Talk:Michel Thomas/Archive 1

message: 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)
thread_title:  POV Check 

message: 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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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?	 
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-	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.)	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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."	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	No one at the Times ever responded to any of these, or more than 380 additional letters the paper received about their article.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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."	 
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-	At the National Archives, we found documentation of the Battle of Autrey France, which was described in Captain Schroeder's letter.	 
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-	What the Sources Said	 
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-	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.'"	 
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-	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'.	 
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-	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."	 
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-	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."	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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."	 
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-	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.	 
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-	McCormick found an entry at p. 2862, of Vol. XX, concerning the small CIC unit in which Michel Thomas had been an Agent:	 
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-	"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."	 
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-	(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. )	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.”	 
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-	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.	 
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-	The Defamation Suit	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	Silver Star Awarded	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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	 
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-	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.	 
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-	Letters of congratulation streamed in. Former Senator Max Cleland wrote to Mr. Thomas, "you are a genuine hero."	 
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-	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.	 
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-	Posthumous Conduct	 
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-	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."	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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?	 
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-	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?	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	That's not funny at all.	 
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-	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)
thread_title:  Roy Rivenburg and Michel Thomas 

message: 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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 	 
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-	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.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	All the available evidence indicates the audience for these efforts is quite limited.	 
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-	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.	 
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-	Any reader who is interested in further information can contact us at facts@michelthomas.org.	 	 
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-	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.	 
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-	The offer stands.
NV Researcher 22:11, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Response from Friends of Michel Thomas

message: 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)
replies: text: Truth is truth, dude. --62.255.236.92 02:57, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV flag etc 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Defendant in defamation suit allowed to write a Wikipedia entry about the plaintiff? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  A Journalist Trained to Present All Views? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Reply to 'A Journalist Trained to...' 

message: 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)
thread_title: Reply to 'Feldgrau'

message: 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)
thread_title: Reply to 'Telling'

message: 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)
thread_title: Reply to Reply to 'Telling'

message: 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)
thread_title: Reply to 'Telling's' reply

message: 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)
thread_title: An Analogy

message: The problem with the Michel Thomas page as it exists today is the excessive focus on whether or not he told the factual truth in several instances, some of which are relatively trivial in the big picture of what is important about his life.  Mr. Thomas's differing narratives about some aspects of his life should not be the focus of an encyclopedic entry about him. Those items deserve a (briefer) mention if they can be backed up with evidence, but to maintain the integrity of Wikipedia, the important aspects of Thomas's life should be highlighted. 
I believe the most important things about Michel Thomas are: (1) that he survived the Holocaust while his European family did not; (2) that he worked against the Nazis during the war, regardless of his title, and; (3) that he managed to start his life over in the United States after World War II, becoming a noted language instructor and innovator. 
How many Hollywood actors have changed their names or not told their true age to the press? Is that what they are remembered for? No. They are remembered for their work. With Thomas, a more nuanced explanation of his changing identities is presented in his language materials and his book. The former states, "His mastery of languages enabled him to adopt many identities (the last one being 'Michel Thomas')..." His biography notes that he prefered not to tell people how old he was because he did not want to be judged by his age. A Wikipedia biography should be accurate but it also should focus on what is important to those seeking information about someone's life. As it stands now, I am discouraged about the ability of Wikipedia to present a fair biography.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by By-the-bay (talk • contribs) 19:48, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Michel Thomas's life should be described in the proper perspective 

