Talk:Michel Thomas
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[edit] Sign your name
If you add comments to this talk page, type ~~~~ after them to sign your name. Discussions are much more confusing without and idea of who said what and when. Antonrojo 16:51, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] NOTICE: THIS ARTICLE IS DISPUTED
Readers of this article should be aware that much of it has been drafted by a man who was sued by Michel Thomas for defamation, Los Angeles Times staff writer Roy Rivenburg, who has made numerous comments below. Mr. Rivenburg has repeatedly altered edits to the article so that it conforms to his view of Mr. Thomas's life. The neutrality of the article has accordingly been put in dispute status by Wikpedia, and the article should not be relied upon as an accurate description of Mr. Thomas's life that meets Wikipedia's standards. For more information about the defamation suit against Mr. Rivenburg and the Los Angeles Times, please see http://www.michelthomas.org, or simply use a search engine with appropriate terms.
The Friends of Michel Thomas
[edit] A WORD FROM THE LOYAL OPPOSITION
The original Wikipedia entry on Michel Thomas, written by his supporters, was declared "non-neutral" by Wikipedia editors (see "POV Check" below). In addition to its flowery tone, the original entry failed to mention the fact that Mr. Thomas' claims have been disputed by numerous sources, including the U.S. Justice Department's former chief Nazi hunter, an Oscar-winning documentary, the Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, Newsday, the prosecutor at Klaus Barbie's trial, military records and more. Of course, Thomas also has supporters -- and a truly neutral Wikipedia entry should include evidence from both. As for Mr. Thomas' libel lawsuit against the Los Angeles Times and me, his case was thrown out of court by four federal judges. Afterward, Times editor John Carroll said, "I'm very proud of that story. We haven't retracted a word of it, and we don't intend to because it was true." Readers can visit Thomas' website and mine, offkilter.org/thomas.html, and judge for themselves what to believe.
-- Roy Rivenburg
[edit] POV Check
I got a message from another editor on this article and within about 20 seconds I have to say it was clear to me this article is in need of a serious NPOV edit. The first line alone says it all:
- Michel Thomas (3 February 1914–8 January 2005) a renowned linguist and language teacher, was a figure of legendary WWII courage who lived one of the most colorful and adventurous lives of his era.
The adjectives and superlatives just jump out at you as inherently non-neutral, editorial, and without serious concern for what is encyclopedic. Take, as a counter-example the lead for Gandhi:
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869–30 January 1948) (Devanagari, Hindi: मोहनदास करमचन्द गांधी,Gujarati:મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધી) was the spiritual and political leader of India who led the struggle for India's independence from the British Empire, empowered by tens of millions of Indians.
Here you have someone of far greater notoriety and respect and his lead isn't overflowing with the superlatives, the closest it comes is "empowered by tens of millions of Indians" which is a fact.
So, I feel this article needs an experienced hand to go through it, if I have the time it may even be me. This article is also entirely unsourced and needs healthy dose of sourcing.
--Wgfinley 00:40, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] The Myth of Michel Thomas
Doubts about the honesty of Michel Thomas have cropped up repeatedly over the years. In 2001, my editors at the Los Angeles Times asked me to investigate some of his hard-to-believe World War II tales. I soon discovered we weren't the first to question his truthfulness. Eighteen years earlier, the U.S. Department of Justice's chief Nazi investigator called a press conference to denounce Thomas' Klaus Barbie stories. "I find it pretty hard to put any credibility in what Thomas says," the DOJ investigator told reporters. Nobody paid much heed, but four years later, after Thomas testified at Barbie's trial in France, prosecutor Pierre Truche reached the same conclusion, telling the jury that "with the exception of Mr. Thomas, all the witnesses are of good faith." Other skeptics included an Oscar-winning documentary ("Hotel Terminus"), Le Monde and Histoire, France's version of the History Channel. (Thomas had also been sued numerous times for failure to pay taxes, rents and other debts.)
Our research found additional dubious stories:
1. Thomas claimed he was an officer in the U.S. Army. In fact, he was a civilian employee, and the Los Angeles Times has National Archives military documents from 1946 bearing Thomas' signature over the words "civilian assistant." Rather than admit exaggerating, Thomas sued the paper for questioning his military status. (The lawsuit was thrown out of court by a federal judge and Thomas' appeal was rejected by the 9th Circuit Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. He was also ordered to pay the Times $98,000 for legal fees). In July 2004, his private investigator finally conceded to Newsday that Thomas was never inducted.
2. In his 1999 biography, "Test of Courage," Thomas said he was born in Poland. However, for 38 years, he told reporters he was born in France -- and different parts of France at that. A minor detail, perhaps, but one that again reflects on his credibility.
3. In the book, Thomas said he accompanied the first battalion of U.S. troops when it entered the Dachau concentration camp on the morning of April 29, 1945. After the L.A. Times proved otherwise (to the point that even his biographer acknowledged the story was wrong), Thomas tried to backtrack by claiming he never said he was with the first battalion, only that he arrived at Dachau sometime later that day. Unfortunately for Thomas, he had repeated his original tale in a sworn deposition filed with his libel lawsuit ("On April 29, 1945, the 3rd battalion of the 157th Regiment liberated the Dachau concentration camp. I accompanied these troops"). Only after his private investigator interviewed the commander of that battalion, Felix Sparks, and realized Thomas' story didn't hold up, did Thomas begin insisting he never said he was with the 3rd battalion. Another hole in Thomas' story involved the photos he said he took at Dachau on April 29. They were marked "May 1945."
4. Thomas said he single-handedly discovered and rescued millions of Nazi Party ID cards from destruction at a paper mill near Munich in May 1945. But his version of events is flatly contradicted by 1945 articles in the New York Times and London Express. It's no accident these detailed articles were never mentioned in Thomas' libel lawsuit or on his website attacking our investigation. Their very existence blows apart several linchpins in his story. Thomas' version of events can be broken down into three separate claims -- that he found the ID cards on his own, that he engineered press coverage of the discovery in May 1945, and that the media spotlight forced his 7th Army superiors to swiftly remove all the documents from the mill for safekeeping. Two of those claims are false beyond any doubt. The third is also questionable, especially considering Thomas' indisputable fabrications on the rest of the story. Here's what really happened: In May 1945, paper mill owner Hans Huber went to 7th Army officials and told them about the ID cards. In response, according to military records, Counter Intelligence Corps agent Francesco Quaranta visited the mill, and returned with some samples. It's conceivable that Thomas accompanied Quaranta (which might explain how he reportedly came to possess several documents from the mill), but that's a radically different scenario from Thomas' tale of learning about the ID cards from his scout and making a solo rescue of them. There's also no truth to Thomas' claim that he leaked word of the discovery to the press, thereby goading his 7th Army superiors into removing the files from the mill in May. In reality, there was no press coverage until October of that year -- and it's clear from reading the stories that Thomas played no role in causing it. More importantly, military records state that the 7th Army "abandoned" the Nazi ID cards after Quaranta's visit to the mill. It moved on to another part of Germany and left the cards at the paper mill. If not for the persistence of mill owner Huber and the arrival of the 3rd Army months later, the documents might never have been saved. The NY Times and London Express make it clear that the real hero was Huber, a German who defied the Nazis. Army journalist Stefan Heym's 1945 account agrees, and his lengthy history of the cards dovetails with the press stories. In other words, all the sources from that era -- newspapers, Heym and military records -- unanimously contradict key details of Thomas' story and give full credit to Huber. Moreover, when Thomas was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, he couldn't name the town where the mill was located, couldn't describe the building and even claimed the ID cards specifically mentioned the Nazi Party, which they don't.
5. Elsewhere in the biography, Thomas portrayed himself as a real-life Hogan's Heroes, able to escape concentration and slave labor camps repeatedly at will. In one story, after learning his girlfriend secured his release by granting a romantic favor to a diplomat, Thomas claimed he voluntarily returned to imprisonment because he didn't want to be freed under such circumstances. Another prison-break tale featured him crawling under a bed when some guards unexpectedly came into the room where he was hiding on his way out of camp. In a scene that is curiously reminiscent of several movie scripts, the guards got drunk and one passed out on the bed, pinning Thomas underneath all night. Another story depicts Thomas hiding in a well, telepathically ordering a dog to stop barking and go away, lest Thomas be discovered by Nazi pursuers.
Thomas claimed other Holocaust victims could have escaped too, if only they hadn't given up hope and surrendered to their fate. After The Times published that comment, Thomas tried to say he was misquoted. But it's spelled out in detail in his biography. See "hope, loss of" in the index. A truly NPOV article on Michel Thomas should recognize that there is debate over his World War II claims and incorporate the above information in a balanced fashion.
-- Roy Rivenburg
L.A. Times Editor John Carroll's 2004 statement about Michel Thomas:
"We published a story awhile back, by a very good and clever reporter named Roy Rivenburg, about a man who published his autobiography. And, if you read the [book], you'd be amazed you'd never heard of this man, because he pretty much single-handedly won World War II for us. It was a preposterous book, and our review of it was an investigative review. It debunked many of the claims in the book and had some fun doing it, had a few laughs at the author's expense. When you put yourself out in public and make claims that are preposterous, and publish a book on it, you're likely to get a reviewer who will look into that and set the record straight. I'm very proud of that story. We haven't retracted a word of it; we don't intend to because it was true."
