Day 15 Transcript: Holocaust Denial on Trial
Part I: Initial Proceedings (1.1 to 4.9)
1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
1996 I. No. 113
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
2 Royal Courts of Justice
3 Strand, London
4 Thursday, 3rd February 2000
5
6 Before:
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY
8
9 B E T W E E N: DAVID JOHN CAWDELL IRVING
10 Claimant -and-
11 (1) PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED
12 (2) DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT
13 Defendants
14 The Claimant appeared in person
15 MR RICHARD RAMPTON Q.C. (instructed by Messrs Davenport Lyons and Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the First and
16 Second Defendants
17 MISS HEATHER ROGERS (instructed by Davenport Lyons) appeared on behalf of the First Defendant Penguin Books Limited
18 MR ANTHONY JULIUS (of Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of
19 the Second Defendant Deborah Lipstadt
20
21 (Transcribed from the stenographic notes of Harry Counsell
&Company, Clifford’s Inn, Fetter Lane, London EC4
22 Telephone: 020-7242-9346)
23 (This transcript is not to be reproduced without the written permission of Harry Counsell &Company)
24
25 PROCEEDINGS – DAY FIFTEEN
26
. P-1
1 <Day 15 Thursday, 3rd February 2000
2 (10.30 a.m.)
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton and Mr Irving, really not for
4 either of your benefit but for the benefit of members of
5 the public who are following the trial, we are not sitting
6 tomorrow and that is going to be the pattern, generally
7 speaking, for the future. That is just to save anyone a
8 wasted journey.
9 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship may wish to consider what happens
10 next week because Monday, everything being equal, it will
11 be Professor Browning. I do not know how long he will be.
12 After that will be Professor Evans. Your Lordship has
13 said that Mr Irving may have time, I do not know however
14 long your Lordship thinks is needed, perhaps a day or
15 whatever, to prepare cross-examination for Professor
16 Evans. It may, therefore be that we shall be taking a day
17 off before Friday next week.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. We will deal with that if and when it
19 arises. I am anxious that Mr Irving should be given ample
20 opportunity to prepare, because it must be exhausting, the
21 burden that you are bearing at the moment.
22 MR RAMPTON: I quite agree.
23 MR IRVING: I have indicated that I would want one extra day
24 between Professor Browning and Professor Evans.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is certainly reasonable. If you need
26 more, say so.
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1 MR IRVING: Monday I will be pretty well prepared, but to save
2 the court time actually in session it will be better if
3 I come well prepared.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is true too, yes.
5 MR IRVING: My Lord, at sometime this morning I will be calling
6 a witness who has not arrived yet, Mr Peter Millar, on the
7 Moscow matter. I do not anticipate we will need more than
8 one hour with him so, with Mr Rampton’s consent, I would
9 propose that we continue with the cross-examination of
10 myself until my witness arrives, and that we then find a
11 suitable point to interrupt and slot my witness in.
12 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, I was being badgered. Is that
13 today?.
14 MR IRVING: Peter Millar.
15 MR RAMPTON: Is that today?
16 MR IRVING: That is this morning.
17 MR RAMPTON: Any time.
18 MR IRVING: Yes. My Lord, the only other thing I want to say
19 is that we mentioned yesterday the book by Gerald
20 Fleming. It is right that I should say that I have now
21 looked at the book and I have seen that I have marked it
22 up in part. And I will give your Lordship a copy of book
23 to see, which you can then pass to Mr Rampton. You will
24 see that I have read, obviously, the first 22 pages of it
25 from the annotations in the margin on one occasion, and
26 then on another occasion I read into it specifically
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1 concerning the Bruns episode.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will take what you have just said as
3 evidence.
4 MR IRVING: Perhaps I should repeat it from the box.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, do not bother because we have a
6 transcript. I will take it as your evidence because it
7 does arise out of your cross-examination and it is
8 something that Mr Rampton can pursue as and when he wants
9 to.
Part II: David Irving Cross-examined by Richard Rampton, continued (4.10-38.19)
Section 4.10 to 18.1
10 < Mr David Irving, recalled
11 < Further cross-examined by Mr Rampton QC.
12 MR RAMPTON: I will not take time with that now, my Lord.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: They have, obviously had the book already in discovery.
