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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Radically different interpretations of whether existing coverage is enough to demonstrate notability suggests that no consensus can be found at this time. Barkeep49 (talk) 01:05, 20 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Crede Bailey

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Crede Bailey (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Non-notable/low-level White House staffer fails WP:GNG. Only the subject of trivial mentions in connection to Jared Kushner's security clearance and contracting COVID-19. There is no biographic material to speak of – not even a job title – only news clippings. KidAd talk 22:06, 10 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Spiderone 23:05, 10 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Lightburst (talk) 23:57, 10 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Sources on his illness include Bloomburg and NYT with reporting in the Israel (JPost), the Middle East, and Europe. He's also the person who suspended a whistleblower [1] and testified to Congress about it [2]. Hobit (talk) 19:50, 11 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete the sourcing does not really overcome the requirement to not be news coverage.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:20, 12 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete his position clearly fails WP:NPOL and the coverage is really not significant at all. SportingFlyer T·C 22:41, 12 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • What does WP:POL have to do with this? He's a government employee, not a politician or judge. Hobit (talk) 23:42, 12 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • It has to do nothing with this, that's why he's not covered by the political SNG even though he works in government, though it is the most applicable SNG. SportingFlyer T·C 14:24, 13 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        • There is a lot international and domestic coverage of him related to Covid. There is significant coverage related to his testimony. I've provided multiple independent sources here and there are others in the article. I'm not going to claim the coverage is in great depth, but it is beyond trivial and thus enough per WP:N. Hobit (talk) 23:26, 13 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
          • Being mentioned in articles doesn't get you past WP:GNG. Bailey is barely mentioned in the articles about testimony (though I can't read the NY Times one, he's nowhere near the headline) and the security adviser infected with COVID articles are all very brief and just states that someone who works in the White House has been hospitalised with COVID-19 and are all very brief blurbs which don't go into any detail of him at all. While his testimony was printed in one of the articles, no true significant coverage of him seems to exist, which is what we need, especially since he's a WP:BLP. SportingFlyer T·C 16:59, 14 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
            • I continue to think that WP:N doesn't require people or things or anything else to be covered in some broader context--just that they be covered. There are literally dozens of newspapers across the world that covered his being hospitalized with Covid. That would probably be a BLP1E thing other than he's seen non-trivial coverage for his actions and testimony with respect to a federal whistleblower. I get we won't agree here, but I don't see an argument that articles, even short ones, could be considered "trivial" coverage. And if it's more than trivial, it's good enough for WP:N (as written). Hobit (talk) 21:54, 14 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
              • I completely disagree - we require significant coverage per WP:GNG and WP:SIGCOV, and none of the sources currently in the article give him more than a trivial mention. Furthermore, he's not really a public figure, as evidenced by the fact he's referred to by his job title instead of his name in the very short blurb of an article about him getting COVID-19, and WP:NPF requires high quality secondary sources. Furthermore we frequently delete articles where the topic has been covered but not significantly - the sports rule is that match reports do not give a player significant coverage, just as "transactional" reports of "another person who works in the White House" has COVID shouldn't give this bloke notability. Also note I'm not arguing WP:BLP1E, I'm arguing he's just not notable at all on triviality and WP:NOTNEWS grounds. SportingFlyer T·C 10:13, 15 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
                • I think we understand each other. I don't think an article, even one of just a few paragraphs, solely about a subject can be said to be trivial coverage of that subject. You disagree. I believe my views are more inline with the examples given in WP:N, but I fully acknowledge that things like "trivial" and "significant" are by definition opinions and that our opinions are different. I think you have a reasonable view, just not one I agree with. We'll see where consensus lies and move forward from there. Hobit (talk) 16:48, 15 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
                • SportingFlyer, some people argue an individual shouldn't have a standalone article is missing the mundane milepoints of their life, like where they were born, where they studied, whether they were married, or had children. While those details should be included, if they are known, they are not what make them notable. What makes them notable is what they have done, what they have said, and what RS have said about their actions and statements. After Bailey's in-camera testimony before the House Oversight Committee Elijah Cummings, the chair, was highly critical of the White House's stonewalling. Every time Cummings criticized "The White House", he was really criticizing Bailey.