[edit] Roy Rivenburg and Michel Thomas
Mr. Rivenburg and his employer the L.A. Times were sued by Michel Thomas for defamation in 2001, after Mr. Rivenburg's profile of Thomas, headlined "Larger Than Life" was published in April of that year. Mr. Thomas was then 87 years old. His biography, Test of Courage, had been published the year before, and had been favorably reviewed by the L.A. Times.
- - Mr. Rivenburg's profile portrayed Thomas as a fraud who had lied about or exaggerated his WWII service. In May 2001, a few weeks after the article ran, the Times published half a dozen letters in response to the article, the gist of them was that the article was the essence of "cheap shot journalism" as one letter-writer characterized it. -
- One of the published letters was from Dr. Theodore Kraus, a former U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps Agent who had served with Mr. Thomas in the CIC in Germany in 1946-47. He had been interviewed by Mr. Rivenburg, and fully supported Mr. Thomas' accounts of his work for the CIC, yet for some reason Dr. Kraus and his statements backing up Mr. Thomas were never mentioned in the article. He strongly disagreed with the article's take on Mr. Thomas's life, and asked in his letter why his own statements backing up Mr. Thomas's wartime CIC service were never mentioned in the article. -
- In June 2001, Mr. Thomas and his attorney hired me to do research that would establish the truth of Mr. Thomas's WWII service, to be used in the defamation case. I had never heard of the man and knew nothing about his past. -
- From my first meeting with him, it was clear to me that something was wrong. Among other things, the article had portrayed Mr. Thomas as a phony Dachau liberator. But Mr. Thomas showed me a briefcase full of original documents, including photos he took at the liberation of Dachau, for which he had the negatives. He also had signed original statements, in German, of the crematorium workers whom he had interrogated. Had the reporter simply ignored all this documentation? Had he researched its authenticity? Had he tried to locate persons who had served with Mr. Thomas during WWII? - - Unlike any real fraud, who would have avoided delving into details, Mr. Thomas gave me his full cooperation. He was never evasive, and during the course of the lawsuit he paid me to research his past. (Later on I donated my time pro bono.) -
- Over the course of the next couple of years, working with others, we found documentation in the U.S. National Archives and in Europe that completely corroborated Mr. Thomas's accounts of his wartime service. I met with noted French Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld in his office in Paris and obtained from him the original files establishing Mr. Thomas's bona fides as a recognized "ancien combattant" who had been imprisoned repeatedly in Vichy French concentration camps, tortured by the French version of the Gestapo -- the Milice -- and had been officially cited for his bravery fighting with the French Resistance. -
- We contacted Ms. Barbara Distel, who for decades has been the curator of the Dachau Memorial Museum, and sent her prints of twenty-three of the photos Mr. Thomas took at Dachau. She replied by letter that she and her staff had verified the authenticity of the photos, stating that “20 of the photos are unknown until now and seem to have been taken by Mr. Thomas," who still had the negatives for many of the photos. -
- At the National Archives, we found a list of the members of the 45th Division CIC unit in which Mr. Thomas had served. I tracked down every member of that unit and found a lone survivor, Mr. Walter Wimer, who lives today in Michigan. He had had no contact with Mr. Thomas since the war but was outraged at the Times' portrayal of Mr. Thomas, whom he remembered well for his extraordinary bravery and language skills. Mr. Wimer, himself an emigre of Hitler's Germany, happily provided a Declaration in the lawsuit in which, among other things, he stated that "Mr. Thomas was sent out on missions by our commanding officers, in the same capacity and with the same duties and powers as the other Agents of our unit." -
- In August 2002, I accompanied Mr. Thomas and Dr. Kraus to the reunion of the 45th Infantry Division in Oklahoma City. I witnessed first-hand Mr. Thomas' reunion with Henry Teichmann, who had written the orders releasing Mr. Thomas from the 180th Regiment of the 45th, in 1944. The two had not seen each other in nearly 60 years, but had a warm and emotional reunion that I videotaped.
- - Dr. Kraus spoke to the membership of the 180th that weekend, and they responded in force: more than 130 members sent signed cards to the L.A. Times, respectfully asking the paper to re-report the true facts of Mr. Thomas' life. I kept copies of these cards before shipping them to the L.A. Times via special delivery from Paris, after my meeting with Serge Klarsfeld. -
- No one at the Times ever responded to any of these, or more than 380 additional letters the paper received about their article. -
- After the reunion, another wartime comrade surfaced. Bedford Groves had served not only in the CIC with Mr. Thomas, but also knew him when Mr. Thomas served in the combat intelligence unit of the 180th Regiment of the 45th Infantry Division. He sent a card recalling Mr. Thomas and when I contacted him he told me that Mr. Thomas "did the work of three Agents" in the CIC. -
- Witness testimony is the gold-standard of evidence for evaluating inflated claims of wartime heroism. Of the four surviving persons we located who had served with Mr. Thomas, every one of them fully supported his 'stories' of extraordinary wartime service. -
- In the meantime, the documentation from our research was piling ever higher. Mr. Thomas had been nominated for a Silver Star in 1944 for his bravery fighting with the 180th in France. He never knew what became of the nomination, and never pursued it, because he was honored enough to have served with the U.S. Army in the fight against the Nazis. -
- I found the widow of the man who wrote the original nomination letter, Capt. Martin Schroeder, and she verified his signature on the letter, and further stated that her husband would never have nominated someone for such a high decoration "unless he really deserved it." -
- At the National Archives, we found documentation of the Battle of Autrey France, which was described in Captain Schroeder's letter. -
- - What the Sources Said -
- I also interviewed people whom Mr. Rivenburg quoted in the article to discredit Mr. Thomas. Felix Sparks, who led the first troops into Dachau, was quoted in the article thus: "[Sparks] says he would certainly recall if Thomas had accompanied the 200-member force: 'He's got the right battalion, that's correct, but there were no CIC [Counter Intelligence Corps] with us.'" -
- But when I interviewed Sparks, he told me, "this reporter called me and said, 'this guy Thomas says he went into Dachau with you as a CIC Agent.' I told him I never heard of the guy and I had no idea what any of those CIC guys did, and never knew any of them." I informed Sparks that, with all due respect, Mr. Thomas had never heard his name until he read the L.A. Times article, and had certainly never told the reporter he had 'gone in' with Lt. Col. Felix Sparks. Mr. Thomas did say, as his biographer made clear to Mr. Rivenburg in emails prior to the publication of his profile, that he had gone into Dachau on the day of liberation as a CIC Agent, who did not need to be "attached" to any infantry unit such as Mr. Sparks'. -
- Mr. Sparks signed a letter in May 2002 stating that, had he known this had been Mr. Thomas's claim, "I would have told Mr. Rivenburg that it was perfectly possible that Thomas was at the camp that day, and I would not necessarily have been aware of this." -
- Mr. Rivenburg's profile also quoted retired Lt. Col. Hugh F. Foster III, an expert on the liberation of Dachau: "Regarding Thomas' mention of tanks, Foster says there were no tanks because the bridges between the town of Dachau and the military camp across the river had been blown up. Thomas doesn't recall a river. Thomas says he entered the camp through the front gate, after the Germans waved white flags and opened fire on his group. But Foster and Sparks say the battalion deliberately avoided the front gate and circled around to another side of the sprawling camp." -
- I believe the implication of this is clear: Mr. Thomas was lying, was not at the liberation, and cannot recall things that a genuine liberator would recall. -
- When I interviewed Foster, I showed him the independent documentation we had found, along with some of the documents and photos Rivenburg had been shown, but did not mention or show to Foster when he interviewed him. Foster wrote a detailed statement, outlining the evidence he had seen, and concluded, "Based on my review of these documents and photos, I believe that Michel Thomas most likely was present at Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945." He added, "I do not know to what extent Mr. Roy Rivenburg was aware of the above information during his contacts with me. I do know that the essence of his correspondence with me was that Mr. Thomas had made the fraudulent claim that he accompanied the first troops to enter the concentration camp at Dachau. I am now aware that Mr. Thomas made no such claim; rather he claimed only to have been at the camp on liberation day, and I believe the evidence I have seen supports that claim." -
- I also interviewed Conrad McCormick, a CIC veteran and archivist at the U.S. Army Intelligence Museum in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, who was quoted in the article about Mr. Thomas's CIC ID card. During the interview, Mr. McCormick mentioned that he had been working for years on an index of the thirty-volume unpublished history of the CIC, compiled between 1950 and 1959 at the Army Intelligence School in Fort Holabird, Maryland. I asked him if he had looked up the name Michel Thomas in his index in response to Mr. Rivenburg's query. He said he had not, but did so while I looked on. -
- McCormick found an entry at p. 2862, of Vol. XX, concerning the small CIC unit in which Michel Thomas had been an Agent: -
- "Agents Thomas and White, on their way to pick up an automatic arrestee, were informed at Hersbruck that the town for which they were heading was in German hands. They collected tactical information about the situation ahead and forwarded it to Target Force Headquarters, along with a report of initial security measures they had instigated in Hersbruck. In addition to the normal arms collection, curfew, travel restrictions, and communications disconnection, the two Agents arrested an official of the Organization Todt and indicated the existence of a war crimes' situation in the town. Agent Schiff was performing all interrogations as the day ended. Most of this work had been performed in suburban areas." -
- (Later, I interviewed Ian Sayer, co-author of a book about the CIC, at his spacious home outside London. Sayer too, was quoted in the profile of Mr. Thomas, indicating his skepticism. Sayer maintains an extensive library of WWII documentation and memorabilia at his home. To my astonishment, Sayer produced the same page from the CIC history, and showed me the fax of it he had sent to Rivenburg in March 2001 after Rivenburg contacted him to research his story. However, no mention was made in the article of this entry documenting "Agent Thomas's" work in the official CIC history. ) -
- I informed Mr. McCormick that Mr. Thomas had photos of himself with Agent Frederick White, in their CIC Agent uniforms. I later contacted Frederick White’s widow and she supplied additional photos of her husband and Michel in their CIC uniforms in a car together, along with photos taken at the liberation of Dachau that matched those taken by Michel Thomas, for which he kept the negatives. -
- After the publication of Rivenburg’s article, the Los Angeles Times published a Letter-to-the-Editor indicating approval of his article by Mr. McCormick. It was the only letter of any substance published in support of the article. I showed Mr. McCormick that letter, published on 7th May 2001. He reacted with some indignance, and stated he had never written any such Letter-to-the Editor, and that it was not his practice ever to write such letters. He said he recognized some of the words in the letter from email correspondence and telephone calls between himself and Rivenburg. -
- In a sworn statement filed with the Court, McCormick declared: “I did not write any letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times. I recognise some of the contents of the letter published with my name, as text from email correspondence that I exchanged with Mr Rivenburg in the course of our contact regarding his enquiries for the article. However, whatever words of mine appeared in the alleged Letter to the Editor were not written to Mr Rivenburg or the Los Angeles Times with the intent that they would be published.”