message: [Note: the following post was not made by LA Times reporter Roy Rivenburg; however, he might want to consider whether such a statement is worth making as he heads into the sixth year of his efforts to discredit Michel Thomas, who died nearly two years ago.]
As the New Year approaches, I have decided to come clean about all this and admit that I simply got this story wrong. Thomas had a way of describing things that made me so suspicious of him that I refused to believe anything he told me, regardless of how much documentation he had.  Plus, his biographer seemed so taken in by Thomas that I also discounted everything he told me, and everything in Thomas's biography.  
I really did think he was a fraud, but now I know I was wrong.
Since there was no way to debunk conclusively some of the stories in the book that I found to be dubious, such as Thomas's release or escape from several slave-labor camps, I focused on well-documented areas that I thought Thomas had lied about.
So, even though Thomas's CIC comrade Ted Kraus made it clear when I interviewed him that Thomas functioned as a fully-credentialed CIC Agent, I knew that the biography made it clear Thomas was not a usual, by-the-book Agent because he was not a US citizen. So, I keyed on this "weak knee" and portrayed Thomas in such a way that readers were led to suspect that Thomas may have had little to do with the CIC beyond a very limited role.  I did the same with the claims regarding Dachau and the discovery of the Nazi Party files.  Readers were left with the impression Thomas might never have been anywhere near Dachau -- before, during, or after the liberation -- and to doubt whether he had anything to do with finding the Nazi Party's membership card file. 
I now must reluctantly admit that my great skepticism about Thomas caused me to ignore significant evidence he showed me, and that appeared in his biography, and that the additional evidence that has subsequently emerged has demolished any reasonable skepticism about these issues.  Had I been more dispassionate about the evidence I knew then, I would not have portrayed Thomas as I did. With all the additional evidence that has emerged, I know now that my portrayal of Thomas was highly misleading, and that I was wrong in my subsequent insistence that Thomas lied about or exaggerated key aspects of his wartime service and WWII experiences.
Specifically: 
• Thomas clearly functioned as fully-credentialed CIC Agent, as attested to by at least three former CIC Agents who served with him who are still alive, and extensive historical documentation.  To emphasize, as I did in my profile, his official status as a mere civilian assistant was misleading to readers.  It was wartime, and Thomas had much to offer the CIC, which they wisely took advantage of.  His contributions in the CIC, regardless of his official status, were clearly beyond the norm and were recognized as such by his comrades and superiors in 1945-47, and after the war. He was treated as an Agent, he wore the uniform of an Agent, and it was perfectly understandable that he viewed himself as one, regardless of his bureaucratic status. It was misleading of me to suggest in my article that Thomas might have invented his role as a CIC Agent entirely, or greatly exaggerated it. 
• Thomas was a Dachau liberator.  When he showed me the documents and photos he kept, I figured he could have picked them up anywhere, and since he could not recall certain topographical details of the camp, I figured he made it all up and probably never even saw the place. I know now I was wrong about this, and he was definitely at the camp on liberation day. Memory is selective, and Thomas's inability to recall topographical details of the camp after more than fifty years should not have led me to conclude he was lying about being a liberator.  
As to whether Thomas was "with the first troops," he may well have been, but in any case it hardly matters.  He was a CIC Agent, and I now know that as such he did not have to be attached to any particular infantry group. The post-liberation arguments between the two infantry divisions that did enter the camp that day as to which one got there first are of little significance -- the important thing is that this was the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by US forces, and the revelations of the liberation opened the eyes of the US to a horrifying reality that we had refused to believe from the wartime reports of witnesses and former inmates. The fact that Thomas -- a Polish-born Jew who lost his family to the camps -- was among the American liberators is what makes this a compelling aspect of his life story.
• The evidence that has emerged since I wrote my article shows that Thomas played a significant role in preventing the destruction of the Nazi Party documents cache he stumbled upon near Munich in May 1945.  When I wrote my article, since I did not believe Thomas's account because I did not trust him, I relied upon the news reports I unearthed from the fall of '45 as the definitive account. Subsequent research, as detailed in Robert Wolfe's paper, establishes that Thomas was part of the small CIC unit that originally came upon the files. The widow of the man credited in the CIC history with the discovery, Francesco Quaranta, said he did not speak or read German and never claimed to have discovered the files. The accounts of Heym are unreliable, due to his clear political antipathy to the Americans at the time of his writings, which he held to the end of his life. And Heym's accounts in any event lend support Thomas's version because they describe two CIC Agents visiting the paper mill and taking some files in the spring of '45. I was not aware of these facts when I wrote the article, and because of my skepticism about Thomas I went overboard in portraying him as a liar about this issue. 
As to what happened between the original discovery of the files in May by Thomas (and perhaps Quaranta), and their subsequent re-discovery in the fall by Major Browne, it's hard to say with certainty, since the historical record is sketchy.  It is clear that in May 1945 a significant volume of Nazi Party membership files was brought to Munich CIC headquarters, judging by the photos and text of Major Browne's September 1945 report that was unearthed by Thomas's defense team at the National Archives. And it's possible Thomas did leak the existence of the files to the press.  He may have assumed there was follow-up reporting, when in fact there was not, or there may in fact have been some, in press sources that are hard or impossible to find now.  
The important thing is that, but for the discovery of the files in May, Browne would almost certainly not have learned of the existence of the files in the fall, and they may well have been destroyed.  It is impossible to say whether Hans Huber was acting out of genuine opposition to Nazism in the fall of '45 when he talked to Browne -- in fact it's likely he was a Johnny-Come-Lately to anti-Nazism since the Nazi leadership would not have  entrusted the destruction of such sensitive documents to an unreliable firm. 
Having cleared up my position on these issues, I'd like to comment that it was extremely insensitive of me to portray a nearly 90 year-old man who endured what Thomas went through, and who contributed as he did to the Allied war effort, in the way that I portrayed him. I have never fought in any war, and have never lost my family members to a nightmarish program of genocidal extermination.  In fact, I've lived a life of postwar middle-class comfort, mostly in sunny suburban Orange County, and the horrors of WWII Europe are so far from my personal experience that I simply did not reflect on the impact my article would have on a man such as Michel Thomas. I apologize for any pain my article caused to him, his family and friends, and perhaps most of all to his wartime comrades, who clearly valued his contributions and rallied to his side when I and my newspaper falsely suggested he was a fraud.  
[Note: the post above was not made by LA Times reporter Roy Rivenburg; however, he might want to consider whether such a statement is worth making as he heads into the sixth year of his efforts to discredit Michel Thomas, who died nearly two years ago.] —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rivenburg-Not (talk • contribs) 07:55, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Year, New Leaf? 