                • The perfect example of a notable individual, known solely for what he wrote, is false Geber. He was an author from before the days of moveable type. Each book had to be copied, by hand, by a skilled scribe. As an unknown he realized his new work would be much more likely to be copied if he claimed it was a forgotten work by someone already famous. So he claimed his work was written by a famous Arabic genius. The result is we know nothing about him, not his age, or nationality, or occupation, or religion. Nothing. Nothing except he was the first person to describe a major advance in chemistry. Yet no one would challenge whether he merits a standalone article. Please remember this example anytime you argue an individual's standalone article should be deleted because it is missing the mundane details of their life. Geo Swan (talk) 22:06, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
            • SportingFlyer, when you want to read an article from the NYTimes, and many other newspapers that put their articles behind a paywall, when you have exceeded their limit of free articles, you should use archive.org. Then place the url of the article you can't read in the to be archived box. All nytimes articles, except some of those where they merely republished something from AP or Reuters, will be available for you to read this way.
            • The head of the White House security office is critically ill with Covid-19
            • White House Whistle-Blower Did the Unexpected: She Returned to Work
            • Geo Swan (talk) 21:35, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
              • Thanks for the article links, but you're putting words in my mouth. I am not arguing the article should be deleted because it is lacking mundane details. I am arguing it should be deleted because he wasn't notable, he got sick with COVID-19, and he got a smattering of routine press coverage which basically said "white house official gets sick." His name gets mentioned a brief three times in the whistleblower article and only mentions him as the whistleblower's supervisor. If you look closely at how he gets mentioned in the articles before the sickness was reported, it's a fairly clear WP:BLP1E and WP:NOTNEWS fail, since no previous coverage is significant in the slightest. None of the keep !votes discuss the fact the articles only relate his testimony or just mention the fact he worked at the white house. I'm willing to reconsider if more coverage can be shown. SportingFlyer T·C 22:29, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
                • Please don't assert BLP1E when it has already been made clear he plays a role in TWO EVENTS.

                  I do my best to respond to what I think people meant, even if the surface meaning of what they said is more open to criticism. Honestly, you seemed to be claiming there wasn't enough coverage of the mundane details of his life.

                  The New York Times entitled an article about him. So, they considered him to be pretty notable. If they had access to those mundane details of his life, they would have included it.

                  You seem to have overlooked Elijah Cummings criticism of Bailey, which I regard as highly significant. Geo Swan (talk) 06:30, 17 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Weak Keep He has reliable source coverage and he holds a sensitive position in the West Wing and he has been in the news also for his illness and for his testimony to the United States House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Lightburst (talk) 14≥:12, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Keep, senior level role, member of Agency Transition Directors Council (ATDC), also White House Chief Security Officer, and [3]. Right cite (talk) 18:29, 13 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Keep per Lightburst. As someone who only knew him from his COVID hospitalization, I initially thought this would be a slam-dunk delete as BLP1E, but there was actually quite a lot of coverage of him before his infection, between his ATDC role, his White House role, his Whistleblower stuff, etc. Feoffer (talk) 02:52, 15 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Press reports quote White House insiders who said Bailey was "gravely ill". Was Bailey merely as notable as his colleagues Carl Kline and Tricia Newbold? No. His colleagues Kline and Newbold played the same central role in giving Jared Kushner clearance to work out of the White House, even though his debts and foreign entanglements disqualified him, but, in addition he is "gravely ill" from Covid 19. In this particular case "gravely ill" means he is expected to die, if it does not mean it is already too late, and he is being maintained on life support. Geo Swan (talk) 21:19, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Let's take a look at the sources.
  1. Enjeti, Saagar (2019-07-18). "EXCLUSIVE: Career officials rebut claims of White House interference in security clearance process". The Hill. Four sentences, all related to Bailey's testimony to the Senate. Only mentions that he's a "career White House security official." All other mentions of him in the article relate directly to his testimony. Not SIGCOV.