- - So, where are we now? Four out of four of Mr. Thomas's surviving comrades are outraged at Mr. Rivenburg's portrayal and happily sign letters or sworn statements backing up Mr. Thomas. Two sources quoted in his article effectively recant their statements quoted in the article, and a third finds evidence that his quoted statement suggesting Thomas was not a bona fide CIC Agent was misleading or incorrect. And, finally, there is evidence of a planted Letter-to-the-Editor, amidst the many letters of outrage received.
- - - The Defamation Suit -
- Mr. Thomas did not prevail in his defamation suit, because the trial judge ruled that the article was not defamatory on its face. This was a curious ruling, insofar as she did agree that the article implied Thomas had lied about his past. So, apparently, one can be portrayed as a liar and a judge will nevertheless find that this is not prima facie evidence one has been defamed. -
- As a result of the ruling, Mr. Thomas was never allowed to put before a judge or jury any of the mountain of evidence supporting his 'claims.' Because of the peculiar provisions of California's anti-SLAPP legislation, which makes it nearly impossible for plaintiffs to prevail in defamation cases in California, Mr. Thomas was then forced to pay all of the L.A. Times' legal fees, amounting to nearly $100,000, but not before the judge reprimanded the Times' lawyers for 'rampant over-billing' and ordered them to cut their bill nearly in half.
- - With the L.A. Times stonewalling all of the letters of protest they'd received, and ignoring all of the evidence they'd been shown after the article was published, indicating they got the story wrong, the loss of the defamation case was devastating to Mr. Thomas. His biographer and several friends decided to put together all the evidence that we could not present in court, and post it on a web site. http://www.michelthomas.org was posted in July 2002. There you will find downloadable copies of scores of historical documents, along with a detailed rebuttal of Mr. Rivenburg's profile. -
- - Silver Star Awarded -
- The final coda to this story came in May 2004. In 2003, I had petitioned Senator John McCain and Mr. Thomas's member of Congress in New York, Carolyn Maloney, to submit to the U.S. Army the letters and documentation I had gathered concerning the Silver Star nomination. They did so, and the Army reviewed the documentation, conducted their own research, and awarded Mr. Thomas the Silver Star, sixty years after he'd been nominated for it.
- - Former Senator Bob Dole, a decorated and wounded WWII vet who had spearheaded the building of the new WWII Memorial on the Mall in Washington, DC, learned of the award and readily agreed to present the medal to Mr. Thomas. He invited his colleague Senator John Warner, also a wounded WWII vet, and on May 25th, the two pinned the medal on Mr. Thomas in a moving ceremony in the shadow of the Atlantic Wall of the Memorial. This ceremony took place just days before the official dedication of the Memorial, as over a million aging WWII vets gathered in Washington. In addition to Mr. Thomas's family and friends, two of his former WWII comrades made the trip to be at the ceremony: Dr. Kraus and Bedford Groves, the latter in a wheelchair because of his war wounds. The Ambassador of France also attended, and saluted Mr. Thomas for his heroism in the French Resistance. Press coverage of the event included these articles in the Army News Service and on CNN's Wolf Blitzer program: http://www.defendamerica.mil/profiles/may2004/pr052804b.html
- - The Los Angeles Times, which three years before had deemed Mr. Thomas sufficiently newsworthy to devote the front page of its Southern California Living section to a 3800-word profile of him, declined to cover this new development in his life, though they were informed in advance of it, and it directly touched upon areas of 'controversy' generated by their own reporter. -
- Letters of congratulation streamed in. Former Senator Max Cleland wrote to Mr. Thomas, "you are a genuine hero." -
- Two days later, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum paid a special tribute to Mr. Thomas, honoring him before a large crowd as a Dachau liberator, at the Museum's "Salute to Liberators" event. -
- - Posthumous Conduct -
- After all of this, rather than give any nod of credit to Mr. Thomas, Rivenburg, an ostensibly disinterested reporter, pounced when Thomas died in January 2005, publishing, "The Myth of Michel Thomas" on his personal web site at http://www.offkilter.org/thomas.html. He has repeated a good deal of that in the discussion above. The article includes links to other blogs, such as one by a Les Jones, http://www.lesjones.com/posts/001778.shtml, with the subhead "that lying old fraud Michel Thomas has died." -
- Mr. Rivenburg has engaged in an 'edit war' here on Wikipedia, with those, including myself, who have tried to correct the misleading impressions he gives in his allegedly objective account of Mr. Thomas's life. He continues to gin up fresh issues to give credence to the phony 'controversies' he has so tenaciously tried to generate.
- - In his entry above, for example, he makes much of the issue of what time of day Mr. Thomas arrived at Dachau, and which troops he accompanied. This is entirely typical of Mr. Rivenburg's M.O. from the time he first interviewed Mr. Thomas: nitpick myopically at small, alleged 'discrepancies,' refuse to accept anything Mr. Thomas said as true, overlook the preponderance of corroborating evidence, and then imply Mr. Thomas is a liar because he did not meet Mr. Rivenburg's insistently skeptical standard of proof.
- - Mr. Rivenburg's article strongly implied Mr. Thomas was a phony Dachau liberator. He has since been presented with so much evidence that he got that wrong that he now has moved the goalpost and insists the issue is that Mr. Thomas could not prove -- to Mr. Rivenburg's satisfaction -- what time of day, and with what troops, he entered the camp. -
- Mr. Thomas insisted to his dying breath that he was with the first troops to arrive at the camp, and I have no doubt that he did. But our purpose as researchers was to find corroborating evidence that he was a Dachau liberator, not to nail down what time of day he arrived -- as if that were of any importance.
- - Now, with Mr. Thomas dead and gone, Mr. Rivenburg writes that Mr. Thomas "tried to backtrack by claiming he never said he was with the first battalion, only that he arrived at Dachau sometime later that day." But this is not true. Mr. Thomas's statements were always consistent: as a CIC Agent, he had freedom of movement, and need not have been attached to any infantry regiment to enter the camp.
- - The historical record shows that it was troops of the 157th that entered the camp first. When Mr. Thomas learned at the time his biography was being written that this was the first regiment to enter the camp, he had no reason to think this was untrue, but the identity of the regiment was not important to him, and so this statement of fact made its way into his biography. Mr. Thomas's biographer Christopher Robbins informed Mr. Rivenburg in emails prior to publication of his profile that he had erred in assuming Mr. Thomas was attached to the 157th. -
- But Mr. Thomas never said he was a member of the 157th regiment, and he took pains to make it clear he was not, and had no need to be, 'attached' to this or any other infantry battalion or regiment, in order to enter the camp as a CIC Agent. -
- In addition to the photos and other documentation Mr. Thomas showed to Mr. Rivenburg, we found additional evidence at the National Archives establishing that Mr. Thomas arrested Emil Mahl, the 'hangman of Dachau' two days after the camp was liberated. Mr. Thomas showed Mr. Rivenburg a letter Mahl had written to him from Landsberg prison in 1949 -- after his execution sentence was reduced to a ten-year term -- complaining about details of his May 1945 arrest by Mr. Thomas. If Mr. Rivenburg assumed the letter was a fake, how does he argue away the correspondence log we found deep in the bowels of the National Archives, proving that Mahl sent a letter to Thomas on the very date shown on Mahl's letter? And what of the additional documentation we found in which Mahl attested, with witnesses, that the date of his arrest by Mr. Thomas was May 1st, 1945?
- - As Hugh Foster told me, even if you assume all of the documents and photos in Thomas's possession were fakes, or genuine items he obtained from others, this evidence of Mr. Thomas's arrest of Mahl is, alone, nearly conclusive evidence Mr. Thomas was a Dachau liberator, for how would Thomas have known who Mahl was, much less where to find him in the vicinity of Dachau two days after liberation, had Mr. Thomas not been there himself?
