Talk:Michèle Flournoy/Archive 1

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Archive 1

P.N.A.C., signatory on their "Letter to Congress on Increasing U.S. Ground Forces", January 28, 2005

Can someone add where appropriate, http://www.newamericancentury.org/defense-20050128.htm, thanks. 71.201.117.30 (talk) 18:50, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Brief career at TIME

I believe Michele Fournoy worked briefly at TIME magazine in a summer intern position, which would be an interesting addition to the piece. I'll reconfirm and add if my recollection is correct. MarmadukePercy (talk) 02:31, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Political Contributions: Democratic Party/Candidate Supporter

76.114.207.194 (talk) 00:07, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Highest Ranking Woman at the Pentagon?

The Post is wrong as she was most certainly not the highest ranking female official ever in the Pentagon. That was actually Sheila Widnall who was Secretary of the Air Force from 1993 to 1997. RicJac (talk) 19:20, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The order of succession for Secretary of Defense was changed by executive order from 22 Dec 2005 through 1 Mar 2010. Flournoy was appointed as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in 2009 and at that time the position was 3rd in line of succession (for Secretary of Defense). Currently, Secretary of the Air Force is 4th in line, as was the case in 1993 when Widnall served in the position. So, "at the time" (as the article states), "highest ranking female official ever in the Pentagon" does or did apply to Flournoy.
On a side-note, highest ranking female to date (in DoD) is Christine Fox as acting Deputy Secretary of Defense (from Dec. 2013 to Feb. 2014). 99.170.117.163 (talk) 05:52, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Possible nomination as Secretary of Defense

AleatoryPonderings, I'm not as sure as you that adding (sourced) information regarding Flournoy's possible nomination would constitute a violation of WP:CRYSTAL, as it says: It is appropriate to report discussion and arguments about the prospects for success of future proposals and projects or whether some development will occur, if discussion is properly referenced. It is not appropriate for editors to insert their own opinions or analyses. Predictions, speculation, forecasts and theories stated by reliable, expert sources or recognized entities in a field may be included, though editors should be aware of creating undue bias to any specific point-of-view.

Sdrqaz (talk) 14:01, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Sdrqaz, Fair enough, but really—what's the point? If she is named as Biden's choice, which will likely happen in a matter of days, we can say that then. If she's not, then we'll have a paragraph saying: "Some people speculated about whether she would be nominated. But, for unknown reasons, she was not". That, IMO, would not be very helpful to readers. It would not be a Merrick Garland–type scenario, where the nominee was nominated and not confirmed. Of course, that is notable and worth talking about. But reports that someone might be nominated and wasn't? I'm just not seeing it. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 14:29, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
AleatoryPonderings, I agree that this is a different case to Judge Garland, but I believe that inclusion of information regarding Flournoy's possible nomination would be warranted. Similar material exists at Evan Bayh (2008 running mate); Rudy Giuliani/Mitt Romney (2016 secretaries of state); Susan Rice (2013 and 2020 secretary of state and 2020 running mate); Elizabeth Warren (2016 and 2020 running mate and 2020 secretary of the the treasury); Karen Bass (2020 running mate); Tammy Duckworth (2020 running mate and secretary of defense). The list goes on and on. In Flournoy's case judging from numerous news reports, she isn't just a candidate: she seems the frontrunner for the job.
Sdrqaz (talk) 18:30, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
Sdrqaz, If all those articles include material like this, I suppose it's not for me to disagree. Feel free to add something to that effect here if you like. I just don't see the encyclopedic value in saying that she was thought to be a candidate for the job if, as it turns out, she doesn't get it. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 19:05, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
AleatoryPonderings, thank you for being so gracious. I'll add some information regarding her possible nomination later on; I think we'll just have to agree to disagree regarding the encyclopaedic value of the information. For what it's worth, I had only heard of Flournoy in the context of a possible nominee to be secretary of defense; prior to the speculation, I had not heard of her.
Sdrqaz (talk) 02:32, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Booz Allen Hamilton

AleatoryPonderings, I am not interested in having an edit war. But just because there are plenty of facts about Booz Allen Hamilton we could put there instead does not mean that the information should be removed. The sentence that was removed did not insinuate that Flournoy was part of some sinister plot in favour of Saudi Arabia; that would have been a violation of WP:SYNTH. Moreover, that information was hardly some unsourced gossip; it was the subject of the New York Times article in question. I find very little reason not to include that information about Booz Allen, especially given the U.S. Department of Defense's relationship with Saudi Arabia.[1]

