Talk:Robin Raphel

Discussion Panel of Robin Raphel article re-development

@Nyttend:
@FreeRangeFrog:
@CorporateM:
I have today inserted a re-developed article for the subject, Amb. Robin Raphel, whose stages of re-development can be tracked at [1]. The original article was poorly sourced, highly biased and did not meet WP:NPOV standards on any count. The original article was also incomplete in terms of the significance of work done by Amb. Raphel when a careful read of her achievements and controversies is undertaken. Her work and the controversies it generated throughout the past three decades is covered by numerous books, at least three of which I cited in referencing the article. I do not know Ms. Raphel personally, so there is no conflict of interest issue. But I know the history of the period during which she served in critical posts during the mid-1990s, and having been involved integrally in the activities of that period as a private American citizen, I believed my background and knowledge could assist to re-develop the article to a better standard of encyclopedic entry. I welcome any editorial comments and your review of the work done here in this Discussion panel section, or at my talk page. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 04:25, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

@Thargor Orlando: Addressing your edit, please see if this reference would work -- it is a book that says the same thing, albeit in slightly different units of calculation. If this is not satisfactory, then would it also not be possible to simply list the Guardian reference without the http link, since that seems not to exist anymore? The data you excerpted is referenced in many locations, but I think the book is the best reference replacement to the original article that cannot be found on its primary site now. Here is the link: Gohari, M. J. (1999). "The Taliban: Ascent to Power". Oxford University Press, p95. Retrieved 2014-04-14.

I removed it only because I couldn't verify the Guardian article and I don't generally trust a word that exists on Rense. If the information can be sourced to that Oxford book, you'll get no pushback from me. Thargor Orlando (talk) 16:26, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

@Thargor Orlando: Point taken! It is exactly attributable as I have written it and is in the book on p95. The only thing that needs changing is that instead of writing 1.9 billion cubic feet per day, I guess the author of the book rounded up and wrote 2.0 billion cubic feet per day. Would you like to revert your edit and put in the proper reference above, or shall I do it? --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 16:29, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

I took care of the reinserted language and replaced the reference. Saves you some time. --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 16:57, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

i'm surprised there's no mention that she was married to the us amb to pak who died in the airplane crash with zia al-huqq. chris — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.34.50.8 (talk) 09:33, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protection request

I've placed a request for the page to be semi-protected until the controversy regarding the counter-intelligence investigation has died down. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 17:47, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

"Hostility towards India"

I don't know enough about Robin Raphel to be sure but it seems that the section titled "Hostility towards India" is not a neutral point of view. 64.134.101.88 (talk) 21:32, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Last edit summary

In my last edit summary I wrote "if he died on 9/9, how could be a problem after 9/11" but I meant "if he died on 9/9, how could be helpful after 9/11". This is in reference to the following sentences in the "Engaging and cooperating with the Taliban" section:

Masood-controlled militias blocked the pipeline's northern access route due to the longstanding civil war with Taliban forces. Masood was killed September 9 2001, in a Taliban bombing. Masood would later become a stalwart in American military policy to counter the Taliban after the September 11 attacks, leading Raphel's critics to lay blame on her for coddling the Taliban to advance America's commercial interests even as Taliban mercenaries gave refuge to Osama bin Laden and other senior Al Qaeda leaders as they planned the 9-11 attacks. 64.134.101.88 (talk) 21:43, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

GA Review re-opened by Sasuke Sarutobi

@Sasuke Sarutobi: I have today completed the re-work and editing for GA review of article Timothy M. Carney. I will begin handling your requests on this article during the next few days as time permits. Would you like to set forth your list of concerns in a tabular manner so I can check each point off as I go along? Many thanks, --Mansoor Ijaz (talk) 23:32, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll put something together, and have it on the review page in a few hours' time. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 16:13, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Impact in India

India claims the entire erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir based on an instrument of accession signed in 1947. Pakistan claims Jammu and Kashmir based on its majority Muslim population, whereas China claims the Shaksam Valley and Aksai Chin.

In October, 1993, Raphel referred to Kashmir as "disputed territory." From LA Times (1994):

In October, Raphel--a former diplomat in New Delhi, a friend of President Clinton’s and the first head of the State Department’s new Bureau for South Asian Affairs--made some remarks on the sensitive issue of separatism in the northern Indian state of Kashmir. Kashmir joined India 47 years ago because of a maharaja’s wish. When Raphel suggested that might not be enough to grant India perpetual title, Indian correspondents treated her off-the-record comment as tantamount to a U.S. statement putting India’s territorial wholeness in doubt.

Raphel openly stated that India and Pakistan should discuss the problem of Kashmir:

The Kashmir dispute polarizes the relationship between the two nations. We are continuing efforts to persuade them to begin a serious attempt to resolve this dispute. This must involve sustained, direct discussion between senior Indian and Pakistani officials. It requires the credible engagement of all the people of Jammu and Kashmir and the cessation of human rights abuses by security forces and militants. It also requires the end of outside assistance to the militancy against the Indian Government. The United States has offered to assist with this process, if India and Pakistan so request. We have no preferred outcome.

Based on the actual facts in RS, Wikipedia should not twist this bio to portray her as a supporter of Kashmir violence or independence.

This article has a section called "Impact in India" but hostility to Raphel in Indian media (and media readers) colors much of the rest of the article. I think this article should put more emphasis on her actual career activities without repeatedly reminding us of the same fact, that the press in India repeatedly attacked her. HouseOfChange (talk) 01:46, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Ok, how about this?