14 MR IRVING: Not the actual book?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: That is the actual book. Those are their flags still
16 stuck to the pages, and you will see that there are
17 annotations that I made presumably about five or 10 years
18 ago for the first 22 pages, pages five to 27, indicating
19 that I have read into it for 22 pages, and then I went
20 back at a later time, which is the second set of stickers
21 and I looked just specifically at the Bruns episode, as
22 I remembered yesterday.
23 MR RAMPTON: We will look at it in due course. Thank you,
24 Mr Irving.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Give it to your side, as it were.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: I shall also be writing to the solicitors of the
. P-4
1 Defendants to suggest that I wish to have more information
2 about the provenance of that document of August 1st.
3 Having seen it, it is a document I would like to know more
4 about.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Also one other point the transcript we were reading
7 yesterday of the speech I made in Bow, it is wrong by one
8 year. It is May 1993. It should be 1993.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is dated ’92 at the moment.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: It is dated 1992 at the moment. I have checked the famous
11 diary and it is May 1993, by which time, of course, many
12 things had happened to justify the remarks I made in my
13 diary.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Rampton?
15 MR RAMPTON: One small point first, MR IRVING: do you remember
16 the discussion, I think on Tuesday, that is two days ago,
17 1st February, about the Nuremberg document PS 3051?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is at any rate one version of a telex from Heydrich at
20 1.20 a.m. on the morning of 10th November 1938.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You in court would not accept that your reference to that
23 document as 3052 was wrong and that, indeed, you were
24 referring to 3051. Do you remember that?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: I was referring to two documents in my source reference.
26 The other one, if you remember, was Karl Wolff. I have
. P-5
1 now checked with all versions of the manuscript — it went
2 through five or six different versions — to see how the
3 error occurred in the digit because obviously I want to
4 track something like that down. The actual reference is
5 to Karl Wolff as Karl Wolff quoting Werner Best, who was a
6 Gestapo official.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, please, can we try today to stick to the
8 point? I am going to read you something which appeared on
9 your web site — this is so as to remove a point of
10 controversy from the case entirely — yesterday or this
11 morning. You print reports of your own version of what
12 goes on in court.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: The “Radical’s Diary”, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You write this. I am not entering into the argy-bargy at
15 all. It is full of comments and I am leaving that out.
16 “In ‘Goebbels Mastermind of the Third Reich’ I have
17 muddled one source note identified there as PS 3052, thus
18 Karl Wolff (it should have been 3051)”.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 3051 is the one that was produced in court
21 which has, as it were, nothing to do with it?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: The diary just says that I identified it as P 3052 plus
23 Karl Wolff. You rather swallowed the word “plus”. It
24 should have been 3051 instead of 3052.
25 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I now would like you, in view of the
26 answers you gave about the National Alliance yesterday ,
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1 notwithstanding the tape that we showed, to look at one
2 very short part of the same tape. We will pause it still
3 when we get to the right place. Then I shall ask you
4 whether you still adhere to the position you took
5 yesterday.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Which position are we talking about? Be specific.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I think this is the October 1995 visit to Tampa. This
8 is ’96, sorry.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Can you specify what position you are referring to when
10 you say I am still referring to the same position?
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You took the position that You had no idea who the
12 National Alliance were, that it was a meeting organized by
13 them, or anything of that kind.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now, we will look at this.
16 (Excerpt of video was played)
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Does it get any clearer?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: I can see what you are pointing to.
19 (Excerpt of video was played)
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is not —-
21 A. [Mr Irving]: It is rather unfortunate they show that bit, is it not,
22 because I am accused of being a Holocaust denier.
23 (Excerpt of video was played)
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: There. Now, Mr Irving, you see that picture?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, it has its back to me apparently.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It has not got its back to you.
. P-7
1 A. [Mr Irving]: It has.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is there by your left shoulder.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. If I see something like that in a hall, I would not
4 know from Adam was that is. Would you know what it was if
5 you went into a hall and you saw that?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, if I was speaking on a platform and that was part of
7 my paraphernalia.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: It is not actually a platform.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And pictures put up by the organizer, of course I would
10 know, Mr Irving. That is enough of that, thank you.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: It is not enough of that because there is one—-
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Turn it off now will you, please?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes because it might show some more unfortunate denials
14 that I am a denier, would it not? Can I just make a
15 statement, so to speak, in re-examination there and say
16 that I will point out that you have had my entire
17 correspondence with all organizations to whom I ever
18 spoke. You have had my entire private diaries. Professor
19 Evans himself says in his report that he has found no
20 reference to the National Alliance in my private diaries.