Sdrqaz (talk) 01:38, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Sdrqaz, I'm going to the mat on this one, as I think it does make insinuations. The paragraph said, in essence: "Flournoy was a member of the board of BAH. By the way, did you know that BAH is involved in influence operations in Saudi Arabia for a highly controversial figure?". That's an insinuation in my book. Putting only vague, negative context next to a mention of an organization, which organization is then associated with Flournoy, is both an insinuation and a violation of WP:BLP, which says we should [b]eware of claims that rely on guilt by association. If we had evidence that Flournoy was specifically involved in BAH's Saudi Arabian operations, that would be appropriate. But the NYT piece does not even mention Flournoy, much less link her to BAH policies in Saudi Arabia. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 01:46, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
I should note: I'm not interested in edit warring either. We've crossed paths a few times recently and have had what is, IMO, a great working relationship. I definitely would not want to change that here :) AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 01:48, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
AleatoryPonderings, you're right to point out that WP:BLPBALANCE states that we should [b]eware of claims that rely on guilt by association. But such association fallacies require that a conclusion be explicitly made: one of the examples given in the page is Jane is good at mathematics. Jane is dyslexic. Therefore, all dyslexic people are good at mathematics. The problem there is the third sentence. There is no problem with saying that "Jane is good at mathematics" and "Jane is dyslexic" as long as you can, well, back it with reliable sources. I find this to be analagous to the situation at hand. Saying that "Flournoy was a member of Booz Allen.[ref] Booz Allen has done xyz.[ref]" does not have any problems because it does not draw any conclusions about Flournoy. However, saying "Flournoy was a member of Booz Allen. Booz Allen has done xyz. Therefore, Flournoy was responsible for xyz." would be clearly WP:SYNTH unless that conclusion was drawn by a source and we were citing it.
NB: I want to continue this excellent working relationship, which I feel only adds to the quality of Wikipedia. I was just mildly taken aback that you reverted by revert without coming to the talk page to hash a consensus out.
Sdrqaz (talk) 02:37, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
Sdrqaz, I'm still wary, although I take your point about not making the connection explicit. (Though I would point out that the whole point of insinuations is that the connection isn't made explicit in text: the audience is supposed to make the inference themselves …) I did a bit of digging to see if I could find anything about Flournoy's role at BAH, as I would still prefer to include something related to her in particular as opposed to general facts about this very large, very old company (founded 1914) which does many, many things. I did not come up with much: BAH said she had "no involvement in contracting or business development with any client, including the U.S. government", some critics of her potential SecDef nom said that BAH is a "a consulting firm laden with defense contracts" , and she has bought and sold some BAH stock while a director. It's very hard to tell what she does as a director—some directors are very hands-off, some not so much. I would not be opposed to including something along the lines of Flournoy has received some criticism for her role as a director at Booz Allen Hamilton, including by authors affiliated with the Project on Government Oversight.[2] AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 03:08, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
AleatoryPonderings, that seems like an amenable compromise; I'll make it as well as adding a reference from the NYT. From a semantic point of view, you're absolutely right: insinuations don't make their conclusions explicit. But I don't think that they're prohibited by Wikipedia (depending on how far-fetched the links are and the tone in which the insinuations are made, I suppose).
Sdrqaz (talk) 19:43, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "U.S. Relations With Saudi Arabia". United States Department of State. November 26, 2019. Retrieved November 28, 2020. The United States and Saudi Arabia have a longstanding security relationship. Saudi Arabia is the United States' largest foreign military sales (FMS) customer, with more than $100 billion in active FMS cases.
  2. ^ Bender, Ryan; Meyer, Theodoric (2020-11-23). "The secretive consulting firm that's become Biden's Cabinet in waiting". Politico. Retrieved 2020-11-28.

Lede

I would like to say something other than former government official. Maybe defense policy analyst or defense policy consultant? I don't recall a source calling her those things specifically, but it seems obvious and there should be something to show that. Just something to indicate that she's done quite a bit outside government during Republican administrations. Any ideas? AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 18:05, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

@AleatoryPonderings: Don't really have an opinion on it, to be quite honest. As WestExec Advisors is a consulting firm and Flournoy had a hand in founding it, I think defense policy consultant doesn't need to be sourced. Just to clarify: are you proposing replacing former government official with the new description, or attaching it after?
Sdrqaz (talk) 18:41, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
Sdrqaz, I was thinking in addition. (I also just hate the phrase …is an American former government official—sounds so bizarre.) So it would be is an American defense policy consultant and former government official, covering her time in the public and private sectors. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 19:03, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
@AleatoryPonderings: Go for it! Sdrqaz (talk) 23:30, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
As I read her career, consulting was a minor part of it. Most of her time was in defense policy, inside and outside government. Her outside time was mostly in policy research organizations, think tanks, NGOs. Consulting seems to have been a side-hustle at most. I'm not sure how to phrase that, but something like "defense policy expert and former government official." NPguy (talk) 03:25, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
NPguy, Yeah, that was my worry too. But "expert", while accurate, seems not particularly NPOV. "Wonk" is perhaps closest to the truth, but that's obviously not lede-appropriate. "Analyst" would seem to diminish her accomplishments somewhat, although it's the best one I can come up with now. What are your thoughts on "analyst"? I'd be fine with "expert" too; just reads a bit like something you'd find in a promotional bio. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 03:38, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
I'm not keen on "expert" either for the same reasons. Plus the term sometimes connotes narrowness of focus when her experience is pretty wide-ranging. "Analyst" is better, but I remember when I had a "research analyst" job that was pretty junior. I'm struggling for a term that connotes experience at the senior-most levels both in and out of government. NPguy (talk) 03:49, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
NPguy, Susan Rice has "policy advisor", which I like? Sounds more dignified than "analyst", is more wide-ranging than "consultant", and is applicable to both the public and private sectors. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 04:00, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
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