Talk:James Clapper

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Hunter Biden laptop controversy mention

The fact that Clapper signed a letter about concerns into Hunter Biden's laptop is relatively insignificant to the rest of his career, and doesn't merit its own paragraph in the lead. The lead commentary is more substantial than the mention of it in the body of the article. Moving the lead's wording to the body. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 23:53, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Clapper has not substantiated his trump Russia allegations

This source should suffice for the edit I included that was removed. @Swatjester please opine.

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/5/12/15632894/trump-clapper-russia-hearing-no-evidence

Quote from Clapper: "So I don't know if there was collusion or not. I don't know if there is evidence of collusion or not, nor should I have in this particular context."

Helpingtoclarify (talk) 06:32, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Not really, no. That quote could maybe be used with a more neutral sentence (with some major caveats), but does not really support the as-previously-written claim that Despite these repeated claims by Clapper, he has not substantiated the connection between Trump and Putin. It has problems for a number of reasons. First, the article specifically mentions that the above quote is in response to the specific context of "a counterintelligence investigation when the possibility was there that this could devolve into some sort of a criminal investigation." As well, your reference is a 2017 article being used to source a present-tense claim in 2024. Being limited in time and scope, it's not really capable of supporting the much broader claim you're making that Clapper's not substantiated any connection between Trump and Putin as of (insert present-day here). And given that the lede paragraph of the Vox article is "President Donald Trump has tried to tamp down the growing controversy over his campaign’s ties to Russia by deliberately misrepresenting comments from James Clapper, formerly the nation’s top spy." it's not really an appropriate source for the given claim. Even if you were just to include the quote from Clapper, it would certainly be undue weight without the broader context of the full relevant portion of the transcript (as quoted in the Vox article) and the contextual conclusions of the article that Trump had misrepresented Clapper's claims. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 07:09, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

The two sentences before my proposed language noted that Clapper has accused Trump of being a Russian agent and that the scandalbis more serious than one where a president resifned. Why isn't it appropriate to highlight that these allegations are baseless. The source I cited highlights that Clapper has admitted he has not evidence of this Russia connection he has made.

The following language may work better, given your concerns.

"Clapper has noted in interviews that he doesn't himself know if there is a Trump-Russia connection or if any evidence of a connection exists.". Helpingtoclarify (talk) 21:08, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Why isn't it appropriate to highlight that these allegations are baseless. Because it's not Wikipedia's place to determine if the allegations are baseless. We are not a determiner of fact. It's our place to say what verifiable reliable sources have concluded.

The modified language you've provided is better (in the sense that it attributes statements to Clapper) but is still problematic for most of the same reasons as the other one. It still takes a single 2017 statement about a specific, defined investigation, pluralizes it (interviews), and imputes it to a present tense with a broader conclusion than the quote supports ("collusion", a term of art in the context of a specific counterintelligence investigation; vs. "Trump-Russia connection", which is a much broader relationship beyond what the source referred to).

Something closer to usable would be along the lines of...

In 2017 during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on whether Russian interference affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, Clapper testified that "In our intelligence community assessment, we made the point that we could not make that call. The intelligence community has neither the authority, the expertise or the resources to make that judgment. The only thing we said was we saw no evidence of influencing voter tallies at any of the 50 states. But we were not in a position to judge whether — what actual outcome on the election." (Vox Ref or other transcript ref) This statement was subsequently misrepresented by Trump, who claimed Clapper had confirmed there was "no evidence" of collusion with Russia. (Vox ref plus potentially direct Trump tweet ref). Clapper subsequently responded on Andrea Mitchell Friday that in his testimony he did not say there was no collusion, but rather that he wouldn’t have been in position to know one way or the other as it was his office's practice to "[leave] it to the judgment of the FBI". (Vox ref with quote parameter).

...Something like that (with the refs filled in, I took them out so as not to break the talk page formatting) would work from the standpoint of accurately reflecting what the source says; whether it's useful enough information to include is a secondary question that I think reasonable people might disagree on. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 22:19, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

The sentence I proposed is a direct paraphrase I'd the source I cited. All of these statements and the testimony is from 2017. You are going to replace this with multiple paragraphs that give too much weight to details that aren't relevant. Re-read my proposed language. It's is simple, relevant and accurate based on the cited source.

Clapper made the statements about Watergate and being trump being an agent. A simple citation that puts these into context (that they have not been proven) is very relevant here. Helpingtoclarify (talk) 01:42, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Your proposal comes to a completely different conclusion than your given source, and is not supported by the quote you're claiming supports it. I've clearly outlined twice now why that is the case. So no, it's not a "direct paraphrase" of the source you've cited. It's actually completely misleading to suggest so, given that you're making the exact same misrepresentation that the Vox article you're citing claims Trump did (misrepresenting a specific quote to be broader than it actually was). It's pretty deceptive to claim those are "details that are not relevant" -- the fact that they *are* relevant is literally the central conclusion of the article you're attempting to use as a source. You are welcome to not use my suggested language if you don't feel the point is important enough to warrant inclusion in the article at all (in which case, we're done here as your version of the text remains unusable regardless and a lack of importance would further weigh against inclusion), but you're not welcome to push a POV on this article, which in case you weren't aware (though you should be, given that you received the standard awareness templates on your talk page earlier this year) is subject to the increased scrutiny and restrictions of the contentious topics policy twice-over: both as a BLP and as an article relating to post-1992 U.S. politics. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 02:16, 29 June 2024 (UTC)