message: In his last will and testament, Michel Thomas left instructions for the following statement to be released two years after his death:
I am proud of my accomplishments, but occasionally I said and did things that I now regret.
One of my missteps was threatening to sue film director Marcel Ophuls over the wording of an English subtitle in "Hotel Terminus," his documentary about Klaus Barbie. In the film, Barbie's prosecutor, Pierre Truche, says the reason he asked the jury to disregard my testimony at Barbie's 1987 trial was because my story was "inconsistent." That is an accurate translation of what Truche said and I now apologize to Mr. Ophuls for publicly challenging it. I also apologize to Mr. Truche for any embarrassment I caused him while on the witness stand. Barbie was evil and I wanted to help convict him, but I realize in hindsight that my story could have jeopardized the prosecution's case. 
I also am sorry for claiming I accompanied members of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Regiment as they liberated the Dachau concentration camp. Even after my biographer and the battalion's commander, Felix Sparks, said this claim was erroneous, I made a sworn affidavit repeating the story. I did go to Dachau, and I interrogated crematorium workers, but I wasn't with any of the troops who first liberated the camp. I apologize for insulting their memory by claiming otherwise.
I'm also sorry for the false information in my story about the discovery of a large cache of Nazi Party ID cards at a paper mill near Munich in May 1945. The man who saved the cards from destruction was Hans Huber, the mill owner. He disobeyed SS orders to pulp the cards, then came to my unit of the 7th Army to alert Allied forces about the cards. Two members of my unit drove out to the paper mill, but our role with the cards basically ended there. We moved on to another part of Germany, leaving the cards at the mill, where they could have easily been destroyed. Huber tried again when Patton's 3rd Army came to town and the cache was finally taken to a safe location. I should never have stated that I single-handedly rescued the cards, or that I leaked word of their discovery to journalists and the subsequent worldwide coverage forced my superiors to move the cards to a safe location. None of that is true. There was no press coverage until October and military records and 1945 newspaper articles prove the 7th Army abandoned the cards.
Lastly, I owe a deep apology to all military veterans for my claim that I was an officer in the U.S. Army. Although I did exemplary work for the Army Counter Intelligence Corps and won considerable praise from my superiors, I was officially a civilian assistant. I was well aware of my status, and even signed documents to that effect. So, when the Los Angeles Times reported that the military had no record of my service and that I might have served as a civilian employee, I should have acknowledged the truth, rather than sue the paper for suggesting I wasn't a full-fledged member of the Army. I now realize that many veterans, such as "Stolen Valor" author B.G. Burkett, don't look kindly on people who falsely claim they served in the military. I should have simply said I was "treated like" a full-fledged Counter Intelligence Corps agent.
In short, although I led an interesting and accomplished life, I nevertheless embellished and exaggerated certain aspects of my past. I'm not sure why I did it, but I have no one to blame but myself for misstating the truth. 
[Note: This post was not written by Michel Thomas; however, his supporters apparently prefer to debate Thomas' stories by fabricating first-person statements and motives instead of discussing facts, so this post will stay up as long as theirs does.]
--Michel-Not 75.19.105.99 04:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Michel Thomas Apologizes 