- - I could go on, but I doubt if even the most diligent and interested reader has the patience for details at this level. For the full story, go to http://www.michelthomas.org, and you will see the overwhelming evidence put forth there attesting to the truth of Mr. Thomas's 'claims' regarding his wartime service. He was a CIC Agent, he was a Dachau liberator, and he did rescue from destruction the Nazi Party's worldwide membership card file in the first week of May 1945. -
- Mr. Rivenburg has written a large body of articles for the L.A. Times in the many years he has been a staff reporter there. Some of them show a talent for humor-writing. On this story, about a serious subject, he did real harm to someone who spent the last years of his life, and much of his savings, fighting to correct the damage to his reputation. -
- That's not funny at all. - - I think the above facts speak for themselves and hope that some day Mr. Rivenburg will find the wisdom to abandon his campaign to discredit a man whose entire family was murdered by the Nazis, who fought against them with great courage and effectiveness, and who was recognized for his wartime heroism in the final year of a long and extraordinary life. Surely there are more worthy subjects for a crusading journalist intent on debunking the real frauds among us.
75.209.36.53NV ResearcherNV Researcher 22:11, 13 December 2006 (UTC) ~~~~
[edit] ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW
I have read Mr. Rivenburg's article about Michel Thomas--several times. To anyone with a basic understanding of the First Amendment and defamation law, there was nothing defamatory about the article and, in my view, Mr. Thomas was foolish to have brought the lawsuit. Not only did a federal district court rule against him, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that judgment, 3-0. There really was no room for any reasonable disagreement--from a legal standpoint.
Mr. Rivenburg raised questions about some of Mr. Thomas's claims. So what? That's what reporters do. I understand that Mr. Thomas and his supporters felt as though Mr. Rivenburg ignored certain sources that would have supported Mr. Thomas, while using others that did not. Again, that happens. Mr. Thomas's supporters, in seeking to defend him, have said repeatedly that the L.A. Times called Mr. Thomas a fraud. The article does not say that, not even close. One supporter said to me: "Every word in the article is a lie." I suppose that includes the glowing testimonials about Mr. Thomas's language school.
Some time ago, I put some very straightforward questions about Mr. Thomas to one of his supporters: (1) Did prosecutor Pierre Truche ever make the statement attributed to him calling into question Mr. Thomas's credibility at the Klaus Barbie trial? (2) Did Mr. Thomas ever say or suggest that he was inducted into the U.S. Army? (3) Did Mr. Thomas ever tell reporters he was born in France? (4) Did Mr. Thomas ever say that he accompanied the first battalion of U.S. troops as it entered Dachau? (5) Did Mr. Thomas ever claim that the Nazi ID cards he said he had rescued specifically mentioned the Nazi party? (6) Did Mr. Thomas ever suggest in any context that other Holocaust victims could have escaped, as he did, had they not given up hope and surrendered to their fate?
These questions were not answered. And unless they can be answered with a categorical and definite "no," this leaves room for questioning. My guess is that these are not simple "yes" or "no" questions and, if I am correct, then Mr. Rivenburg had every right to raise questions about Mr. Thomas's credibility and claims. Mr. Thomas's life is not a series of simple and irrefutable "facts." No one's life is. There is always room for disagreement about events, their meaning and how they should be interpreted. That is not defamation.
One last thought. I am a bit amazed that this debate rages on. And I wonder about the fragile legacy of this man if one article by one reporter has assumed such importance. If Michel Thomas was a hero--and his supporters say he was--then Mr. Rivenburg cannot undo that.
[edit] The Dachau Deception
Did L.A. Times reporter Roy Rivenburg really mislead his Dachau sources about Michel Thomas? Supporters of Thomas have produced letters from Felix Sparks and Hugh Foster saying I misrepresented what Thomas said about the camp's liberation. It sounds pretty incriminating, but appearances can be deceiving:
When I interviewed Sparks and Foster in 2001, I read them the Dachau portion of Thomas' biography, in which Thomas claimed he accompanied Sparks' unit (the 3rd battalion of the 157th Regiment) as it entered the concentration camp. Both men said there was no way Thomas was with Sparks' battalion. Nevertheless, after our article came out, Thomas repeated the tale in a sworn deposition: "On April 29, 1945, the 3rd battalion of the 157th Regiment liberated the Dachau concentration camp. I accompanied these troops." Months later, after Thomas' legal team visited Sparks, Thomas changed his story. According to Thomas' own website, "Michel's investigator interviewed Sparks at his home in May 2002. He explained that Michel had never claimed to have 'gone in with the 157th.' "
After hearing that, Sparks and Foster said they'd been misled. Yes, they were -- by Thomas.
Finally, for the record, here's what The Times actually wrote about Thomas and Dachau:
- On the day Dachau fell, Thomas says, he was a U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps officer who temporarily joined two columns of tanks and infantry rolling through the German town to the camp.
- He says he didn't have orders assigning him to the 157th Regiment: "I just went there. I could choose wherever I wanted to go."
- Did anyone from the 157th know he was along for the ride?
- "They all knew I was there."
- However, the commander of the battalion, Lt. Col. Felix Sparks, now a retired brigadier general and former justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, says he would certainly recall if Thomas had accompanied the 200-member force: "He's got the right battalion, that's correct, but there were no CIC [Counter Intelligence Corps] with us." Ian Sayer, co-author of "America's Secret Army," a history of the CIC, says his records don't specify when the first CIC agents arrived at Dachau, but they do show their unit. It isn't Thomas'.
- Thomas' version of how the camp was liberated differs from eyewitness accounts and National Archives records, says retired Lt. Col. Hugh F. Foster III, who has been researching the liberation for five years. Regarding Thomas' mention of tanks, Foster says there were no tanks because the bridges between the town of Dachau and the military camp across the river had been blown up. Thomas doesn't recall a river.
- Thomas says he entered the camp through the front gate, after the Germans waved white flags and opened fire on his group. But Foster and Sparks say the battalion deliberately avoided the front gate and circled around to another side of the sprawling camp. The white flag incident did happen--but not to the 157th. As Sparks and his men inched through the camp, a handful of journalists and troops from the 42nd Division approached the main entrance.
- Did Thomas simply confuse the two units and actually enter with the 42nd? No, he insists: "The 42nd was late." But Robbins, responding to written queries submitted later, says: "It is quite possible he arrived later than the 157th and that the troops he joined were indeed from the 42nd." In the course of writing the book, Robbins says, "research showed that it was the 157th that was involved, so it was I who assumed these were the troops he joined."
- When Thomas is asked about other conflicts between his story and the one relayed by Foster, he concedes: "I was not with the front combat troops." He says he was at the camp that day but cannot say when.
Just in case you're wondering, Thomas didn't enter Dachau with the 42nd either. The arrival of that extremely small group is extensively chronicled in photographs and other records. No sign of Michel Thomas.
-- Roy Rivenburg
[edit] Worldwide Conspiracy to Discredit Thomas??
Notice how Thomas supporters never actually address any of the facts and issues outlined above in "The Myth of Michel Thomas," such as:
1. National Archives records proving Thomas was a civilian assistant to the Counter Intelligence Corps instead of a true agent.
2. The believability of his concentration camp escape stories, especially his voluntary return to a slave-labor camp and his Dr. Dolittle animal telepathy skills.
3. Thomas' ever-changing birthplace: France vs. Poland.
4. Thomas' sworn deposition that he accompanied the 157th Regiment into Dachau, a boast his supporters cannot explain away. (See "The Dachau Deception" above).
Thomas' supporters also ignore the questions posed by the writer of "Another Point of View." Instead, his apologists try to shift the issue to me (L.A. Times writer Roy Rivenburg), presumably to divert attention from the fact that his tales have been challenged for decades -- by Nazi hunters, an Oscar-winning documentary, other journalists and Counter Intelligence Corps veterans as far back as the 1950s. Either there's a giant conspiracy to discredit Thomas or maybe -- although he presumably did some commendable work during World War II -- he exaggerated and fibbed about his record. As the old saying goes, where there's smoke, there's usually fire.
-- Roy Rivenburg
[edit] A smoking gun Thomas is afraid to let you see
Long before the L.A. Times article was published, Mr. Thomas threatened to sue the newspaper, so we made sure every fact was triple-checked, and we gave Thomas every chance to back up his claims. He couldn't. We sent a series of e-mails to his biographer and publicist outlining our findings and asking for documentation or other support for Thomas' stories. Those e-mails and his biographer's replies to our questions have never been printed by Thomas supporters. Why? Because they would show that Thomas misrepresented how the Times article was reported -- and they would make clear that Thomas changed the details of his wartime claims after our story came out, especially about Dachau, the Nazi Party ID card discovery and Thomas' military status. If the e-mails backed up Thomas' version of events or proved the L.A. Times ignored evidence, you can bet they'd be posted in full on his website and would have been submitted to the court with his libel lawsuit. Instead, they prove just the opposite, which is why you'll never see them at Thomas' website. (You also can no longer find my answers to a series of questions his website asked about the Times article, even though his supporters promised to post my replies uncensored. My comments, which were put up after Thomas could no longer file another frivolous lawsuit, have mysteriously vanished from his site.)
