Talk:Oswald LeWinter

message: LeWinter has confided under oath that he is a conman. There is absolutely no evidence that LeWinter was in the US Army or intelligence service. And please use only reliable sources, such as newspaper or magazine articles. The material added is not properly sourced, and POV. Intangible2.0 18:30, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The article clearly says he was jailed for conning Mohammed al-Fayed. What other point are trying to make?Phase4 21:13, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: He confided that in the early 1990s! I cannot see how your changes are in accordance with WP policy, you even deleted info that LeWinter was used as source in various works dealing with the October surprise conspiracy. Intangible2.0 17:56, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If there is evidence for your assertions, please let us have it: chapter and verse!Phase4 19:57, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The references are already there. The problem here is with your additions that are referenced to sources in violation of WP:RS. Intangible2.0 17:05, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Are you familiar with WP:NPOV? You cannot just rewrite this article into a conspiracist slant when reputable sources (those that were already present in the article) all assert that LeWinter is a hoaxer. LeWinter himself has also, under oath(!), confided that is a hoaxer. We can mention that LeWinter himself claims he is a CIA agent, but we cannot base an article upon this claim. That is what you are doing, and it is wrong. Intangible2.0 15:54, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You will be blocked if you continue to remove reliably sourced edits (such as that from CNN). WP:NPOV is not relevant to CNN-sourced edits.Phase4 21:45, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've reverted back to a sane version. If you want to add something, first discuss this here. Intangible2.0 22:44, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  conman 

message: I will temporarily add on-line sources here. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 06:24, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources 

message: With the exception of the information which comes from the Washington Post article cited in the article, almost everything else here must be treated with extreme caution, and much of it should probably be deleted.  Some of it simply lacks importance: the civil career section lists his help in a labor day book fair in Redding Connecticut, how trivial can trivia get?
The rest of it lacks veracity. Who says there is a Khalil Gibran International Poetry Prize, an International Rilke Prize in Poetry?  I can't find a single trace of either of these, except in websites reproducing this article, oh and the issue of "Yggdrasil" cited in the article, with its "Excerpt from the judge's statement on awarding the Rilke Prize" to Le Winter, "written by" Karl Krolow. Krolow is a real and famous poet of course, but strangely enough he is also amazingly aware of all the trivia of Le Winter's obscure endeavors from the 1950s.  A classic case of non RS.
It is with some justification that the German Wikipedia article on Le Winter bluntly calls his awards "selbsterfundene Preise" (self-invented prizes).  On the other hand, there really is a letter to Le Winter in William Carlos Williams's Selected Letters, just as "Karl Krolow" claims, so there is sometimes some basis to some of this. I'll see what I can dig up. Rgr09 (talk) 16:48, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, Rgr09. I was tempted to redirect to House October Surprise Task Force or October Surprise conspiracy theory, but he received news coverage regarding his attempt to swindle Mohamed Fayed. A good place to start building an article with reliable information  Joint report of the Task Force to Investigate Certain Allegations Concerning the Holding of American Hostages by Iran in 1980 ("October Surprise Task Force"). You can search for his name, or go to the meat of it on pages 154-156. A transcript from the Frontline investigation is included as an appendix that provides additional details of LeWinter around page 715. - Location (talk) 23:45, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the references! Frank Snepp's article "October Surmise" has information on him as well, it turns out LeWinter is none other than the mysterious Razine. I have looked at the Task Force report and it confirms much of what Snepp said about LeWinter/Razine's role in elaborating the October Surprise story, then adds LeWinter's admission, under oath, that everything he said was a lie.  Mind-boggling. It would require serious original research to really put a biography of this guy together, another Baron Corvo it seems.  Maybe I can start by stripping out the stuff that it is indubitably fantasy.  Rgr09 (talk) 05:14, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure how best to approach this. Chronologically, it appears Snepp's article came out the month after the Task Force report, but it appears to have details that the Task Force report does not have. - Location (talk) 21:03, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quite something 