In the absence of an ambassador in New Delhi or attention by the secretary of state or the President, Robin Raphel, the assistant secretary in the newly created South Asia Bureau of the State Department, assumed the prominent role in American relations with India. She became a lightning rod in Indo-American relations in April 1994 by suggesting that the United States had reconsidered its historic position on the 1947 accession of Kashmir. Raphel also led the Pentagon’s campaign to dilute the Pressler Amendment, so that 71 paid-for F-16 aircraft could be delivered and the restored government of Benazir Bhutto could thereby be bolstered. After a debate remarkable for its strident anti-India character, in which New Delhi was berated for being an ally of the Soviet Union years after that country had dissolved, Congress passed the Brown Amendment, which diluted sanctions so that more arms could be sold to Pakistan. In effect, this amendment legitimated Islamabad’s surreptitious nuclear program. The manner in which the Brown Amendment was passed as part of a compromise amendment to a foreign operations bill and not as an independent issue was illustrative of the way in which Congress deals with the South Asian region.

Far from "solving" the Kashmir problem, she in fact made it more intractable. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:44, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

This is a BLP concerning the career and actions of Robin Raphel. It needs more attachment to the facts described by RS and less coatracking in of "analysis" aka POV attacks on Raphel. HouseOfChange (talk) 13:43, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

References

Looking at IP edits of this bio

• This IP has made only one edit to Wikipedia, adding two "citations" to a defamatory blogpost blog, and making some additional POV changes. HouseOfChange (talk) 14:03, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

• A similar IP made additional POV changes, including changes to section titles. HouseOfChange (talk) 15:49, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

FBI investigation timeline

As often happens in Wikipedia, very understandably, a developing story gets cobbled together as news stories emerge. In this case, since the early news stories contained charges later found to be false, we should rely more on later news stories (including a long article in WSJ that became a 2017 Pulitzer finalist.) With quotes from that article and others, here is a relevant timeline, which I plan to refer to for improving the article. HouseOfChange (talk) 13:35, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Many early news stories were based on anonymous, unauthorized leaks that could not be verified by RS. E.g. e.g. NYT piece from November 2014:

While the F.B.I. secretly watched Ms. Raphel in recent months, agents suspected that she was improperly taking classified information home from the State Department, the officials said. Armed with a warrant, the agents searched her home in a prosperous neighborhood near the Maryland border with Washington, and found classified information, the officials said.

The leaker's clear implication is that FBI found she was, in fact, "improperly taking classified information home from the State Department." What the leaker failed to tell the NYT was that the only classified material found was 20 years old. So again, I think we need to remove this section's dependence on unauthorized and anonymous leaks to newspapers, and rely instead on later investigative journalism from RS. HouseOfChange (talk) 14:57, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

• "In February 2013, according to law-enforcement officials, the FBI received information that made its agents think Raphel might be a Pakistani mole. The tip came in the form of intercepted communications that suggested Raphel had shared sensitive inside information without authorization. Two officials said this included information collected on wiretaps of Pakistani officials in the U.S...Investigators began what they call “circling the target,” which means examining the parts of Raphel’s life they could explore without subpoenas or warrants."

• "After months of circling the target, FBI supervisors decided it was time to delve deeper. To monitor Raphel’s private conversations with Lodhi and other contacts on Skype, the FBI obtained a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court—a decision approved at the highest levels of the FBI and the Justice Department."

• "In January 2014, the bureau obtained a court-issued “sneak and peek” warrant, allowing agents to secretly search Raphel’s northwest Washington home while she was away... they discovered the 20-year-old classified documents from Raphel’s Diplomatic Security investigation—a group of papers officials would later refer to as 'the nuclear file.'"

• "As Raphel stood on the small porch of her house in Washington on Oct. 21, 2014, the FBI agents leading the raid asked her for the names of the Pakistanis she spoke to most."

• "To keep the story out of the media, Raphel’s bosses hadn’t told her co-workers why she wouldn’t be coming back to work. Yet on Nov. 21, a story about the espionage investigation appeared on the front page of the New York Times."

• Spring, 2015: "In the spring of 2015, a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office handling the Raphel case notified Amy Jeffress, one of Raphel’s attorneys, that the Justice Department was no longer investigating her client for espionage. That was the good news. Yet the FBI still wanted her to be prosecuted for mishandling classified information—a charge that could result in jail time."

• October 2015,NYT "officials now say the spying investigation has all but fizzled, leaving the Justice Department to decide whether to prosecute Ms. Raphel for the far less serious charge of keeping classified information in her home."

• "Raphel heard nothing for months from the FBI. She had already spent about $100,000 on legal fees, which she paid by tapping into her savings, but the bills were piling up. Jones set up a legal-defense fund and 103 of Raphel’s friends and colleagues, mostly from the State Department, donated nearly $122,000. Inside the Justice Department, prosecutors went back and forth on the merits of the case against Raphel, officials say. The most sensitive document the FBI recovered was 20 years old, and if she were charged, it could well have been routinely declassified while she awaited trial."

• "On March 21, 2016, 17 months after the raid on her house, a U.S. prosecutor informed Jeffress the Justice Department had decided to decline prosecution...Raphel’s lawyer, Amy Jeffress, called it 'deeply disturbing' that law enforcement officials 'continue to make anonymous and self-serving allegations about her conduct,' adding that 'there was no evidence she ever provided classified information to anyone without authority.'

HouseOfChange (talk) 13:17, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

References