Talk:Abscam

message: I'm not sure what the correct form is for pointing out an inconsistency, but in the article for abscam it says the conviction of Richard Kelly was overturned in 1982 thanks to an entrapment defense.
But in entrapment the statement "the defense of entrapment was unsuccessful in the Abscam operation in which several members of the United States Congress were convicted of accepting bribes." says that entrapment was unsuccessful in all cases.
I don't know which is correct.  I'm cross posting this to the abscam talk page.
:Kelly's obituary, in the New York Times of 26 August 2005, clears it up. The conviction was overturned in Federal District Court, but reinstated in higher courts: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/26/politics/26kelly.html . I'll edit the article to incorporate this.TypoBoy (talk) 15:56, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, the article already says this. I added the cite to the Times. TypoBoy (talk) 16:03, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Inconsistency

message: The references cited in the piece about Murtha are right wing propaganda from a known right wing propaganda web site, CNS News, owned by right winger Brent Bozell.  See wikipedia article: 
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
The Cybercast News Service (also CNSNews.com) is a conservative news website operated by the Media Research Center. It was founded on June 16, 1998 under the name "Conservative News Service"; "Conservative" was changed to "Cybercast" in 2000 after the MRC was unable to trademark the name "Conservative News Service."[1]. CNS sees its role as serving an audience which puts a "higher premium on balance than spin" by covering stories that mainstream news organizations ignore.
"In response to these shortcomings, MRC Chairman L. Brent Bozell III founded CNSNews.com in an effort to provide an alternative news source that would cover stories that are subject to the bias of omission and report on other news subject to bias by commission. CNSNews.com endeavors to fairly present all legitimate sides of a story and debunk popular, albeit incorrect, myths about cultural and policy issues." [2]
Cybercast News Service's leadership consists of President Brent Bozell and Editor-in-Chief David Thibault, who became top editor in April 2005. Its editor from 1998-2005 was Scott Hogenson, who also worked as the chief of radio operations for the Republican National Committee in 2004.[3]
CNS itself has been accused of having its own bias. ConWebWatch, a website set up to challenge possible biases in politically conservative news sources, accuses CNS, among others, of engaging in the same tactics as the "liberal media" they criticize.
In reality, these sites are no less slanted or arrogant than they accuse the "mainstream" media of being. They demonstrate time and again that, despite promoting themselves with words like "fairness," "responsibility," "accuracy" and "balance," their real goal is to attack and discredit anyone who doesn’t agree with them, as well as to promote their own political views -- the same exact thing they accuse the "liberal" media of doing. [4]
Similar to FOX News, CNS trumpets its focus on presenting news in a non-biased manner [5]. Despite these claims, CNS's motto is "The Right News. Right now."[6]
CNS' commentaries [7] tend to echo Republican talking points[8
-----------As such, it is not fair and responsible to let such patently biased descriptions of Murtha be published at wikipedia without a disclaimer.
See Murtha's details at PBS: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/law/corruption/history.html
See video at: http://www.cnsnews.com/cns/video/2005/FBIAbscamMurtha.wvx
--209.248.136.146 09:46, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This Murtha section tries desperately to link the congressman to Abscam (using the conservative MRC for its evidence) and seems like a huge distraction to me.  If you want specific cases, talk about Harrison Williams -- but geez, Murtha's involvement is barely worthy a paragraph.--Idols of Mud 20:20, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

text: That's just it...Murtha WASN'T "indicted."  There is also evidence (pulled directly from the transcript in one of the sources) of Mr. Murtha directly turning down money when offered it.  People who don't have their facts straight shouldn't be editing Wiki articles.Ray Ash 18:59, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Murtha Changes & Additions 

message: Thought if we were going to have a whole section dedicated to Jack Murtha, we might as well start expanding to include other politicos who were involved as well.  Most of the articles I linked to on the NYT site are mostly buried, but the relevant information to the citation should be there.  
--AdmiralKit 19:26, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just added a comment with an external link to a reference on the talk page of the Harrison A Williams page, relevant to Abscam. I had never heard of either before, not being a USA-ian, but found the reference's info interesting and thought I'd see what Wikipedia had on the subjects.40.0.96.1 (talk) 09:46, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Harrison A. Williams 