message: Okay, which fool removed the Michel Thomas Method section I produced. Since this is the reason for him even being in Wikipeida, I can't believe someone deleted it.
It was extremely short and to the point. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 163.19.15.169 (talk) 02:23, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of Michel Thomas Method Section

message: Okay, it's back, I'll shut up. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 163.19.15.169 (talk) 02:24, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  I'll shut up 

message: I would really like to know more about the Michel Thomas method of language teaching -   Where it stands in the spectrum of other language learning techniques.  What other linguists out there make of it.  Whether his claims for what the method can do hold water.  I suggest that this is the greater 'legacy' he left to the world of knowledge, and what his entry in any authoritative (and mature) encylopedia would focus on. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Iwanbrioc (talk • contribs) 18:35, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Michel Thomas Method 

message: Part of the article has now been merged with this article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 163.19.15.169 (talk) 00:31, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Michel Thomas Method 

message: Shouldn't this article be shortened. There seems to be an incredibly long section debating the book about Thomas and subsequent court cases surrounding defamation. Can't this be truncated into two paragraphs and the rest of the argument surrounding it be put into a separate entry about Tim Robbin's book. Then just add a link to this article. At the moment, the huge size of this section makes it a bit unreadable. I think this is the problem you get when you have two sets of fanatics building an article. To a person from outside, it's really pretty useless. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 163.19.15.169 (talk) 03:08, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shorten? 

message: I've reedited the article and it seems far more readable and appropriate. Let's keep things where they belong, people. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 163.19.15.169 (talk) 03:14, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reedit 

message: You have a point about the article's length, but the debate over Thomas' claims is complicated and your slicing and dicing didn't preserve a fair picture of that. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rivenburg (talk • contribs) 03:44, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undid reedit 

message: The description is certainly better written and more encyclopedic but it seems to me that the essence of the method has been removed. The description reads like almost a dozen other methods. Although the old description sounded a bit like it was from a publisher, as I remember it far better explained the way the method worked by building structure and interchanging words etc. To be honest, for me, although the description regarding the courses that exist is very good, the bit on the method is now really wide of the mark.
: Please discuss the new "Method" page on that page, not here.--Lingvo9 17:14, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New description of the Thomas method 

message: As Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts." In response to the anonymous paragraph right above this one, I restored the POV tag to the main article. But it's amusing that Thomas' supporters claim the article is my version of Thomas' life. I didn't invent the fact that Klaus Barbie's prosecutor and the U.S. Department of Justice's chief Nazi hunter, among others, criticized Thomas' truthfulness. And it's not "my version" of events to say Thomas flip-flopped on whether he accompanied the 3rd Battalion as it liberated Dachau. Nor did I fabricate National Archives documents that prove Thomas was a civilian employee of the Army -- or 1945 newspaper articles and military records that contradict his story about the rescue of Nazi Party ID cards. All of this is sourced and footnoted. Thomas' supporters might not like such facts, and they might disagree over how to interpret them (that's what the talk page is for), but they cannot dispute their accuracy. Rivenburg 20:17, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fact vs. Opinion 

