Talk:Allen Weinstein

Removed incorrect material

I removed this from the article:

For The Haunted Wood, he purchased exclusive rights to KGB files preventing other scholars from confirming his translations.

because it's very inaccurate. It was Random House who negotiated the contract with the SVR for archival access, not Weinstein, and a number of different authors were covered. (Among the others are Costello, for Deadly Illusions.) The authors did have "exclusive access", but given that Random House paid for the privilege, this is not as sinister as it may first sound.

(Without reviewing the contract, it's not clear exactly how "exclusive" this "exclusive" is, anyway - presumably Random House was only interested in protecting its commercial interest, i.e. the "exclusive" might simply mean that it's an exclusive license to reprint copyrighted material. That would not preclude e.g. others reviewing the material. But that's all speculation.)

Anyway, the principal reason no other authors can review the material is that the SVR closed off access to its archives to all outsiders in late 1995, for a variety of reasons. So it's simply incorrect to say that it's Weinstein who is "preventing other scholars from confirming his translations". Noel (talk) 00:05, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Also the material on Perjury is unbalanced; Perjury first appeared in 1979 and had a conclusion that Hiss may have been innocent. After material from Soviet Archives was reviewed, Perjury was rereleased in the 1997 Edition which included material from Soviet Archives and had different conclusions. Being the only difference between the two books is insertion of written material from Soviet Archives, the material based on personal intereviews remained unchanged. Hence, as the article reads,

"Critics on the left have argued that Weinstein's books Perjury and The Haunted Wood (both arguing Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy) have severe problems. Interviewees quoted in Perjury claimed they were badly misquoted..."

makes no light of this, it is uninformed and needs revision. nobs 01:51, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Required edit made

Controversial material of any kind that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately.
    — from the box at the top of this page.

I just removed a whole bunch of completely unsourced controversial material from the "Criticism" section. Current Wikipedia policy strictly forbids that sort of writing about any living person on any page on this site. Anyone who wants to restore it will need to say exactly who makes those criticisms of Weinstein, and give verifiable cites to Reliable Sources. CWC 23:38, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

July 2007

I've just made a substantial edit, using links provided by Bdell555. (Thanks for that!) The comment by Ellen Schrecker that Bdell555 found is undated; I got its date from here.

I made two unrelated changes. First I removed the following sentence:

One subject, Samuel Krieger, sued Weinstein for libel in 1979, leading Weinstein to settle out of court by issuing a public apology and paying Krieger $17,500.

WP:BLP requires immediate removal of uncited negative claims like this. I did a quick Google search but didn't find any WP:RSes. If someone can produce a cite, we'll put it back. (Important note: The Nation is clearly not a Reliable Source of the subject of Allen Weinstein.)

Second, having just come across a malignantly selective quote in another article, I was worried enough by the "weakness for mystification" quote to Google it. Guess what? No hits except for this article! My bogometer is well into the red zone. Plus that's a very strange thing to say about a successful historian; it's suggestive but uninformative. So I've deleted that too. If someone can produce a copy of "Tangled Treason", we can take another look at it to see if we can use it.

Cheers, CWC 15:38, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

May 2009

"The Nation is clearly not a Reliable Source"?? Apparently this is because The Nation has published research criticizing Weinstein. NPOV requires that critical voices as well as celebration be recorded, as long as the record includes cited sources.Jonwiener (talk) 01:16, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

• "Apparently"? Not to this doctrinaire liberal. The Nation practices advocacy journalism at best, and my recollection is that many who support its general line where severely shocked when, apparently to make a point about nuclear proliferation or information security practice, they published plans for making a nuclear weapon, based on sources that were already in the process of being made unavailable in order to hinder nuclear proliferation. I probably support most of their politically controversial positions, but i don't regard them as a reliable source for purposes of WP's V policies.
  --Jerzy•t 20:42, 23 September & 01:12, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
  
  • I'm not going to apologize for relying on my memory (especially since i used the phrase "...my recollection is that..."). Moderation in all things, especially where there are more things to fix than editors, but plenty of editors who may catch errors without recourse to research.
    On the other hand, i'm pleased to have had nagging self-doubts and have responded to them with

    research that makes me believe i was wrong, and
    striking thru my clause in which i went wrong.