message: It's been over 2.5 years since I added the section on Harrison A. Williams, and nobody else has been added to the detailed descriptions.  I've remedied this with Rep. Frank Thompson.  All of the info I described is validated within the external sources cited, though I realize I've not done a bang-up job of identifying which fact is tied to which article.  I don't know how to do those little citation number things, sorry.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by AdmiralKit (talk • contribs) 05:46, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Frank Thompson

message: The Murtha section is largely based on the video, or I should say someone's interpretation of the video, which is original research. I have tagged the article where sources need to be added and OR removed. I'll give it a couple days but I am going to remove all the OR after that. Hopefully someone can fix this, but as is, this section is in violation of WP policies. --IvoShandor (talk) 01:07, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Murtha

message: Who were the Philadelphia City Councilmen involved? --DThomsen8 (talk) 19:31, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Philadelphia City Councilmen 

message: The article's lead section claims, without a citation, that, "The operation initially targeted trafficking in stolen property but was converted to a public [officials] corruption investigation." However, the Operation section does not mention stolen property or trafficking; it seems to imply that the operation was, from the beginning, an investigation into corruption.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.145.26 (talk) 17:24, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead summary and article inconsistent 

message: I was surprised to read, in the lede, that "Abscam" was a contraction of "Abdul scam", because I remember the extensive coverage at the time, which invariably said it stood for "Arab scam". A search of nytimes.com found this brief but helpful piece from 21 August 1980:
:Etymology of "Abscam" Undergoes Revision
:What exactly does Abscam stand for?
:When law enforcement authorities first revealed the Federal Bureau of Investigation's undercover operation, they said that Abscam, its code name, stood for "Arab scam," or swindle.
:Yesterday Judge George C. Pratt, who is presiding over the first Abscam trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, said that it was clear to him that "Abscam" was a contraction of "Abdul scam," a reference to Abdul Enterprises Ltd., the fictitious business that the undercover investigators invented as their front.
:Thomas P. Puccio, the prosecutor in the trial and one of the supervisors of the operation, later said that the judge was right. However, Mr. Puccio had made no effort before yesterday to correct news reports that said "Abscam" was based on "Arab scam."
:The issue came up in court after Judge Pratt announced that he had received a complaint from the American-Arab Relations Committee that the trials "reflect poorly on the Arab people and perpetuate the old prejudices against the Arabs, even though they had no part in the charade concocted by the F.B.I."
It seems clear that the feds were embarrassed, and rightly so, about the casual bigotry of the name they chose for their operation. I'm glad they changed it. But let's tell the full truth here. After all, money talks and bullshit walks, as a wise man said. Or anyway, a man.
I have changed the lede to include this. TypoBoy (talk) 14:42, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Arab scam" 

message: This article does not make clear who was involved, and who was convicted. That information should be included.--DThomsen8 (talk) 03:09, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who was involved? Who was convicted? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: "The first four words of Williams's reply were 'No, no, no, no"  And so what?  If his last words were "Thank you very much for the bribe." then that makes him GUILTY.  This whole section feels wrong and stupid.  WTF does the opinion of a "linguistics expert" have to do with anything, anyways.  My neighbor is a pet groomer, and she says he's GUILTY.  This feels very much like POV pushing; like some Editor, somewhere, thought that what's-his-name got a raw deal and so they through the kitchen sink into the Article so that all the world would know that someone thought he wasn't guilty.  He asked for a pardon.  BOO HOO HOO.  That doesn't make him NOT GUILTY.  If the Article can't provide substantive information that gives the interested reader some reason to believe that his case is somehow special, and that his guilty verdict is worth questioning, then the Article should zap the whole idea of his possible innocence, and let him be lumped into the same group with all the other guilty politicians.68.206.249.124 (talk) 20:47, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  One of These Crooks is Just Like the Others