Red Army casualties - and the claim in some of the blog references of "first US victim of Islamic terrorism" doesn't hold up in light of the FBI and CIA later saying that he acted alone and had no links to any terrorist organizations. I think the article on the shooter is probably the best place to mention the existence of the memorials, but not detailed bios. They can only really contain memorial information, since the pre-incident lives of the victims are not adequately sourced. Thomjakobsen 18:51, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Positive comment about the article - see this dialogue reproduced below:

I saw the William R. Higgins article that you created a few years ago. Do you have any tips about notability? I've written an article about Lansing Bennett which is going to be deleted for lack for notability (see comments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Lansing_Bennett ). Bennett was killed in the 1993 attack on the CIA, sometimes noted as the first incident of Islamic terrorism in North America. If Bennett is judged to be not notable, Higgins is similarly at risk. Again, I am not canvassing but merely asking for your advice on achieving notability. Mrs.EasterBunny 16:34, 8 September 2007 (UTC) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Big_iron"
My suggestion would be to look at Wikipedia:Notability for ideas: establishing that there has been "significant coverage" in reliable, independent sources appears to be key. There is also Wikipedia:Notability (people) which provides additional criteria for articles about people. Note that my original contribution to the William R. Higgins article was only at the stub level and I think that contributions by other editors have been more important in establishing notability for that subject. I hope that this is helpful. --Big_iron 09:43, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Note that it was 30 days after the Higgins article was started did others contribute to it. In contrast, there have already been other editors editing the Lansing Bennett article. Also note that Big_iron believes the Higgins article is notable and, by the same logic, Lansing Bennett would be notable. There is a possibility of consensus but I'll let this AFD proceed first before proposing the concensus compromise. Mrs.EasterBunny 22:42, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

  • Tough call More notable (or has more citations) than fellow victim Frank Darling, more notable than most 9-11 victims due to the shear numbers on 9-11 (sorry, folks), but most citations are related to the attack. Goss9900 04:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
  • The problem is that the article isn't about the attack, it's about the man. --WebHamster 09:39, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment I've created an article 1993 CIA shootings covering this notable event in detail, all of it backed up by reliable sources (Washington Post, the perpetrator's death row letters to Salon, the opinion of the Virginia Supreme Court). Really, neither Kasi nor Bennett nor any of the other victims were notable outside of this event and its aftermath, so I've kept all the information on them which is sourceable and relevant (including mentions of the CIA memorials, what they did at the CIA). My suggestion is that "Lansing Bennett" be deleted and redirected to this new article (along with "Frank Darling"), and I'll put Mir Aimal Kansi (his real name doesn't have the "n") up for an AfD later, again asking for a redirect. What do people think of this? Thomjakobsen 15:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.