Talk:Strobe Talbott

message: Anyone want to finish my partial bibliography? JTM 20:46, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bibliography 

message: Good grief, no mention whatsoever of his long career as a journalist before joining the State Dept.??? Unbelievable. Okay, I guess I will have to take care of that myself when I can free up some time... Cgingold 21:56, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Career as journalist 

message: A significant portion of perfectly sourced text from this article has recently been deleted. If you want to explain your edits, please do it here.Biophys (talk) 17:11, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Last edits

message: "He has also been a friend of Bill Clinton and other communist sympathizers and one-worlders..."  -- Rather amusing and downright biased, don't you think?
:He was Bill's college room mate. The part about communist sympathies was removed a long time ago.--FeralOink (talk) 15:09, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV 

message: Strobe Talbot modeled for several memorable characters in Indiana Jones and Star Wars movies.TogetherinParis (talk) 15:10, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  removed 

message: The caption on the top right seems to be wrong.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.183.227 (talk) 17:25, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It has now been removed.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.183.227 (talk) 12:00, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Caption 

message: I removed the link to the "New World Order" conspiracy page, which seemed highly POV and was not justified by the article itself. I'm also skeptical about the quotes - the first one seems to be there mostly to justify the conspiratorial connection, and outside of that context doesn't seem that representative of his overall career. The second one is somewhat interesting, but I'm honestly not sure why it's there. I may remove them or try to find some more representative ones, unless somebody is willing to make a good case for their inclusion here. Lateralus1587 (talk) 15:41, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  "New World Order" and quotes 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: At another talk page, there was recently a debate regarding whether Strobe Talbott's account of the 1999 Russian apartment bombings is a reliable source per Wikipedia policies.
More specifically, the following is the excerpt from Talbott's book in which he claimed there was no evidence for the conspiracy theory that the FSB had blown up apartment buildings in Russia to bring Putin to power:
Based on that information, the lead section to the Russian apartment bombings currently sais the following: "The theory of FSB involvement has been criticised for the lack of evidence by Strobe Talbott".
I have studied every passage in the "Comrade J" book about Tretyakov which mentions Talbott, and I believe the following is correct:
*There is no evidence to indicate that Talbott was an unreliable source of information regarding Russia in general and the 1999 Russian apartment bombings in particular.
*The current view of allegations against Talbott at the Strobe Talbott page is pretty much correct.
I will cite the relevant information from the "Comrade J" book here to corroborate my findings:
From "Preface"
Chapter "TWENTY"
Chapter "TWENTY ONE"
Chapter "TWENTY-TWO"
Chapter "TWENTY-FOUR"
Chapter "THIRTY-NINE"
— Document hippo (talk) 12:49, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: *Do you suggest to include some of that info to the page? Good idea. I do not mind. This is consistent with BLP rule because the subject is a public figure and because there are multiple RS, for example, the book by Earley (secondary RS), this book, this soure, and of course whatever Talbott said himself about it was also reliably published. Or maybe not on this page, but on page about the bombings. For example here  The Kremlin “influenced” the Clinton administration. One example: “The fact that Talbott (Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State), McCurry (Mike McCurry, State Department spokesman), and Clinton each defended Russia’s attacks in Chechnya . . . delighted the propagandists inside the SVR”. Note that according to BLP, the allegation for public figures should not proven, but only notable and well documented. That one certainly is.    My very best wishes (talk) 04:40, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have looked and found no reliable secondary source that agrees with the wild speculation made by Sergei Tretyakov, a person who never observed or met Talbott and instead speculated on the basis of third-hand gossip. Journalist Earley interviewed Talbott and the Russian diplomat Mamedov and they both rejected Sergei's speculations  & challenged him to name an actual detail. [see above from ch 22: " Because of the prominence of SPECIAL UNOFFICIAL CONTACTS, the SVR's operational dossiers about them were always closely guarded with top-secret access limited to only a few senior officials in Moscow. Sergei later explained that this was why he could not cite specific examples in this book of information that the SVR claimed it had collected through diplomatic channels from Talbott. Nor could he recall any specifics of how information alleged to have come from Talbott might have been used. "All I can tell you is that the SVR conferred on Talbott the SPECIAL UNOFFICIAL CONTACT designation, and I was told Russian intelligence had tricked and manipulated him.""]  So when challenged the "source" (Sergei) was could not specify to Earley a single actual example of manipulation even in the broadest terms--that indicates he is wholly ignorant of Talbott's actions. Not a reliable source. ] Talbott was briefed daily at the time by US intelligence agencies. He was the main interface with Russian officials  --the silly suggestion is that if a Russian intelligence agency supplies questions that were asked of Talbott he was "manipulated" by them. It's the job of intelligence agencies  to draft questions to ask  highly experienced diplomats--who are not easy to "manipulate". Rjensen (talk) 09:04, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The interactions/negotiations between Talbott and Mamedov is a matter of fact, this is something Talbott described himself in his books. This is just a matter of interpretation. Talbott honestly believed that he promotes US interests, exactly as he said himself. And perhaps he did. SVR believed that they manipulated Talbott. They could be right or wrong about it, I have no opinion. But the story is well known, sourced and can be neutrally described on the page. But whatever. I just replied to the very long post by user Document hippo. My very best wishes (talk) 16:20, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Well no--the point is that "SVR believed that they manipulated Talbott. " is a claim made by someone with no credibility regarding Talbott. He admits it himself: "All I can tell you is that the SVR conferred on Talbott the SPECIAL UNOFFICIAL CONTACT designation, and I was told Russian intelligence had tricked and manipulated him." That's third-hand gossip --gossip--his informants never gave him access to SVR documents, and never gave him any examples or episodes. Talbott was the official American contact with the post-Soviet Russian leadership (ie Yeltsin) and was therefore indeed a special contact who provided lots of information about the hopes and intentions of the Clinton administration. Rjensen (talk) 02:12, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, let's not include it. I just looked at preface to a book Endgame: The Inside Story of Salt II written by Talbott himself. It tells: "The former Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) operative Sergei Tretyakov claimed that SVR considered Talbott a source of intelligence information and classified him as "a special unofficial contact", although "he was not a Russian spy". These unproven allegations ...", and so on (whole paragraph). I did not read the book, but apparently this story was described in the book (hence it should an important story?). So, I thought one could do the same on this page and present it in the same light as Talbott described himself.  My very best wishes (talk) 03:37, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: As a side note, Robert Amsterdam said  that "When Talbott was a journalist, he had career-boosting relations with a KGB agent called Viktor Louis". That one is really famous. My very best wishes (talk) 03:43, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reliability of Talbott's information on Russia