Another important point: The e-mails sent between me and Thomas' biographer, Christopher Robbins, were cc'ed to my editors and, since a lawsuit had been threatened, the newspaper's attorney. Likewise, Robbins was cc'ing the e-mails to their lawyers. Thus, if you believe Thomas' claim that I was ignoring evidence and violating journalistic standards in the pursuit of some alleged vendetta against him, my editors and the paper's lawyer clearly knew about it and didn't care. How likely is it the Times would risk its reputation (not to mention a lawsuit that would cost well over $100,000 to defeat) to run a story that wasn't thoroughly documented and ignored reasonable evidence presented by Thomas' side? Answer: not likely at all. Obviously, if what Thomas says about me is true, these e-mails would prove it. Yet, they're curiously absent from the voluminous "evidence" he submitted to the courts and posted on his website. When I've asked why, Thomas' investigator says they're irrelevant. How could they be? They spell out our research methods and findings about Dachau, the Barbie trial, Thomas' military status and the Nazi ID cards -- and they contain the written reactions of Thomas' side. To date, his website has printed nothing more than a couple of out-of-context snippets from Robbins' letters. Surely my e-mail replies to even those snippets would be telling, right? What's in those e-mails that Thomas' side was afraid to let the courts and public see? Answer: proof that he changed his claims after the article came out.
-- Roy Rivenburg
[edit] Response from Friends of Michel Thomas
Mr. Rivenburg's responses to the bulletin board at http://www.michelthomas.org remained posted there, unedited, for many months. Recently, the bulletin board was hacked. If Mr. Rivenburg would like to contribute to the organization, to pay the cost of restoring the bulletin board, we would be happy to re-post his responses.
- - As to the business about our hiding Mr. Rivenburg's email correspondence with Christopher Robbins, it is simply untrue. Relevant sections of that correspondence are quoted in Mr. Robbins' Declaration, which is posted on the web site and can be downloaded by anyone.
- As to other issues Mr. Rivenburg raises, we have not seen any of the evidence he alleges, e.g. a transcript from the 1987 Klaus Barbie trial of Pierre Truche's alleged statements -- or any contemporary commentary from M. Truche about Mr. Thomas; nor have we seen any of the articles in which Mr. Thomas allegedly stated he was "born in France," nor any document signed by Mr. Thomas as a civilian assistant in the CIC, nor the transcript of any statement by any Justice Department Nazi-hunter. -
- If Mr. Rivenburg would like to provide these materials to us, we would be happy to respond. Privately. We believe that the public's interest in this sort of minutiae -- including readers of this Wikipedia commentary -- is very limited.
- - For the average reader, this story is fairly simple: an 87 year-old victim of Nazi and Vichy French persecution, with a distinguished WWII military record fighting with the French Resistance and U.S. military, was the subject of a well-researched biography written by a British author. The author had done extensive reading and research on WWII and had published two previous books about war-related subjects. A Los Angeles Times reporter, known primarily for his discontinued humor column "Off-Kilter" and with no published expertise in WWII history or military matters, undertook to discredit the man in a long profile questioning several areas of his WWII record, quoting persons who had little or no knowledge of the man being profiled. The lone WWII comrade who was interviewed was never mentioned in the article and immediately wrote a letter-to-the-editor objecting to the article and asking why his comments were ignored. Not a single person who had known the man during WWII was quoted in the article. The article sparked outrage and prompted a vigorous defense from his surviving WWII comrades, who -- to a man -- rallied around him and unequivocally stated that he had served with distinction and had not lied or exaggerated anything about his WWII record. The reporter has yet to locate anyone who actually knew the man during WWII who will say anything negative about him. The U.S. Army reviewed evidence of the man's WWII heroism submitted by Senator John McCain and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, conducted their own research, and awarded the man the Silver Star, sixty years after he was nominated for it -- a rare event indeed. Two of the U.S. Senate's WWII veterans then volunteered to present the medal at the WWII Memorial on the eve of its dedication, and the Ambassador of France also paid his respects at the same ceremony. -
- The following year, after the man died, the reporter resumed his efforts to discredit him. His efforts continue to this day, more than a year and a half after the man's death. -
- All the available evidence indicates the audience for these efforts is quite limited. -
- For reasons we still can only speculate on, Mr. Rivenburg took his best shot at destroying Mr. Thomas's reputation in his published profile of April 2001. An extensive investigation of the assertions and implications of the article was made in the following years, primarily in preparation for the defamation case against Mr. Rivenburg and the Los Angeles Times. The results of that investigation are posted at http://www.michelthomas.org, and are briefly summarized above. -
- Any reader who is interested in further information can contact us at facts@michelthomas.org.
- - If Mr. Rivenburg would like to debate these issues further, the lead researcher for Mr. Thomas's legal team has politely offered many times to meet with him at a place and time convenient to Mr. Rivenburg, including his office at the L.A. Times, but has always been rebuffed. -
- The offer stands. NV Researcher 22:11, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Smoking gun No. 2 on Thomas
The previous post is amusing. The Thomas Defense Club says it won't publicly debate the documents cited in "The Myth of Michel Thomas" because such issues are "minutiae"? Huh? Remember, Thomas sued the Los Angeles Times for "implying" he was a civilian employee of the U.S. Army, calling such a suggestion "an insult." So, how can a National Archives military record from 1946 with Thomas' own signature above the words "civilian assistant" be minutiae? It's more like a smoking gun, especially in conjunction with Thomas' lack of discharge papers or military ID number, as well as 1946 documents signed by his superiors that also refer to him as a "civilian assistant." Incidentally, I've sent copies of the National Archives documents to Thomas supporters, so they HAVE seen it.
The reason Thomas' defenders won't publicly debate such documents is because they can't. Other examples: Their website posts newspaper articles about Thomas dating back to 1949 -- which say he was French-born, as do the articles we uncovered. Thomas kept a briefcase full of such clippings, so if his acolytes could produce a pre-1987 article saying he was born in Poland, they would. Likewise, if there were a court transcript in which Gestapo chieftain Klaus Barbie's prosecutor didn't slam Thomas' credibility, they'd produce that too. For those who doubt whether the prosecutor rebuffed Thomas' honesty at trial, rent the Oscar-winning documentary "Hotel Terminus," in which the prosecutor makes even more damning comments about Thomas. His public statements speak for themselves and have never been retracted. So, the Thomas crew's unwillingness to respond publicly has nothing to do with "minutiae." Their website is full of minutiae. It has to do with being unable to argue away things like Thomas' sworn deposition about Dachau.
That's why they try to make me the central issue. They've even falsely accused me (on blogs and in a phone call to Times attorneys) of anti-Semitism or being a Holocaust denier (never mind the fact that my editor was Jewish). This helps them avoid the uncomfortable task of trying to explain why so many other credible sources have debunked Thomas since the 1950s. And, for the record, it's untrue that we found nobody who knew Thomas and doubted his tales. Unfortunately, those sources would only comment off the record, possibly because they knew about his history of suing anyone who contradicted his version of reality.
If Wikipedia readers have questions about any of this, contact me at roy.rivenburg@latimes.com.
[edit] Final Round?
Again, we reiterate that we don't think Wikipedia is a proper forum for debating details at this level. We reiterate our invitation to Mr. Rivenburg to contact us privately.
As briefly as possible then:
1) We've never seen the National Archives document. Please send it to the email address above. We'd like to see it. Nevertheless, even if it exists, it's hardly a 'smoking gun.' As has been explained ad nauseam, including in the biography, Mr. Thomas had a very unusual status as a CIC Agent. As attested by the three surviving CIC Agents with whom he served, he was given the full powers and duties of an Agent, and wore the uniform of an Agent, as pictured numerous times in his biography, for more than two years, in spite of the fact that he was not yet a U.S. citizen. He was mentioned as an Agent in the official history of the CIC, as noted by Conrad McCormick and Ian Sayer.
2) As to M. Truche's comments, again, this has been covered extensively. Mr. Rivenburg's article depended upon newspaper characterizations of M. Truche's statements. Upon further scrutiny, those characterizations were either inaccurate translations or simply misleading reports. The burden is upon Mr. Rivenburg to dig up the original French transcript or to contact M. Truche, if he is still alive. He failed to do so in his original article, perhaps because what he would have found would not have served his purpose.
M. Truche met with Mr. Thomas at his office in Paris after the trial, and explained that he did not offer Mr. Thomas's testimony to the jury, not because he doubted its veracity, but because Mr. Thomas's account was more complicated than that of the other witnesses. As described on page 313 of "Test of Courage" Truche told Mr. Thomas that as he listened to the evidence he was reminded of the line by the 17th century poet Nicolas Boileau: "Le vrai peut quelquefois n'etre pas vraisemblable", "The truth can sometimes not be likely."
3) Finally, Mr. Rivenburg has just presented fresh allegations that "we" -- by which he presumably refers to a number of friends of Mr. Thomas who publicly supported his efforts to repudiate the insinuations in Mr. Rivenburg's article -- have accused him of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. This is untrue.
Mr. Thomas's attorneys were never given the opportunity to depose Mr. Rivenburg and so never learned anything from him about his beliefs or attitudes toward Jews or the Holocaust.
His article about Mr. Thomas is his only published item touching on these subjects that we could find.