  2. Strickler, Laura; Dilanian, Ken; Alexander, Peter (25 January 2019). "Officials rejected Kushner for top secret clearance, were overruled". NBC News. Bailey's name does not even appear in this article.
  3. Rogers, Katie (2019-04-01). "White House whistle-blower did the unexpected: She returned to work". The New York Times. His name appears three times in this article, which clearly isn't about him at all: The office’s new director, Crede Bailey, said at the time that Ms. Newbold had refused to “support new procedures your supervisor implemented.” The Republican members also pointed out that she had positive things to say about Mr. Bailey, her current supervisor. Mr. Passman said Mr. Bailey’s two-week suspension of Ms. Newbold was “unwarranted,” but added that “he’s not personally attacking her like Kline did.” None of that is significant coverage of Bailey, it just mentions his role in an event.
  4. Strickler, Laura; Alexander, Peter (2019-02-01). "'Whistleblower' in White House security clearance office is suspended". NBC News. Security office chief Crede Bailey first proposed the suspension on Dec. 3, 2018. Wednesday's notice is signed by Bailey and mentions that in Newbold's 18-year career she has not faced any "prior formal disciplinary action." These are the only mentions of Bailey in the article. Clearly not SIGCOV.
  5. Jacobs, Jennifer (October 7, 2020). "White House Security Official Contracted Covid-19 in September". Bloomberg News. This is technically about him, but it's four sentences and includes the phrase A career federal employee who has seldom appeared in the news, and does not go into any further detail about him other than he's the security official and is gravely ill. He is not being reported on because he is worthy of notability, but rather because he works at the white house and got sick. This is the political equivalent of a sports transaction article. Not sigcov.
  6. Haberman, Maggie; Cooper, Helene (2020-10-08). "The head of the White House security office is critically ill with Covid-19". The New York Times. The article is directly about him, but not only is the article short, his name only appears twice and only describes his duties in the white house and then mentions his case in relation to another outbreak. Not SIGCOV.
  7. Gregorian, Dareh (2010-10-08). "Head of White House security office tests positive for coronavirus". NBC News. Four sentences long, his name only appears once: The official, Crede Bailey, who heads the office that handles credentials for access to the White House, adds to a lengthy list of White House officials who have tested positive for the coronavirus in the past week. Clearly not SIGCOV.

There's lots of routine reporting of the fact he's gravely ill in the similar vein to the Bloomberg article, and I found translations in several languages, but none of the articles say anything other than "White house staffer very sick with COVID." The government documents presented above are primary and don't count. Based on the available sources and with respect to WP:BLP requiring detailed secondary sources for living people, especially private individuals, and WP:NOTNEWS standing for the premise Wikipedia is not a place to post articles which fleet their way through the news cycle as Mr. Bailey's illness did, it's clear Mr. Bailey is not yet notable. SportingFlyer T·C 22:47, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Excuse me, but the flaw in your argument is your description that the reporting that Bailey is "gravely ill" is "routine". I think if I were to challenge you to find reporting of White House officials' routine illnesses you would find you were not able to do so. Reporters are rarely going to report on a routine illness. A fluff piece, on a celebrity, might mention the celebrity was grumpy from trying to quit smoking, or that quitting smoking had given them the sniffles, or a cough. That would be trivial, but it would be in only one article. However, as you yourself noted, LOTS of RS were reporting Bailey was "gravely ill".
  • For "Bailey is gravely ill" read "Bailey is not expected to survive", or possibly "Bailey is on life support, and his family have agreed to not pull the plug until voting is over."
  • Hundreds of individuals must work in the White House, maybe one hundred in the West Wing alone. With that many employees there are going to be the occasional deaths. I looked for reporting on those deaths, and didn't find any recent ones. The last I can remember is that of Vince Foster, which I think erodes your position. Why aren't those deaths ever reported nationally, internationally, while Bailey's imminent death has got LOTS of reporting? Because RS think his illness is significant, not, as you asserted, "routine".