  It was The Progressive that, in 1979, published nuclear secrets that the gov't wanted to suppress. (If there were more detailed plans -- perhaps assembled by a then high school student -- published by a left periodical, then i don't know which one. But i'm pretty sure that i did confuse The Nation and The Progressive.)
  (BTW, "already in the process of being made unavailable" was a ref to documents that were

  classified (or, less likely -- since classification is grossly overused -- should have been but hadn't been) but
  placed on library shelves accessible to some people who lacked the appropriate security clearance, and
  removed after information from them was published or planned for publication. My questionable memory says that the library in question was at or closely associated with Los Alamos.)

  As to using The Nation as a ref, i no longer claim to have a killer argument against its use, but after a brief browse of their Web site, at least the role of financial contributors (some labeled as "Activist"- or "Loyalist"-grade supporters) is further evidence of advocacy journalism.
  I would 'not object to using The Nation in a concurring reference that reinforces some more clearly neutral source (nor, of course, to using it as a ref abt what was claimed in its pages).
  --Jerzy•t 01:12, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
  

"No friend of anti-communists"

I removed

, no friend of anti-communists,

as unencyclopedic in its ironical vagueness (litotes?). If she is usually a critic of anti-communism, say so and provide a ref.
--Jerzy•t 20:42, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence and claims

I inserted into the accompanying article the wording that i have bolded on this talk page, within the following sentence:

In 1997, Editor Victor Navasky published what he claimed as evidence that Weinstein had misquoted, misrepresented, or misconstrued several of his interview subjects for Perjury.

My wording would (presumably) be unnecessary if the source cited, namely

Navasky, Victor (November 3, 1997). "Allen Weinstein's Docudrama" (subscription required). The Nation. Retrieved 2007-05-25. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

either

1. did not require a subscription in order to check it, or
2. were the object of an essentially undisputed consensus that

   _ at least three sources (two do not amount to "several") had been subjected by Weinstein to at least one of the offenses of misquoting, misrepresenting, or misconstruing them, and

   _ what is presented there does constitute "evidence" that, for each of those kinds of offense at least one source had been subjected to that specific offense: at least one case of each offense, bcz any case where it is merely unclear which of the three offenses produced what he reported is correctly described not as "misquoted, misrepresented, or misconstrued", but rather as "at best misconstrued" or "inaccurate in the form of something in the range from misconstruction to misquotation".

As a matter of fact, John Ehrman's CIA paper has the PoV that

Substantively, Navasky's main claim was that Weinstein had quoted his interviewees and documents out of context or distorted their words.

essentially suggesting that any misquotes are insubstantial and Navasky's claims must rest on his implicit assertion that he has the ability to evaluate context and intention of third parties better than Weinstein. That doesn't show Navasky lied, but it means countervailing evidence for such a consensus is needed for the former claim.
As an alternative to finding on-line evidence for either of those two sets of circumstances, a classic use of the fair use provision is quotation for the purpose of facilitating our discussion of how the source can accurately be paraphrased: an editor with a subscription can, without committing a copyvio, quote directly, here on the talk page, to the extent necessary to make their argument to those without subscriptions that Navasky's supposed evidence is prima facie evidence; likewise to answer our objections. But anything Navasky calls evidence, but may be regarded by other reasonable observers as not needing to be countered, amounts, in the absence of better sourcing than we have now, to just Navasky's or the editor's PoV that N presents evidence.
My reasoning in the preceding portion of this contrib might be disparaged as mere theoretical prissiness. In fact, the knowledge i had during early drafts of it would have made that label merely harsh -- if i had saved it at that point. But it turns out that John Ehrman's cited article attributes to Weinstein a claim to have the quotes on tape: so we have to believe that Navasky either

1. satisfied himself that the tapes were doctored, or
2. didn't know of them and called Weinstein a liar, based simply on a belief in one or more people who gave him their word that they remembered that they could not, when interviewed, have been in a state of mind where they could have uttered what Weinstein attributed to them.