[edit] Still Dodging the Issues
Thomas & Co. spent four years distorting what the L.A. Times article said and lying about how it was reported, knowing full well that if I replied publicly, Thomas could file another frivolous libel lawsuit. Now that the legal threat is gone and I've been able to respond to their claims and they're hearing (as we are) from people who've changed their mind about Thomas' truthfulness, they suddenly want the debate to be done "privately." Hmm. Could it be they're afraid of how their case will stack up? Why else would they refuse to post the full e-mail exchange between me and Thomas' biographer, dodge discussions of Thomas' changing birthplace, renege on their promise to display my answers to their questions on Thomas' website, ignore the simple questions posed by "Another Point of View," not address Thomas' Dachau deposition, and fail to explain why -- short of a worldwide conspiracy against Thomas by journalists and Nazi hunters -- so many impeccable sources questioned Thomas' tales long before the L.A. Times did?
A footnote on Thomas' status with the Army: The issue isn't whether he was "treated like" a CIC agent. If that were his only claim, we wouldn't be having this argument. The controversy is over his insistence that he was inducted into the U.S. military. His biography claims he was an officer in the U.S. Army. Since a civilian can't be an officer, the central question is whether Thomas was inducted. Supporters point to photos of Thomas in a CIC uniform. However, lots of foreign-born civilian assistants wore CIC outfits. His defenders also cite a CIC history document that refers to Thomas as an "agent." But they ignore this same CIC document when it names someone other than Thomas as the person who discovered the big cache of Nazi Party ID cards.
Ultimately, the only definitive source on whether someone was in the Army is the Army itself. And it has no record of Thomas' service. Thomas also had no discharge papers or military service ID number. The final nail in the coffin is the 1946 military document with Thomas' own John Hancock over the words "civilian assistant." In response, Thomas supporters have said we myopically focused on a minor detail. If it's so minor, then why did Thomas sue the L.A. Times over it? It bears repeating that the issue wasn't whether Thomas performed admirable work for the Army. We never said or implied otherwise. The issue is whether he fibbed about being an inducted, non-civilian Army officer. If Thomas' supporters were honest enough to print the aforementioned e-mail exchange between me and Thomas' biographer (in which they adamantly insisted he wasn't a civilian), that's one of many issues they'd have to eat crow on.
-- Roy Rivenburg
[edit] Bawk?
We weren't able to find this word in the dictionary, but Mr. Rivenburg's last post is illustrative of his conduct since he first contacted Mr. Thomas's biographer in 2001. No matter how much evidence he is shown, he ignores it, or raises some new issue for which no amount of explanation will ever satisfy him. Substantive replies, based on careful research, which address the specifics of his allegations, are summarily dismissed, and his tone becomes one of mocking ridicule.
We have asked that he move the debate about the fine points he raises to another forum, not because we won't address the issues, but because the hair-splitting has reached the point where the general reader will be lost, or understandably uninterested. If it can be demonstrated that there is a substantial number of Wikipedia readers who are interested in these fine points, we will be happy to address them in greater detail than we already have.
Because of his position at the Los Angeles Times, and the leeway given to him by his editors, in 2001 Mr. Rivenburg set himself up as judge, jury and executioner of Mr. Thomas's reputation, provoking the response that's been described above. No other media outlet followed up on his reporting, other than to cast doubt upon his skeptical portrayal of Mr. Thomas, see, e.g., the 2004 coverage of Mr. Thomas by the Army News Service, CNN's Wolf Blitzer, and even Fox's Bill O'Reilley. The transcript of the segment filmed in 2004 for Tom Brokaw's NBC Nightly News also makes for interesting reading -- none of it flattering to Mr. Rivenburg.
Mr. Thomas is long deceased. We are happy to let the record speak for itself, and don't feel any further obligation to 'explain' Mr. Thomas's life to the satisfaction of Mr. Rivenburg. If he would like to pursue the additional issues he has raised, we suggest he find a neutral forum for such a debate, where we would be happy to discuss whether his reporting on Mr. Thomas meets generally accepted standards journalistic standards of fairness, balance, and accuracy.
Unfortunately, when a similar proposition was last made to him, and he and the lawyers for the L.A. Times were invited to defend his reporting at a mock trial of the defamation case hosted by the schools of law and journalism at the University of California at Berkeley in April 2003, Mr. Rivenburg claimed he never received an invitation. But the invitation was transmitted to him, weeks in advance, by five letters sent via Federal Express, one to Mr. Rivenburg directly, and the others to his editors and the Times' management -- every one of these was confirmed as received. There were also numerous faxes and emails sent, and similar communications were sent to the attorneys for the L.A. Times.
Somehow all of these were ignored, and when contacted by reporters to ask why he was not participating in the mock trial, Mr. Rivenburg told them he was never invited.
We could accuse Mr. Rivenburg of lying -- as he has here accused us of lying in some unspecified way -- but if we bend over backward to give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps Mr. Rivenburg did not lie to those reporters. Perhaps he just ignored all those communications, in what could be described as a pattern of purposeful avoidance.
This is a resonant phrase with respect to Mr. Rivenburg. At the mock trial, one of the Boalt law professors who acted as a judge of the evidence presented said that Mr. Thomas "was unfairly treated by the Times " and indicated he felt there had been a pattern of "purposeful avoidance of the truth" in the reporter's article.
In our opinion, that pattern continues to this day, but I don't believe we should clutter Wikipedia with any more of it -- or any further responses to it.
[edit] More Dodging
Notice once again how Thomas' people resort to mudslinging and red herrings instead of actually tackling the straightforward issues raised by me and the unknown writer of "Another Point of View"?
As to the bit about other media casting doubt on Times coverage of Thomas, it should be noted that those outlets never spoke with us and in most cases never even tried. The media that did bother to get our side either dropped the story because our evidence was so overwhelming or, like Newsday, did additional reporting that refuted Thomas' claims. Yes, Newsday is owned by the same Tribune media empire as the L.A. Times, but the suggestion of collusion in the worldwide conspiracy to discredit Thomas is ludicrous and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how the newspapers operate. It's another red herring to avoid addressing the evidence outlined earlier. And, again, the L.A. Times was hardly the first organization to question Thomas' credibility. His defenders keep trying to paint me as some rogue reporter with an unexplained vendetta, but Thomas' tales had already been challenged in American and French media -- as well as by a top Nazi hunter and an acclaimed documentary film, neither of which was controlled by the Tribune media empire.
-- Roy Rivenburg
[edit] Battling the Hydra
Responding to Mr. Rivenburg is much like battling the Hydra. Each time one conclusively swats down an issue, he ignores the response and raises three more in its place.
So Newsday is the only other media outlet that got the story of Michel Thomas right after the publication of Mr. Rivenburg's article? Could that have anything to do with the fact that Newsday, like the L.A. Times, is owned by the Tribune Group, which was a fellow defendant in the defamation case? Did Mr. Rivenburg or anyone else at the Times have any communications with the Newsday reporter as he prepared his article about Mr. Thomas being awarded the Silver Star in New York in July 2004 by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, with his friends and family standing by, just to make sure there was a little rain on that parade? If so, it gives a whole new meaning to the term 'activist journalism.'
And what did that article 'refute'? As Mr. Rivenburg subsequently characterized the article, the Newsday reporter wrote that Thomas's investigator "admitted" Thomas was never inducted into the Army. But it's a typically misleading distortion to call that an 'admission' because neither Mr. Thomas, his investigator, his biographer, or anyone else who knew him ever claimed he was inducted. His biography makes it clear -- how many times must this be repeated? -- that he served as a CIC Agent in spite of not yet having become a citizen. As the book makes abundantly clear, Mr. Thomas's CIC superiors and colleagues at the time knew how valuable he could be, so they took advantage of his talents, such as the many languages he spoke and his extensive French Resistance contacts. And as the investigation to prepare the lawsuit made clear, they vigorously defended their decision not to go 'by-the-book' in making Mr. Thomas an Agent. Just ask Ted Kraus, Walter Wimer, Bedford Groves, or Henry Teichmann. They defend Mr. Thomas to this day.
But then, Mr. Rivenburg never wanted to hear what Mr. Thomas's WWII comrades had to say, lest the house of cards that he constructed to discredit Mr. Thomas collapse beneath the weight of their first-person testimonies.
More of that pattern of purposeful avoidance of the truth mentioned above?
Another mock trial? As Mr. Rivenburg well knows, Mr. Thomas is deceased. It is only Mr. Rivenburg who cares enough about these issues to want a public debate on them. As to his refusal to defend his reporting when Mr. Thomas was alive, he was certainly advised by his attorneys that truth is the ultimate defense against accusations of defamation. He was also advised, or should have been, that the issues raised in his article were res judicata and could not be raised in another lawsuit. So he had nothing to fear in defending his article when Mr. Thomas was alive, and his newspaper made it clear they would defend him to the hilt.
And finally, as to the 'worldwide conspiracy' he posits in his customary mocking tone, he has put this shoe on the wrong foot: could all those other media outlets have abandoned their usual practice of getting a balanced story just to put Roy Rivenburg and the L.A. Times in a bad light?