  • I haven't seen any RS authors who are prepared to risk looking ghoulish, by speaking of how damaging it would be for the Trump campaign if a relatively senior White House official died of the Virus that the POTUS routinely claimed was not that dangerous, and, for which, he routinely ignored precautions.
  • The large number of RS that report he is gravely ill, and those that note the White House officials have been silent on his health status, mean his illness is itself significant, not "routine", as you assert. Geo Swan (talk) 08:14, 17 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • The reporting is routine because there is not a single piece of coverage that goes into any in depth reporting of him. I would change my vote if there were a full feature story on him, but there's not! "Routine news" is news that would have been reported about anyone, a mad lib story - if anyone who works in the white house, regardless of whether they had received any coverage before, had fallen very ill with COVID, there would have been a news report. I hope he is recovering, that the reports as they stand clearly do not make him permanently wiki-notable, ESPECIALLY considering we have to balance the fact he's otherwise a private WP:BLP, and because there's been no continuing coverage. SportingFlyer T·C 11:21, 17 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Position is far from satisfying WP:NPOL, and the coverage (such as there is) squarely falls within WP:BLP1E: it's only in the context of the subject contracting Covid. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 16:08, 17 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oyi. #1 WP:POL doesn't apply. #2 WP:POL is not exclusionary--that is not meeting WP:POL isn't a reason to delete, even if it did apply. #3 There was coverage quite a bit before he got Covid. Hobit (talk) 01:49, 18 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • As I've shown, he got mentioned before he got COVID, but he didn't get any significant coverage before the COVID-19 impact. Had he not gotten COVID we wouldn't delete him on WP:BLP1E grounds, we would have deleted him for being completely non-notable. SportingFlyer T·C 11:02, 18 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        • The point is that he had coverage in multiple independent sources before this for testifying to the US congress in a whistleblower case. That, by itself, might not be enough to make him meet WP:N, but it certainly puts him outside of WP:BLP1E. Hobit (talk) 11:14, 18 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
          • I strongly believe that you can't overcome WP:BLP1E for being briefly mentioned during another previous event. If I become famous for something tomorrow, the fact my name has been in the paper before shouldn't mean that WP:BLP1E doesn't apply. It shouldn't matter - there's clearly no SIGCOV here regardless - but there is a very good argument WP:BLP1E could apply. SportingFlyer T·C 11:25, 18 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
            • SportingFlyer do you remember Chesley Sullenberger - Captain Sully? Someone created an article about him, following the heroic performance of Sully (and the rest of his team - he routinely credits them too)
            • Well, after the article was started multiple well intentioned individuals tried to delete or redirect that article on BLP1E grounds. I know, it seems hard to believe, now, but that is what the record shows.
            • When you did a web search on his name you got a firehose of hits fixated on the heroic landing earlier that day. It took all my web-search-fu to confirm my intuition that there would be hits in there, from his web presence prior to the landing, that confirmed he was not a BLP1E.
            • We have some special purpose notability guidelines, like NPOL you mentioned, that supercede GNG. But well over 99 percent of our biographical articles are about individuals whose notability was not established by one factor, like holding a National office. Well over 99 percent of the individuals we cover in standalone article require a calculation of the notability factors from multiple events before they measure up to our notability criteria. So, yes, of course playing a role in a previous event makes BLP1E a moot point.
            • If you really mean to challenge the significance of Bailey's role in breaking the White House rules over giving Jared Kushner clearance, then I think you need to do yet another web search:
  1. While Carl Kline was a horrible bully to Tricia Newbold, it was Bailey who recommended disciplining Newbold, with a 2 week suspension, without pay.
  2. Bailey would later justify that discipline by criticizing Newbold for paying more attention to the written guidelines than she did to the verbal instructions of her direct supervisor. Newbold's position, if I understood it correctly, was that she wasn't challenging whether her supervisor had the authority to instruct her to ignore the written guidelines, or to draft new guidelines. She argued, however, that those revised instructions had to be in writing. If she were to follow verbal instructions to flout the guidelines, and a new administration was to initiate an inquiry into how Kushner received a clearance, she would be the fall guy. The written record would show she authorized the clearance, and she would have no way of showing she received verbal instructions to do so.