The first of those would be an extraordinary claim, calling for extraordinary evidence.
The second, based on that word presumably being given years after Weinstein's interviews, and perhaps soon after having been abused by Navasky with something like "what kind of fascist toadie would say what you said to Weinstein?", would amount to an extraordinary act of faith on Navasky's part.
--Jerzy•t 08:23, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Whether or not a subscription is required has no bearing on our usage of the article, good faith should be (initially) assumed of those who put it in, even if it is not easily available. I do not subscribe to the Nation, and I have no problem reading the link, so I reremoved the false subscription required statement. Neither of the alternatives above are correct. Weinstein claims to have quotes supporting him on tape. He refuses to let anyone else listen to them, after promising Navasky, who certainly knows of them, that he would. Navasky has excellent evidence on his side in at least one case, which was wrongly removed from the article a couple years ago - Weinstein was sued for libel, apologized, paid the plaintiff and settled. The Nation refers to a New York Magazine article bearing on that case, tracking it down could yield a helpful additional source.John Z (talk) 09:45, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

This is another problematic removal, it is not clear that the Tanenhaus article is not the source of all the criticism, it is certainly true that his appointment was protested with reason. TNR's site is currently down, so I can't even see how much it costs, though their archive is partly accessible, enough to see the article is there.John Z (talk) 11:44, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

• You may or not be backed by our generic policies, in insisting that it is just fine to have to pay out money in order to know whether to challenge content.
  When the content has been as PoV-pushing as it in fact is in the accompanying article on both sides of the controversy (even after, for instance, your quite proper anti-OR "rm editorializing" edit), IMO that would be crazy (whether it's clear policy or not): referees prepared to edit boldly are needed, and should in that role be free of such financial inhibitions; the PoV pushers should shoulder whatever burdens that thrusts upon them, or watch their casually documented content evaporate.
  BLP cases, such as this one, are even more exceptional, and override e.g. AGF (not of course in permitting PA but in shifting the burden of proof away from the removing editor), and i'm confident you're wrong as far as BLP cases are concerned.
  As to the content whose free availability you've clarified, thank you for that. I'll figure out if TNR is The National Review (which i recall weighed in) rather than The New Republic, and use the library time i'd planned to spend tomorrow on The Nation (as i mentioned on yr tk pg, before noticing your response on this tk pg!) on the appropriate one instead -- so don't waste any money based on that concern.
  --Jerzy•t 22:17, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
  

• Sorry for taking a long time to reply. Of course we should be more careful in a BLP - I'm not sure what I'm wrong about - usage of nonfree sources? I meant The New Republic; the TNR Tanenhaus article is the source of the "weakness for mystification" quote discussed above and removed - correcting what I said above, from other sources, Tanenhaus was one person allowed to hear some tapes. There are enough other sources, probably free ones or free snippets out there to corroborate all or most of the criticism in the Nation, which I think is sufficiently reliable here, although its POV should be taken into account.John Z (talk) 06:04, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Substantively, Navasky's main claim was that Weinstein had quoted his interviewees and documents out of context or distorted their words.

Navasky's main claim and point here was that Weinstein demonstrates pretty poor standard of scholarship using a few examples as mere illustration of his point. Weinstein's distorsions and misrepresentations of sources and evidence, as well as unfounded speculations, deliberate ommisions and other dirty tricks serving to just one purpose - to vindicate Chambers and portray Hiss "guilty as charged" - are far more numerous. But what is the worst of all and what violates all basic principles of scholarly work is the fact that Weinstein kept his files closed for some thirty years (despite of repeated promises to make them public for other researchers to check his claims) and he is in the same work once again with The Haunted Wood.88.101.177.121 (talk) 03:14, 24 May 2010 (UTC)Honza73

New information for Career

I cleaned up the unreferenced career section and gave it a few more clear breaks in the Career section to make it easier to read. These edits don't involve your argument, but I hope you guys don't object with the edits. I will continue to polish this section and not interfere with the arguments about his scholarship,

Thanks much SADADS (talk) 15:03, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

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