21 You have not so far produced to this court one single item
22 of correspondence between me and the National Alliance.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I just want to ask you two more questions, Mr Irving.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: I take it you accept what I have just said?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you have said it to me. I have
26 taken it on board but you do not need to get Mr Rampton to
. P-8
1 answer your evidence.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: It is an opportunity for Mr Rampton to cross-examine on
3 that point.
4 MR RAMPTON: No, Mr Irving, it was re-examination. You said so
5 yourself. I do not butt in when people are re-examining.
6 I let people do it to themselves.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: You took away about 40 boxes of all my private files and
8 papers and not one single letter between me and the
9 National Alliance have you produced to this court.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have the point.
11 MR RAMPTON: We changed the date on this. My Lord, I am going
12 back to the little clip of utterances, page 37 in the
13 clip, my Lord, file K4, tab 4, page 3.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have lost the clip.
15 MR RAMPTON: Your clip, my Lord, has been put in the front of
16 K4, apparently.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
18 MR RAMPTON: Page 3, my Lord. This is Bow 1993, I think you
19 tell us now. Is that right?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: That is right yes.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where?
22 MR RAMPTON: Page 3 of the transcript, my Lord, and page 37 of
23 the clip. I am going to start a little bit before the
24 clip extract begins. If Mr Irving wants to read on or
25 have more, than he must do it himself, the whole text is
26 there. I am going to read, Mr Irving, from the sixth line
. P-9
1 in the middle of the page after the words “our national
2 heritage”, where you say this:
3 “When people ask me about racism I say ‘would
4 you mind explaining to me what is the difference between
5 racism and patriotism’? Journalists, television
6 interviewers, I’ve had a great deal of these in the last 2
7 or 3 weeks, you won’t notice this of course, because I’ve
8 been going to the television studios here or in Camden
9 town or in Isleworth, speaking by satellite live on prime
10 time Australian television, 3 or 4 times last week. New
11 Zealand television as well because New Zealand always
12 picks up what their big brothers do in Australia, and the
13 journalist has said ‘Mr Irving, we read in today’s
14 newspapers that you told the ABC radio” — that is an
15 Australian radio, is it not, Mr Irving, ABC radio?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “‘That you feel queasy about the immigration disaster
18 that’s happened to Britain. Is that your opinion’?
19 And I said well yes, I have admit to being born in England
20 in 1938, which was totally different England, I feel
21 queasy when I look and see what has happened to our
22 country, nobody has stood up and objected to it’ and he
23 says, ‘well what do you think about black people on the
24 Australian, on the British cricket team then? How do you
25 feel about that then, the black cricketers’? So I said,
26 ‘that makes me even more queasy,”. Pause there, please,
. P-10
1 Mr Irving.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am going to read on. Why does it make you feel queasy
4 that black Englishmen should play cricket for England?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: What is left out here is what is also stated in the
6 interview that he then said exactly same question as you
7 and my reply to him on air was, what a pity it is that we
8 have to have blacks on the team and that they are better
9 than our whites.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why is that a pity?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: It is a pity because I am English.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Are they not English too?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, English or British, are you saying?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am saying that they are English. Most of them are born
15 here, just as all the Jews in England were born here, most
16 of them.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Are we talking about blacks or Jews now?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It does not matter. They are all English.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: The England I was born into it, if you had read earlier,
20 the England I was born into, which is the England I come
21 from and probably the England you come from, although
22 probably a few years after mine, was different from the
23 England that exists now.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, thank goodness.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: When I talk about English, I am talking about the England
26 I came from.
. P-11
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: When did the Irvings arrive on these shores, Mr Irving?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: King Robert the Bruce, I think. We can go back as far as
3 that.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Where did they come from?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Scotland.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. The Bruces came from France. They were Normans,
7 beastly foreigners.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: The Bruces came from France?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Robert the Bruce was a Norman princeling, if you like.
10 Where did the Irvings come from?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: What do you mean, where did the Irvings come from? How
12 far back are we going to go?