  3. Bailey asserted she lacked varied experience to understand she should follow verbal instructions, and not insist on a paper trail.
  4. After Newbold testified before the House Oversight Committee it subpoenaed Bailey. After Bailey's testimony Elijah Cummings was extremely critical of "The White House" for its lack of a paper trail justifying Kushner's clearance. He said they hadn't supplied one page of documentation justifying waiving the rules to give him clearance. Okay, for "The White House" read Crede Bailey, as he was the White House official who testified, the one who should have brought the documents to justify the decision.

    Newbold had wanted her department to write a memo explaining why the rules were waived for Kushner, her superiors didn't do that, Bailey didn't do that, and Cummings criticized them for a lack of documentation of that decision. I see that as Cummings criticizing Bailey.

  5. The Hill quoted Bailey's assertion that the decision to offer Kushner clearance, even though he didn't meet the criteria for clearance, was not due to political pressure. Cummings didn't seem to find his assertions credible. Geo Swan (talk) 19:34, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • In that reply you've now written more on Bailey than any of the articles we've found so far, which is what we ultimately require for notability. It's clear you think what Bailey did was "significant," but as I keep saying and have demonstrated, the coverage of Bailey himself is clearly not significant. None of these articles cover Bailey significantly as a person. They say he testified and got sick and that's it. That's not significant coverage. Also, your Sullenberger anecdote is completely off point, but I will take the bait and say Sullenberger is notable only for one event, but his role in the event was fantastically notable, and he became a public figure as a result. SportingFlyer T·C 19:57, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - The sources provided are not convincing to me that this individual has done anything notable per WP:GNG. He played an extremely minor role in two notable events. The six short sentences about his role in the White House COVID outbreak and the Jared Kushner security clearance can easily be merged to White House COVID-19 outbreak and Jared Kushner. There is no need for a separate article on this individual that will never become anything more than a stub, because there is simply not much that can be said about him. ‑Scottywong| [talk] || 05:44, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Scottywong, you are a longtime contributor. Did you really mean to state you reached your conclusion on ‘’”The sources provided”’’? Longtime contributors know, or should know, that it is the underlying notability of an article’s topic that should be under evaluation at AFD - not the current state of the article. Geo Swan (talk) 18:06, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • I didn't intend to imply that "the article is short, therefore delete it." My point in mentioning the "six sentences" of the article is that I don't believe that much more could be written about this individual, because it doesn't appear that they have really done anything notable. The brief descriptions of this person's minor role in a notable event could easily be mentioned in the main article that covers the event. While there is some verifiable information in the media about this person, I simply don't see the need for a standalone article on him. ‑Scottywong| [chat] || 18:41, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        • I do my best to respond to what my correspondents really mean, if that seems to differ from what they actually said. So, you didn't mean to imply to less experienced contributors that it was okay for them to base their notabiliy conclusions solely on the current state of articles? Great! If that is what you meant above thanks for clarifying that!
With regard to "six sentences", The head of the White House security office is critically ill with Covid-19 is 8 paragraphs long, and the first four paragraphs talk about Bailey. In addition, the article's very headline refers to Bailey - "The head of the White House security office." Geo Swan (talk) 19:48, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that source. While his name is clearly mentioned twice in that NYT article, and they even give a very brief description of his job, I can't see this article (or any other, for that matter) being used as the basis for a biographical article on this individual. This source verifies two basic facts: he caught COVID-19, and he's the head of the White House security office. That doesn't qualify as WP:SIGCOV in my book. So far, the only claims of notability I've heard about this person is that he caught COVID-19, and he was the supervisor of the person that approved Jared Kushner's security clearance. I just don't see how that turns into a standalone biographical article. Again, this is all great, verifiable information for Jared Kushner#His security clearance and White House COVID-19 outbreak. ‑Scottywong| [babble] || 20:43, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
He also testified to congress about a whitleblower issue. Tha also got coverage. Hobit (talk) 21:18, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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