Talk:L. Patrick Gray/GA3

GA Review

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I'm reviewing this this article as part of the WP:GAN process. Normally I use template {{GAList}} to describe how various aspects of the article do/do not meeting the WP:WIAGA criteria. But in this case, the article has two big problems that need to be discussed first, before anything else:

1. it's not a balanced, full biography that treats the subject's whole life, but instead focusses too much on one part of that life
2. the sourcing for the article is questionable

Problem #1 is because the article is dominated by Watergate. Yes, this is the thing the subject is most famous for, and as a result it will be the longest section in the article, but that can't be to the exclusion of everything else. Even the sectioning should be a clue: "Early career" goes to the time the subject is 53 years old! That's not very "early" (I'm going to fix up some of the sectioning).

Some particular aspects that are underdescribed: Gray's World War II service needs more detail, including what boats he served upon, what rank he attained, what kind of combat/danger he saw, what medals he won. We need clarification of what part of the Navy was looking for trained lawyers. We need the boats he commanded during the Korean War, what action he saw if any, what medals he won, etc. We need a description of him first meeting Nixon and working for Nixon in the 1940s and 1950s, see this NYT story. We need a description of what Gray did in private practice in the 1960s.

Then, once Gray joins the Nixon administration, we need a description of what he did in each of those posts. What accounted for his rise in positions? What attracted Nixon to him? There are nine NYT stories that mention Gray even before he was named Acting Director FBI, maybe they will help fill in details.

Then we need a description of what he did as Acting Director that wasn't connected to Watergate. Hoover would have left the place in a total mess in many ways, and Gray's primary focus wouldn't have been how to deal with Watergate, but how to give the FBI direction in the post-Hoover era. That isn't described at all!

Even within the Watergate material, there's likely a bit too much of a focus on Felt and Deep Throat rather than other aspects. I realize that there's an endless fascination with this, but some of the speculation probably belongs in the Deep Throat article, not in this BLP.

Problem #2 is that many statements in the article aren't sourced, and worse, most of those that are, are sourced to his autobiography. Autobiographies are a primary source that are inherently exposed to the dangers of bias, skewing, selective reporting, etc. for obvious reasons. This isn't a knock on Gray or anyone else, it's just human nature, even among the best intentioned. Therefore in BLPs we try to limit use of autobiographies to supply quotes from the subject, to representing the subject's (claimed) state of mind, and to sometimes supply early-life details that aren't available anywhere else. For everything else we try to use reliable secondary sources.

Much has been written about the FBI and Watergate, and there's simply no reason for the Gray autobiography to be the main source in this article. The NYT has published 840 stories that mention him, for example. Time magazine's online archives are a good source for material, as is the Google News Archive, which has many stories about him from the 1970s on forward. Google Books also returns many references to him, which you can follow up on in "limited preview" mode or at a library.

I realize that you've put a lot of effort into this article, and that you've submitted it several times for GA. But these major aspects really need to be addressed before it can be considered for GA status. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:40, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your time, WTR, this is probably the most constructive GAR I've gotten yet, and I really appreciate your time and effort. I largely agree with much of what you say above, the only thing I will say right off the bat is that I noticed you called this article a BLP severaly times, which I understand to stand for "Biography of a Living Person." I note that Gray died in 2005, so this is not a Biography of a Living Person. I'm not sure to what extent that makes a difference with regard to your discussion above, but I know that BLPs tend to have stricter requirements than other Biographies, and I thought I would just point that out in case there was some confusion.

Anyway, I do appreciate the research you have provided for me above, and will certainly be digging into those, and I am pretty sure I can find other sources to help flesh out his pre-FBI and non-Watergate FBI careers, in particular his military career. Having said that, I would note that I have found it a bit surprising in my research how little is really documented about this particular figure in history (hence the heavier reliance on his autobiography). He is referred to in a wide variety of places, but almost universally as little more than a mention or a side note, and there is innumerable repetition between sources (e.g., describing him as a Nixon loyalist sent in to clean up the old-boy network in the FBI). The only explanation for this I can come up with is that it must be due, at least in large part, to his 32-year silence from his resignation from the FBI until right before his death.

Nonetheless, I hasten to add that there certainly is plenty more out there and I will work to put as much as I can find into this article, I just wanted to mention that even the most well researched article possible on this guy may not reveal as comprehensive a biography as may otherwise be expected of a historical figure of this calabre.

On that note, I would only add one administrative issue, which is that I will be travelling this weekend and may not be able to work on this that comprehensively until next week sometime. I am going to make a stab at some of the low-hanging fruit tonight, but after that you might not see anything overly substantial until next week. (Morethan3words (talk) 16:17, 2 July 2009 (UTC))

Just based on the little looking I've done, I'm sure you can come up with more biographical information. For example, this book's brief biography has more detail on Gray's other-than-Watergate life and career than the current article. So does this book's coverage of him. And so forth. And while you may have read many references to Gray being a Nixon loyalist sent in to clean up the old-boy network in the FBI, that isn't included in the current article, at least not that I could see. As I said above, the history of the Nixon relationship with Gray is one of the key aspects that the article needs to cover.

Also, one advantage of mixing material from different sources together is that your text will be less similar to that of the Gray autobiography. Right now, some passages from it are perilously close to the paraphrasing you did in the article. They aren't an exact copyvio, but they still might be close enough to cause trouble. If you get other sources' material interleaved with this, that problem will naturally cure itself (and typically be replaced with a problem that the different sources conflict on details and you have to figure out what really happened when). Wasted Time R (talk) 17:29, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

There hasn't been any further action on this article over the last three weeks (the normal GA review period is one week), so I'm going to close it at WP:GAN. And the kind of additions that are necessary here typically take a number of weeks to research and make, so it shouldn't be done under any time pressure. Wasted Time R (talk) 21:39, 24 July 2009 (UTC)