[edit] Thomas' Army status
Predictably, the Thomas brigade offers another volley of ad hominem attacks and purposely avoids addressing any of the issues raised in posts far far earlier in this string. In the most recent blurb, they continue to contend Thomas and his biographer never claimed he was inducted into the Army, even though his book calls him a U.S. Army officer, even though Thomas regaled the L.A. Times at length about being drafted, and even though he sued the newspaper specifically for suggesting he was a civilian employee. Just answer these simple questions and maybe we can move on to another easy topic, like why Thomas kept changing his birthplace when interviewed by journalists:
1. How can someone be an Army officer if they were never inducted?
2. If Thomas was correct in insisting he wasn't a civilian employee, then what was he? What category exists besides civilian employee or inducted member of the U.S. Army? Double-secret CIC Agent, perhaps?
To repeat, the issue isn't whether Thomas had valuable skills and thus was "treated like" a real CIC agent by his unit. The issue is whether he fibbed in claiming not to be a civilian employee.
As to the res judicata, that applied only to the Times article. Any new statements could have been actionable. Even verbally saying "I stand behind the article" could have constituted a second publication.
-- Roy Rivenburg
[edit] Time for Little Chat?
I've reviewed the exchange here this evening between Mr. Rivenburg and the supporters of Mr. Thomas and have the following observations:
1) Why can't Mr. Rivenburg give any credit to Thomas who, regardless of the details of this debate, clearly led an amazing life and did a lot of incredible things?
2) Why won't Rivenburg meet with Thomas's researcher and have a conversation? It's clear from this exchange that very few people care about the details of Thomas's life more than these two. If the researcher is willing to meet, why isn't Rivenburg?
3) Why doesn't Mr. Rivenburg let Mr. Thomas rest in peace?
[edit] Reply to 'Little Chat'
1) The Times article gave lots of credit to Thomas. There's no question he led an interesting and accomplished life. After both interviews, he invited me to lunch and I enjoyed talking with him. As I've said earlier in this conversation, he undoubtedly performed some valuable work for the U.S. Army. Beyond that, he created an intriguing and acclaimed language instruction method. Our article was full of praise for that, and highlighted some of his other feats too. But this otherwise charming man also made some indisputably preposterous claims and that's what ends up being debated.
2) I've had numerous e-mail discussions with Thomas' researcher about the topics in this exchange, so I'm not sure what an in-person session would add. And, frankly, I'm wary of the guy. Although he occasionally sends calm and warm messages, he has privately said some pretty vitriolic things, has had weird run-ins with a Thomas critic back east and has publicly misrepresented my religious beliefs, my journalistic background and my conduct and motives in reporting the Times article. I've suggested that if he's sincere about a goodwill meeting, he should correct such misrepresentations and prominently display on Thomas' website the full text of all e-mails that Thomas' biographer and I exchanged before the L.A. Times article came out. That would be a show of good faith.
3) I actually felt kinda sorry for Thomas when I reported my story. One of his friends, Herb Morris, had me close to tears when we discussed what Morris referred to as Thomas' "embellishments" on the truth. It isn't exactly pleasant to expose someone who mostly seems like a good guy. I had similar feelings while dismantling the tale of an Arizona octogenarian who claimed to have invented the TV dinner. Good guy, funny guy. But a phony on the TV dinner thing. Why have I continued debunking both men even after their deaths? Simple: to set the record straight. Michel Thomas, by falsely claiming certain deeds in World War II, dishonored the memory of the people who actually did the things he claimed for himself. Those people don't have private investigators and slick PR teams trying to spin the facts. My dad, uncle and godfather fought in World War II. Some of my friends and colleagues served in Vietnam -- and they don't look kindly on people who fudge about heroism or about being full-fledged military when in fact they were civilian employees, however valuable or exemplary. I also have friends whose relatives were exterminated by the Nazis and I find it offensive that Thomas claimed he made multiple Hogan's Heroes-style escapes from concentration camps -- and then had the gall to suggest in print that other prisoners could have done the same if they hadn't surrendered to the "siren song" and given up hope. Read the half dozen escape tales in his bio and tell me you don't think they're preposterous. Thomas did some good and brave things, but that doesn't give him a pass for the bogus stuff. For the real heroes of those events, and for the people who had no choice about their fate in Nazi death camps, I want to set the record straight.
-- Roy Rivenburg
[edit] Questions for the reporter
I ran across this discussion today and, in contrast to "ElmDarkShark's" point of view above, I have to say that I find it is the reporter who should be answering the questions here. How does he account for the apparently planted letter to the editor of Mr. McCormick? The letters written by Mr. Foster and Sparks, indicating they were misled by the reporter? The flimsy excuses of the reporter regarding his not receiving the invitations to the mock trial? But, most important, why on earth does he kept hounding this man Thomas after his death, in the face of the universal support he received from the men he fought with decades ago?
Something's rotten in Orange County, if you ask me.
[edit] Answers from the reporter
Regarding the "planted letter to the editor," do you really think the L.A. Times would be stupid enough to write a fake letter and sign it with the name of a real person who could be traced, especially when Michel Thomas and his biographer had been threatening to sue? Of course not. Mr. McCormick sent the reporter an email after the story came out (we still have a copy). We asked for permission to publish it and he said yes, apparently thinking it would be part of a follow-up article, not a letter to the editor. Incidentally, we edited out the section of his note where he theorized that Thomas borrowed his stories from CIC colleagues.
As for Sparks and Foster, please read "The Dachau Deception" post higher up. Your other questions were also answered above.
-- Roy Rivenburg
[edit] NPOV flag etc
I've flagged the article as possibly lacking neutrality and as containing unsourced claims. The point of the article should be to present all significant views about Mr Thomas, not to determine the 'truth' of his life. As it stands, it reads like an investigative report rather than an encyclopedia entry. For example, a statement like "There are several problems with this version of events" takes a definite position in regard to particular allegations. It should be phrased something like "'X' alleges inconsistencies in 'Y's version of events" etc.
--GuyIncognito 12:07, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
- Truth is truth, dude. --62.255.236.92 02:57, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Defendant in defamation suit allowed to write a Wikipedia entry about the plaintiff?
If Wikipedia is serious about building its reputation for fair, objective, neutral articles on any given subject, surely one of the most basic rules should be to bar the defendant in a defamation suit from writing or editing an article about the plaintiff. Could there be any clearer example of a biased author? Would Britannica allow this? World Book? Not even the most feverishly partisan editors of a tabloid newspaper would allow such a practice, lest the paper be ridiculed for its thumbing its nose at even the pretense of objectivity. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.9.108.66 (talk) 03:42, 7 December 2006 (UTC).
[edit] Reply to 'Defendant in defamation suit...'
Using the logic of the unsigned comment above, the entire Thomas article should be deleted from Wikipedia, because the pro-Thomas contributions are largely written by the private investigator he hired for his unsuccessful lawsuit. My contributions have included both sides, because I'm a journalist trained to present all views, even those I don't necessarily agree with. In contrast, Thomas' supporters consistently eliminate any evidence that contradicts his claims. Like it or not, Thomas was controversial and some of his claims have been proved false by indisputable sources and documents, all of which I've cited so any reader can check their accuracy. A fair article about his life has to include that.
-- Roy Rivenburg, Dec. 6, 2006
[edit] A Journalist Trained to Present All Views?
See the Declaration of Thomas's CIC colleague Dr. Theodore Kraus, at http://www.michelthomas.org: after three pages describing Thomas's work as a CIC Agent with Kraus during WWII, Dr. Kraus wrote: "I relayed all of this information to Mr. Rivenburg prior to the publication of the article. I was surprised that none of this information appeared in the article, including the fact that Mr. Rivenburg had interviewed me, particularly since I believe that I am one of the only living witnesses who is able to corroborate Michel Thomas's CIC service. / I do not understand why Mr. Rivenburg or the Los Angeles Times decided to ignore the information I provided to them. The absence of this information implies that Mr. Rivenburg was intent on discrediting Mr. Thomas, despite clear evidence I provided to him about Thomas' military service. / I was so upset by Mr. Rivenburg's depiction of Mr. Thomas as someone who would misrepresent his military service that I wrote a letter to the Editor of the Los Angeles Times." [Copy of letter attached to Declaration]
After Mr. Rivenburg's article was published, Dr. Kraus's testimonials to Thomas's WWII service were subsequently buttressed by additional statements from WWII comrades Thomas had not seen in nearly sixty years, including Walter Wimer, who was in Thomas' CIC unit in Germany, and Bedford Groves, who knew Thomas in the 180th Regiment of the 45th Infantry Division, and knew Thomas as a CIC Agent. Groves wrote that Thomas "did the work of three Agents" when he was in the CIC; his letter concerning Thomas's service in the 180th was part of the evidence reviewed by the Army's Decorations Review Board which granted Thomas the Silver Star in 2004.
Yet Mr. Rivenburg's web site article, "The Myth of Michel Thomas," published after Thomas's death, makes no mention of any of these, or many other statements, of Thomas's wartime comrades.
Fair and balanced? You decide...
Signed ~~NV Researcher~~ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.9.108.66 (talk) 21:14, 7 December 2006 (UTC).
[edit] Reply to 'A Journalist Trained to...'