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is the point, is it not? How far back do you have to
14 go? Does it matter, Mr Irving?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: It does. You see, what I am saying in this entire
16 paragraph is this. Somebody born in England of 1938, with
17 all the values that I grew up in, grew to respect and
18 admire and love, I regret what has happened to our country
19 now. Sometimes I wish I could go Heathrow Airport and get
20 on a 747 and take a ten hour flight and land back in
21 England as it was, as it used to be. That is what this
22 paragraph is saying.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, it is. It is saying that England has changed in this
24 regrettable respect, that now we have all these black
25 people in England.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: One wonderful thing about England, Mr Rampton, you may
. P-12
1 disprove of it, is that privately you are allowed to have
2 your own private thoughts about the way things go, what
3 you would call a state of mind, and my state of mind is
4 that I regret what has happened to the England I grew up
5 in.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That, I am afraid, Mr Irving, is characteristic of people
7 that one may properly and legitimately call racist, is it
8 not?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Or patriotic. Patriotism is literally respecting the
10 country that has been handed to you by your fathers, by
11 your parents.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You are proposing —-
13 A. [Mr Irving]: I wish you would not interrupt me when I am speaking.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Finish your answer.
15 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, I had not thought you had anything
16 more to say, I am bound to say.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: You interrupt my flow of oratory.
18 MR RAMPTON: Carry on.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think there is anything despicable or
20 disreputable about patriotism. You wish to call it racism,
21 that is your choice. I call it patriotism. Respect and
22 love of the country that I grew up, the England I was born
23 into.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we just go back to the cricketers? Is
25 the regret you feel about them playing for England or
26 wherever because of the colour of their skin?
. P-13
1 A. [Mr Irving]: No, it is, I think — I feel sorry that my England was
2 unable to provide enough good cricketers, if I can put it
3 like that.
4 MR RAMPTON: So the answer to his Lordship’s question is yes,
5 is it not?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: No, it was not.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You regret the fact —-
8 A. [Mr Irving]: The answer was as I stated it.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Don’t you interrupt either, please, Mr Irving. You regret
10 the fact, do you not, that there are not enough good white
11 cricketers to keep out the black cricketers?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, again this is probably a tendential answer, but I am
13 not very well up on cricket and I am not a great
14 cricketing fan. This is an example that I am not very
15 positive about.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you ever watch the English football team or any of the
17 English clubs play football?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: If I do not watch cricket, I certainly do not watch
19 football.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you propose that the numerous black people who play for
21 first class football clubs and for England in this country
22 are not patriotic, Mr Irving?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: What I am probably saying is this, is that it is
24 regrettable that blacks and people of certain races are
25 superior athletes to whites. Now, if this is a racist
26 attitude, then so be it. It is a recognition that some
. P-14
1 people are better at different things. And perhaps you
2 may wish to legislate that state of affairs away, you may
3 wish to describe it as despicable, but it is a recognition
4 and it is an objective statement about the way things
5 are. They run faster, they jump higher and there is no
6 disputing that fact.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why is it regrettable?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, it is regrettable in as much as it is now described
9 as being a racist attitude, and there is disreputable to
10 point out that there are differences between the species.
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You would like it to be the position, would you not, as
12 with the National Alliance, that this country was a pure
13 white Aryan race of people who went back at least as far
14 as Robert the Bruce, for what difference it makes, would
15 you not?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, you heard what I said about taking off in that 747
17 and landing back in England as it was, the England of the
18 blue lamp and Jack Warner and when there was no chewing
19 gum on the pavements, and all the rest of it.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I will just finish.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: It is just an old fashioned attitude, I think. You will
22 probably find that 90 per cent of Englishmen born at the
23 same time as me think the same. That is what democracy is
24 about.
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I am sure you have not been standing with a clipboard in
26 Oxford Street either, Mr Irving?
. P-15
1 A. [Mr Irving]: You will have heard the word “probably”, on the balance of
2 probabilities.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I will just finish this, if I may, and then I want to pass
4 to one more. Where was I? “‘How do you feel about that
5 then, the black cricketers?’ So I said, ‘That makes me
6 even more queasy …’ and so he says right, and I say,
7 ‘No, hang on, it makes me feel queasy but I would like to
8 think we’ve got white cricketers who are as good as the
9 black ones’ and he couldn’t climb out of that, you see”?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: There you are. That is precisely what I just said.
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes, Mr Irving, but I do not myself see — perhaps you can
12 enlighten me — why the journalist should have anything to
13 climb out of.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Because he was wanting me to express an attitude that the
15 blacks are in some way inferior to us. They are different
16 from us but not inferior.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Then he says, you see, he has rather not had anything to
18 climb out of, he has picked up on what you said, he says:
19 “‘So what you’re advocating then is a kind of race
20 hatred’.” He was absolutely right, was he not?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, he obviously had his agenda of questions. He
22 probably had them written down on his clipboard in front
23 of him, “Ask him about race hatred. Use the word ‘race’.