message: The article originally claimed that Le Winter had received two prizes for his poetry: the Khalil Gibran International Poetry Prize, and the International Rilke Prize in Poetry. Regarding the Khalil Gibran International Poetry Prize, there is a German-language webpage mentioning this, which apparently dates from April 2007.  This item, whose provenance is unclear, claims that the prize was established in 2007 by the Rafic Hariri Foundation.  The Hariri Foundation website, however, does not mention such a prize.  Without further verification, I have removed this claim. The same story also mentions the International Rilke Prize in Poetry and says that Le Winter received the prize in 1997 for a work called "Qualverwandtschaften" (Painful relationships?).  There is no bibliographical entry for such a work by Le Winter in WorldCat. The other source for this claim is the 2003 issue of the online journal Yggdrasil cited in the article.  This article, and its introduction to Le Winter's poetry, supposedly written by the German poet Karl Krolow, has problems in terms of reliability, as noted above.  Outside of these two sources, there is no trace of a Rilke Poetry Award. Without independent evidence that such a prize ever existed, I have deleted this claim as well. Rgr09 (talk) 05:57, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed awards section 

message: Both of these sections consisted of only one or two sentences recording very low relevance matters, such as LeWinter writing letters to the school newspaper or conducting book fairs(!)  There's simply no need to put such insignificant matters into a Wikipedia biography. Rgr09 (talk) 16:23, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed sections on early activism and "civil career" 

message: Terry Lenzner's book appears to be a reliable source of information (e.g. , , ) of LeWinter's role in the attempt to defraud of Mohamed Al-Fayed. Here is the full citation (without page numbers) if copy-and-paste is desired:
::.
I am going to change the name of the section to better reflect what the incident was about. - Location (talk) 05:44, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Very interesting book. Unfortunately, for LeWinter it doesn't give the sort of simple who what when where details that are easiest to work with in articles.  Looks like the WaPo article is still the best account for that.  A remarkable piece of investigative work. I'll try and get a paragraph from that. Rgr09 (talk) 08:49, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I added one. There are some minor details there that are not in the Post, but it should be sufficient for now. - Location (talk) 21:27, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks good. As Lenzner says, despite everything, Al-Fayed seems to have bought some of the details of LeWinter's story. Al-Fayed's ambivalent attitude shows up in various tabloid articles over the two decades since the scam which hint that there was more to the story than met the eye, and Lenzner's book is a good response to this. Rgr09 (talk) 03:03, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Attempt to defraud Mohamed Al-Fayed

message: Oswald LeWinter is the main interviewee in Allan Francovich's [] 3 part BBC series Gladio. This is not an unreliable source. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXavNe81XdQ if you watch all 3 hours of this you can see LeWinter filmed in silhouette but repeatedly captioned as Colonel Oswald LeWinter CIA-ITAC Liaison Officer Europe, as the main witness. In other words the BBC captioned him as a CIA officer.
 Someone wrote this on a website called Conspiracy Planet: "My name is Alexei Galkin. I am a retired Lieutenant General, formerly head of a directorate of the KGB. General LeWinter was a man both much feared and admired by knowledgeable intelligence officers throughout the Soviet bloc for his skills in disinformation and media manipulation. His work in Chile in the early 1970s, where he totally neutralized the El Mercurio newspaper, is considered a classic and was taught in numerous services in the bloc. His work on the 'October Surprise' case was so well conceived that even today the truth remains discredited. Many of us consider LeWinter the most brilliant CIA officer of his era. Since his forced retirement, his life appears to have been chaotic and he is living in what is reported to be a state of poverty and serious illness in Portugal. He has published two excellent books in the language of his adopted country. It is deeply saddening that a man of such qualities, after long years of loyal service to his country, should be reduced to living like this."
It is not inconceivable that he was planted in that documentary series to mislead Francovich who went on to make a report for Newsnight discrediting the October Surprise Theory.Wool Bridge (talk) 16:47, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not familiar with Timewatch, however, I assume that the series, like Frontline, has had producers and writers of varying quality and credibility since its inception in 1982. Allan Francovich raises many WP:REDFLAGS, and any program that cites LeWinter as a CIA official is definitely not reliable. -Location (talk) 02:45, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gladio interviews