message: There's a big difference between juxtaposing facts in a misleading way (which did NOT happen in the Los Angeles Times article, by the way) vs. making stuff up altogether, as the previous post did. 
It's also worth noting that the issues highlighted by The Times weren't chosen "selectively." They were issues that Mr. Thomas himself singled out as important in his biography and in interviews. Unfortunately, some of his "facts" didn't check out. As Times Editor John Carroll said, "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."
That's all the Times article did and that's all I'm doing now -- setting the record straight. The "larger picture" of Mr. Thomas' life is that he was an interesting and accomplished man who for mysterious reasons embellished, exaggerated and in some cases outright fabricated his past. Most of this was documented long before the L.A. Times came along, so it's ridiculous to claim that the newspaper invented or misrepresented the controversies surrounding Thomas' tales. Yes, Thomas did some good things, but that doesn't give him a free pass to steal credit for the accomplishments of others. Rivenburg 20:59, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reply to "Selective Highlighting..." 

message: Recent edits have added citations for just about everything in the article, and I have thus decided to Be Bold and remove the Original Research tag.
However, the Neutrality tag remains. As the article now stands, I believe it's as neutral as can be, putting across any challenges and counterchallenges to the information within as clearly and concisely as possible. If there are no objections here within, say, a week, I will remove the tag. Best Regards. Liquidfinale 11:42, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Most of your edits seem fine on a quick read, but in some spots I think the condensing introduced inaccuracies or deleted crucial material. A couple of examples: In the Challenges section, the wording makes it sound as if William Browne called his press conference to contradict Thomas. Also, regarding Dachau, Felix Sparks didn't recant his statement that Thomas never accompanied his battalion into the concentration camp. What happened was that Thomas changed his own story, telling Sparks that he never claimed to have accompanied Sparks' battalion. Based on that, Sparks issued a letter saying he had been misled by the Times reporter, not realizing that a few months earlier, Thomas had given a sworn court deposition saying he WAS with Sparks' battalion.  I'll take a closer look at the rest of your edits later. Thanks. Rivenburg 17:20, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, thanks for pointing those out - now corrected, all save the Dachau claims. My original wording said something along the lines of "After confusion over the number of the battalion" or somesuch, but must have got lost along the way. I'll take hard look at that paragraph to see how it can be worded better, with the appropriate citations of course Liquidfinale 19:20, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original Research and Neutrality Tags 

message: This article was automatically  assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 07:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject class rating

message: Whether the Newsday quote stays or goes doesn't change the fact that Michel Thomas lied about his military status. He claimed he was inducted, claimed he was an officer in the U.S. Army and a full-fledged CIC agent (positions that REQUIRE official induction) and sued the Los Angeles Times for implying he was actually a civilian employee. Unfortunately for Mr. Thomas' credibility, National Archives records that he himself signed prove he was a civilian assistant, as do his lack of a military service I.D. number, discharge papers or any record of his service at the Army Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. 
I find it baffling that Thomas and his supporters seem ashamed to admit he was a civilian Army employee. If anything, it's more admirable that he did everything he did voluntarily, as an unpaid civilian. It's too bad he sort of undermined his accomplishments by bragging that he was something more. He did the same with Dachau. In real life, he made a key arrest and handled some interrogations, but then he gives himself a black eye by claiming he accompanied the very first Army battalion into the concentration camp, a story he repeated in a sworn declaration even though his own biographer and the battalion commander said it was false.
It's interesting that people who inflate their resumes are typically, like Mr. Thomas, fairly accomplished. Maybe it's insecurity that motivates them. I don't know, but it's sad.
As for the notion that the L.A. Times had any sway over Newsday, utterly ridiculous. That's just a red herring to divert attention from the fact that Thomas cannot back up any claim to have been more than a civilian employee of the Army. Rivenburg 20:10, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reply to 'Removal of Newsday...' 