As I noted earlier in this thread, the issue isn't whether Thomas assisted the CIC or was "treated like" a full-fledged agent. The question is whether he lied about being inducted into the military. His biography and libel lawsuit claim he was an officer in the U.S. Army, a position that would require being inducted. The reason Theodore Kraus wasn't quoted in the L.A. Times article is simple: Kraus told me he didn't know Thomas' official status with the Army. More importantly, the only authoritative source on whether someone was in the Army is the Army itself. It has no record of Thomas' service. Thomas also had no discharge papers or military service ID number. Last but not least is the 1946 military document with Thomas' signature over the words "civilian assistant." Guess who else's signature appears next to Thomas' on the 1946 document? Yep, none other than Theodore Kraus, so he should know full well that Thomas was indeed a civilian employee. Again, The Times article never said or implied that Thomas didn't do admirable work for the Army. It merely challenged his false claim to have been an inducted Army officer, a boast he repeated in his unsuccessful libel lawsuit.
-- Roy Rivenburg ... Rivenburg 22:41, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Feldgrau.net
Mr. Rivenburg has not only repeatedly deleted the work of multiple Wikipedia editors to impose his own version of Mr. Thomas's life, (see history page), he also keeps re-inserting a link to a 'debate' about whether Thomas 'lied' when he was the subject of a 1949 Stars & Stripes article, on a web site called Feldgrau.net. While Feldgrau.net undoubtedly has many members who are not nostalgic about the good old days of the Third Reich, it is interesting to note the "About Us" page of Feldgrau's principal sponsor, "GermanWarMachine" magazine: It is this:
"Last communiqué of the Wehrmacht, 9 May 1945: "Since midnight the guns have fallen silent on all fronts. Thus the almost six-year-long, honourable fight is over. It brought us great victories but also heavy defeats. In the end the German Armed Forces succumbed honourably to overwhelming forces. True to his oath, the German soldier, giving his all for his people, performed feats which will never be forgotten. To the end the homeland supported us at the cost of terrible sacrifices. The unique accomplishments of front and homeland will find its ultimate worth in a later judgement of history. The feats and sacrifices of German soldiers on water, on land and in the air will also receive the respect of the enemy. Therefore every soldier can lay down his weapons proudly with his head held high and in this most difficult hour in our history go on to work with courage and confidence for the eternal life of our people. In the gravest hour the Wehrmacht remembers those comrades who have fallen. We owe it to the dead to show unconditional loyalty, obedience and discipline to our bleeding, wounded Fatherland."
~~NV Researcher~~
[edit] Reply to 'Feldgrau'
I don't know the website's background, but the evidence it offers of Thomas fabricating information to Stars & Stripes sounds compelling. And nobody has contradicted it. Readers can judge its veracity for themselves.
Rivenburg 20:09, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Telling
I have watched this edit war between Mr. Rivenburg and various others during the past few days. It is telling that Rivenburg would find the postings at Feldgrau.net to be persuasive. No doubt he would find an even more enthusiastic group of supporters at Stormfront.com.
Mr. Rivenburg's posture of neutrality is belied by his persistent reversion of this article to suit his own version of Mr. Thomas's life, going back more than a year. Clearly there is a long history here, but it seems beyond question that this reporter is the last person on earth who should be given a forum by Wikipedia to fly under the flag of being a neutral commentator on Mr. Thomas.
~~Livingstonian~~
[edit] Reply to 'Telling'
Everything I've written is sourced with citations anyone can verify. It's not my version of Thomas' life. It's all public record. It's not my opinion that Thomas lied when he claimed to be a non-civilian Army CIC agent. He signed a 1946 military document over the words "civilian assistant." And it's not my opinion that Klaus Barbie's prosecutor told the jury Thomas' testimony wasn't made "in good faith." It's documented in newspapers and in an Oscar-winning documentary in which the prosecutor tells filmmaker Marcel Ophuls that Thomas' story didn't hold together. It's also not my opinion that Thomas lied about accompanying Felix Sparks' men as they liberated Dachau. He said it in a sworn affidavit for his libel lawsuit, even though his biographer and Sparks himself said Thomas wasn't with that unit. Last but not least, it's not my opinion that Thomas lied when he claimed to have leaked word of of the Nazi Party ID cards to the press in May 1945, and that subsequent stories forced his superiors to move the cards to a safe place. The press coverage didn't happen until October. And military records prove the 7th Army unit Thomas worked for "abandoned" the cards. So, even if you believe Thomas was the first to find the cards, it's beyond dispute he lied about engineering press coverage and getting them moved to a safe place. The 3rd Army did that. Thomas and his unit left town without doing anything to secure the cards.
The bottom line is that Thomas' stories have been questioned for years, long before the L.A. Times article. So any fair, neutral account of his life must include that. My wiki edits retain arguments from Thomas' side even when I disagree with them or know they're false. In contrast, the pro-Thomas edits have removed links to my website, deleted links to the judge's decision rejecting Thomas' libel lawsuit and erased references to other credible sources who have questioned or contradicted Thomas' version of events as outlined above.
Rivenburg 02:53, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Reply to Reply to 'Telling'
The issue here is not Mr. Rivenburg's opinions, though his selective highlighting of certain facts while ignoring others does seem to be part of a long-standing pattern when it comes to this subject. The immediate issue is his repeated deletions of edits, or fully-compiled versions of an article, to which he objects, when numerous other Wikipedia contributors have judged his version to fall short of NPOV guidelines.
The longer-term issue, of interest to all Wikipedians, is whether a person who is has a clear public record of hostility to a given individual should be allowed to use Wikipedia as a public forum to propagate his efforts to discredit that person, particularly after that person has died.
Even if a panel of neutral judges were to decide that the collection of facts put forward by Mr. Rivenburg meet the standard of a Neutral Point of View article, the very fact that he is the contributor of those facts, chosen from a host of many others, and given his tangled history with the subject of the article, should be sufficient to disqualify him from posting on this subject.
Livingstonian 03:36, 16 December 2006 (UTC) [Livingstonian]
[edit] Reply to 'Telling's' reply
By your logic, the edits written by Thomas' private investigator or anyone else involved in his unsuccessful libel lawsuit should also be thrown out. And then we wouldn't have a Wikipedia entry on Thomas at all, because the whole thing is based on material compiled either by his legal team, his biographer (who filed an affidavit in the lawsuit) or by the Los Angeles Times, all inherently biased sources under your criteria.
As for edit deletions, it's the pro-Thomas side that keeps cutting Wiki material it doesn't like. I retain pro-Thomas arguments in my edits.
If your definition of "clear public record of hostility" means trying to present documented facts about Thomas' life, then yes, I'm guilty as charged. But if you think I'm ignoring other "facts," then by all means add them to the Wiki entry. Just don't delete mine while you're doing so. Also, if you're going to criticize the Times article, criticize the entire paper, not me. Every fact in that article was rigorously vetted by editors and lawyers before and after publication. And Times editor John Carroll publicly stated his full support for the piece in 2004, saying the paper wouldn't retract a single word because the story was true.
Rivenburg 07:52, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Checking In
It has been quite a while since I have looked at this article, but I was notified tonight that there has recently been a lot of activity here by several contributors. As the lead researcher for Mr. Thomas's legal team during the pendency of this case for nearly three years, I still see substantial problems with this article that I take issue with. If time allows I would like to edit this further at some point in the future. But as it stands today this article has come a long way, perhaps because so many people have contributed, including Mr. Thomas's chief critic, Roy Rivenburg. Though I'm quite certain he will never be capable of taking a neutral stance with respect to Michel Thomas, given the acrimonious history, the long string of edits indicates he has invested substantial effort in this article. His most recent edits suggest he has made some progress in restraining himself from extrapolating certain facts to the worst possible conclusions about his subject.
As this current draft makes clear, a rich factual record has emerged as a result of the extensive research that has been conducted about Mr. Thomas's life, by Mr. Thomas's biographer, myself, and by Mr. Rivenburg. In the spirit of an honest inquiry into the interesting historical issues raised here, I am renewing my invitation -- which I have made several times since the defamation case ended nearly three years ago -- to Mr. Rivenburg to contact me privately to discuss some of our differences of interpretation of these facts. While I have no illusion that we are likely to agree on many key issues, I see no reason why we should not be able to discuss them.
Facts@mt.org 10:24, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] An Analogy
Let's analyze Michel Thomas' military status from another angle. Is it possible Thomas could have been a CIC agent despite never being inducted by the Army? The situation is analogous to a freelance writer claiming to be a staff writer at a newspaper. Let's say this freelancer does the work of three staff writers, as one of Thomas' colleagues said regarding his CIC contributions. And let's say this freelancer is treated like a staffer by his bosses and even nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. But his editors can't officially hire him because he just arrived from England and doesn't have a green card. What happens if, years later, this freelancer tells people he was a "staff writer" at the newspaper? That is, essentially, what Thomas did. He can say he did the work of three colleagues, he can say he was nominated for a Pulitzer (or Silver Star) and he can say his bosses intended to hire him, but once he crosses the line to claim he actually was a staff writer, he has (choose your word) embellished, exaggerated or lied.
Can Thomas' supporters concede that point? Being an Army officer or CIC agent by definition requires being inducted. Yet Thomas sued the Los Angeles Times for suggesting he was a civilian employee. Can anyone out there honestly defend his public claim that he wasn't a civilian employee? The National Archives has a military document with Thomas' signature over the words "civilian assistant." This is a no-brainer. The problem for Thomas' supporters, of course, is that once they entertain the idea that Thomas misrepresented himself in one area (they won't even acknowledge that he spent four decades saying he was born in France instead of Poland), it opens the door to the possibility he did in others too.
Rivenburg 18:06, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