message: Actually, what's absurd is using Thomas' Silver Star to suggest that everything he claimed is true and everything the Los Angeles Times and other critics said is false. I have no problem with giving Mr. Thomas his due. Indeed, the Los Angeles Times article made note of quite a few of his accomplishments. And I presume he deserved the Silver Star. Nobody ever said Mr. Thomas didn't do valuable or brave things during the war. He obviously did. But he fabricated some stories too. And pointing that out isn't hair-splitting or a vendetta. Thomas' tales have been criticized for decades, by an Oscar-winning documentary, various media outlets in the U.S. and Europe, Justice Department officials, members of L.A.'s CIC club in the 1950s, and others. 
So, we have a fascinating dichotomy here: a man who demonstrated enough gallantry to receive a Silver Star, but who for mysterious reasons decided to exaggerate and lie about other aspects of his war record. That is the truth about Michel Thomas. The Silver Star doesn't negate his lies any more than his lies negate the actions that led to his Silver Star. Both are true. 
Rather than acknowledge that humans can have good and dark sides, Thomas' supporters act as if the Silver Star confers sainthood and infallibility. It doesn't. The medal was awarded for reasons that had nothing to do with what the Los Angeles Times wrote about. Instead of vindicating Thomas, the Silver Star merely points up the complexity and duality of human nature. Rivenburg 07:24, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reply to 'This is absurd' 

message: Until I see some evidence that there are more than a tiny handful of people who care about these details, I will not spend the time refuting in greater detail the alleged "fabrications" which Mr. Rivenburg has, well, fabricated. 
However, he has managed to insinuate a new one in his post above, when he refers, without providing any details, to "members of L.A.'s CIC club in the 1950s" as having "criticized Thomas' tales." 
Again, this is something that I believe should be handled in private discussions or email correspondence, but since it's out there, I will address it.  
I met with one of the "LA CIC club members from the 50s" at his home in 2005.  I will not mention his name to protect his privacy.  He told me he was contacted by Mr. Rivenburg in 2001, and had expressed some skepticism to him about Michel Thomas' wartime experiences, and reported other members of the club harbored similar skepticism.  However, he could not offer any specifics about what, precisely, they doubted.
I showed him the affidavits and letters I had obtained from Michel Thomas's CIC colleagues, and other evidence set forth in the biography and in the investigation to prepare the defamation case against the Times.  
He responded that he was not aware of this information, and if he had been aware of it, he would not have expressed the doubt and skepticism he had mentioned to Mr. Rivenburg.  He even indicated a willingness to write a letter to the LA Times to this effect, but I said that it seemed pointless at such a late date, since Michel had died. 
He also told me that Michel had taught his daughter more Spanish in a few hours than she had learned in years of schooling, and said his daughter had never gotten over it.  He offered to put me in touch with her to hear from her first-hand how amazing she found the experience. 
Michel Thomas lived such an extraordinary life that many people who only knew him in passing certainly must have harbored doubts about him.  Perhaps this is why I feel strongly that the record should be kept straight: as someone who spent hundreds if not thousands of hours researching his past, what was most astonishing was that every "claim" he made was verified by documentation and people that he was not even aware of, or had forgotten during his ninety years. 
Facts@mt.org 08:16, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Time to Whack Another Hydra Head 

message: Obviously, Klaus Barbie's prosecutor, the Justice Department Nazi hunters, various journalists and others didn't consider "these details" unimportant. As for L.A.'s CIC club, one of the Thomas tales they doubted was his claim to have been an inducted member of the U.S. Army. In 1958, one contacted the Army (well before the 1973 fire that destroyed some personnel records) and received a letter saying the Army found no trace of Thomas in the military's official records or in "the records of units in World War II." Rivenburg 15:16, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reply to 'Whack another hydra' 

message: The point is that "these details" have been refuted ad nauseam, and I see no evidence anyone but you cares about them, and would like some indication that they matter to anyone else but you before spending additional time taking up Wikipedia's space refuting them in greater detail. 
To touch on but one of your points, the "Justice Department Nazi Hunters" you refer to are one person, whom Thomas picked a public fight with by criticizing his report about US intelligence's turning a blind eye to Barbie's war crimes.  Many more people than Michel Thomas considered that report to be a whitewash, but Michel stepped forward and criticized it publicly, and held a news conference that was picked up by CNN.  (I have seen the tape, have you?)  Using your familiar formula of propping up an authority figure to discredit Thomas, you leave out this crucial information about why Allan Ryan criticized Thomas, and lead readers to believe that Ryan was simply attacking Thomas's credibility out of thin air.  
Interestingly, the current head of the "Nazi-Hunting" office you refer to -- the Office of Special Investigations, (OSI) -- who occupies the chair that Allan Ryan sat in, has taken a keen interest in this matter, and was very supportive of Michel and my efforts on his behalf.  He attended the Silver Star ceremony on the Mall in Washington in 2004, and gave an autographed copy of one of his books to both Michel and me, with a very nice salutation on the flyleaf.  As you know, one of his most seasoned prosecutors also credited Michel with the original rescue of the Nazi Party Master file in a published 2006 article in the U.S. Attorney's Bulletin. 
As with Allan Ryan, you use the same tactic with respect to Michel's Barbie testimony and your references to Pierre Truche's comments to the jury.  I have read most or all of the press coverage regarding Michel's testimony about Barbie.  You selectively focused on a couple of critical items, including one that had a false and misleading mistranslation of Truche's comments, while ignoring the rest. (Example: "à une manière de s'exprimer, à un goût trop prononcé de paraitre, de multiplier les détails" does not translate to "a taste for make-believe.")
Did you ever read Flora Lewis's columns about Michel's testimony in the New York Times?  They were anything but critical of him.  And, as with Ryan, you made no attempt to research original sources, such as the French transcript of the trial, or to interview the authority figure (Truche) whom you employed to attack Michel's credibility.
Instead, you stitched together a patchwork of critical items, presented them without context or in-depth research, and crucified Michel with an article that left readers, through artful innuendo, to believe he was a fraud and a liar.  And you're still at it, more than two years after his death!
We could undertake a separate (private) debate about who was right about Ryan's report and whether it was in fact a whitewash.  Michel felt strongly that it was a defense of the indefensible.  I have a copy of the report, and am good friends with a man who worked on the investigation in the early 80s for Ryan's office.  But it is misleading to refer to Michel's public fight with Ryan in the way that you have done, and entirely typical of your M.O. when it comes to Michel Thomas.  You have cherry-picked a scrap from an old news item more than 30 years old, and presented it without context, and furthermore made no effort to contact Ryan presently to see what he has to say today about the matter -- Michel indicated to me that they eventually became friendly.
As for the "letter saying the Army found no trace of Thomas in the military's official records or in 'the records of units in World War II'" to which you refer, I have the original of that letter, from the man who wrote to the Army inquiring about Michel's military records.  The man who wrote it was a close friend of Michel's in the LA CIC club, and was interested in writing a book about him -- he gave me the original manuscript draft of it, along with photos of him and Michel at the CIC Club, taken in the 50s. 
When his would-be biographer received that letter in the 50s, Michel was in no way defensive about it.  He told his friend that since he was never formally inducted, but was attached to the 180th Regiment, and functioned as a CIC Agent despite his lack of US citizenship, it was not surprising that the Army did not have a personnel file on him. 
When I showed him Michel's biography, and all the other records and testimonials that I gathered to prepare the lawsuit, he was completely satisfied that Michel had functioned as a fully-credentialed CIC Agent, and had not lied or exaggerated his role.  He is the one mentioned above who offered to write a letter to you and the LA Times, correcting the impression he had given to you four years earlier that Michel was something less than what he claimed. 
The two remained friendly, but lost touch over the years.  When I met with him shortly after Michel's death, he remembered Michel with both fondness and a sense of awe, and said he wished he could have been in touch with him before he died.
Today, in September 2007, you now refer to this Army letter from the 50s and insinuate it's some kind of "proof" that Michel was a fraud.  Yet you have been inundated since the day you met Michel in 2001 with documentation of his wartime service -- when you interviewed him he gave you copies of the letters written by his US Army superiors praising his service, written during the war, and you're well aware of how every one of them who survived back Michel to the hilt and were outraged at your depiction of him, including Ted Kraus, whom you interviewed before your article but never mentioned. 
I do hope you can find someone knowledgeable about WWII history and journalistic ethics who can give you some candid feedback about the propriety of your ongoing campaign to discredit Thomas, and the tactics you have employed.  It would be most helpful to have such a person -- who is not a friend of yours or someone biased to defend the Times -- give you a reality check.  It would also be helpful to avoid clogging Wikipedia with all this minutiae -- it's clear that many editors who have looked in on this article and the debate between you and Thomas's supporters think it's way out of hand.  I for one am happy to debate these points with you privately, but I see no evidence that there is a public appetite for it here. 
Facts@mt.org 17:21, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  There You Go Again 

message: As I noted in the post titled "Reply to 'This is absurd'," the truth about Michel Thomas is neither black nor white. It's a complex mixture of both. Attempts by facts@mt.org to reduce his portrait to hagiography are a disservice to history.
Regarding the remarks in "There you go again":
The 1958 letter isn't proof that Thomas lied about being a noncivilian Army employee. The proof is a National Archives document with Thomas' signature next to the words "civilian assistant." (Are you still seriously claiming he wasn't a civilian??). The Los Angeles Times never said Thomas didn't perform valuable and heroic work during the war. It simply questioned his claim to have been an officer in the U.S. Army. He wasn't. Is that a "minor point"? Depends on your point of view, but there are entire organizations and books devoted to debunking people who falsely claim to be enlisted/inducted in the U.S. military.
Allan Ryan Jr. (yes, I interviewed him, along with several other sources you incorrectly say I never tried to contact) wasn't the only Justice Department official to challenge Thomas, as a 1983 L.A. Times article makes clear. If Ryan had said anything positive about Thomas or his stories, I'd have quoted him. The dispute over Ryan's report on Barbie's escape is spelled out in the Wiki entry, so readers can judge for themselves whether he had an ax to grind. 
As for Barbie prosecutor Truche, his rebuke of Thomas' credibility at trial is public record and reiterated on film in "Hotel Terminus." However, as the L.A. Times article pointed out, Thomas' testimony was believed and supported by Serge Klarsfeld and other credible sources. Whether you believe Thomas or not, it's a fact that his statements about Barbie were highly controversial -- in French and American media, at the Justice Department and to Barbie's prosecutor. Erasing mention of all this would be a whitewash of history. 
Also a matter of record is that Thomas gave a sworn affidavit saying he accompanied Felix Sparks' battalion as it liberated the Dachau concentration camp. That claim, according to Sparks and Thomas' own biographer, isn't true. The Los Angeles Times didn't say Thomas never set foot in Dachau. It said -- correctly -- that his story of accompanying Sparks' battalion was contradicted by eyewitnesses, military records and Dachau experts. Yet when Thomas sued the L.A. Times, he repeated the claim in a sworn declaration. His supporters have been trying to backtrack and obfuscate ever since, even asserting that Thomas never claimed he accompanied Sparks' unit. He did make the claim, and it's not a "minor detail." It's a flat-out falsehood. 
I'm not trying to "discredit Thomas." I'm trying to set the record straight and give props to some of the people whose wartime actions he claimed for himself. I've listed extensive citations and sources so anyone can check my facts. Nothing unethical about that. I've even added citations for Thomas' side and improved their presentation of information in a few spots. Rivenburg 18:34, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reply to 'There you go again'