24 Keep calling him a racist’. This is the way journalists
25 keep their jobs, is it not? They are politically
26 correct. They know the questions to ask and nobody fires
. P-16
1 them. I have never been politically correct and I am not
2 ashamed of it.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: “So I said, ‘Before I answer your questions, would you
4 tell me what you believe in, as a journalist, an
5 Australian journalist. Do you believe in mixing up all
6 God’s races into one super, kind of mixed up race? Are
7 you in favour of racial intermarriage and racial mixing?’
8 and he said, ‘Well, I believe in multi-culturalism’.” Do
9 you believe, Mr Irving, in intermarriage between races, as
10 you call it?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: I have precisely the same attitude about this as the
12 Second Defendant does.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Tell us what your attitude is.
14 MR RAMPTON: Tell us what her attitude then is.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, or yours.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: I believe in God keeping the races the way he built them.
17 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I see.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: And I will be putting evidence about the Second
19 Defendant’s position on this in court later on.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Although he is remorselessly —-
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I beg your pardon?
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Sorry, although he is remorselessly pursuing his Final
23 Solution to kill off all the blacks in Africa?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: In his infinite wisdom.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In his infinite wisdom.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: That is not exactly what I said in the previous diary
. P-17
1 passage. That is a total manipulation of that passage.
Section 18.2-38.14
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: One more and then we can pass on to Moscow, Mr Irving.
3 There is a tab 3A in this file, K4. Your Lordship will
4 find this, I hope, on page 37A of the clip. This is, I
5 think, the Clarendon Club speech?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: My clip does not have a 37A.
7 MR RAMPTON: It has not got a 37A? It is a very short
8 passage. I have mine at 37A. May I ask your Lordship to
9 use the file which has got a tab 3A — at least mine has.
10 Your Lordship has a 3A tab.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: A tab, yes, but not in the clip.
12 MR RAMPTON: No, I am sorry, that is my fault. I have made my
13 own new number?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Can I say here, of course, that when the tables are turned
15 and it is my turn to cross-examine, I shall be putting in
16 any amount of evidence which completely refutes the notion
17 that I have racist attitudes.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a perfectly proper thing to say.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: The reason I say that, of course is —-
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You will have your turn, Mr Irving, of course.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but in the meantime, the world turns and newspapers
22 appear.
23 MR RAMPTON: That is too complicated for me. I cannot follow
24 that. Could you turn to — this is the Clarendon Club in
25 1990?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
. P-18
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The numbers of the pages are at the top right-hand
2 corner. There are 12 pages in all. Can you turn to page
3 9 of 12, please? I am going to read the whole of this.
4 This block in the first half of the page, leaving aside
5 the interesting historical comment in bold type. You say:
6 “Thus, we follow this tangled thread. At the end of the
7 war in 1945, the British Empire was at its greatest ever
8 extent in history. Our armies straddled the globe. We
9 were beginning to get back the territories that we had
10 lost in the Far East through Churchill’s foolish military
11 and naval strategy. And suddenly the Empire went.
12 Groping around in the darkness, we look for”, capital G,
13 “Guilty”, capital M, “Men. Partly I think that we must
14 blame sins of omission. If we look back from where
15 Britain is now, with just a handful of people of true
16 English, Irish, Scots and Welsh stock – apprehensive,
17 furtively meeting in dinners like this, exchanging our own
18 shared sensations and sorrows – then we can see where some
19 of the worst errors have been made.
20 “In 1958, for example, we find Lord Hailsham
21 saying at a Cabinet meeting, ‘I do not think this Coloured
22 Immigration is going to be much of a problem in Britain.
23 We only have 100,000 of these immigrants so far, and I do
24 not think the numbers are likely to grow much beyond
25 that! So on chance I am against having any restrictions
26 imposed”. It might be “on balance”, is it?
. P-19
1 A. [Mr Irving]: It should be “on balance”, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I think it should. Then you close the quote from Lord
3 Hailsham and you say: “Traitor No. 1 to the British
4 cause”. What do you mean by that?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Lord Hailsham, these were records that were in 1988 just
6 released from the Public Record Office, Cabinet records,
7 and they reveal Lord Hailsham, who later became a Lord
8 Chancellor, I believe, having said at a Cabinet meeting in
9 1958 in a totally negligent manner that he did not think
10 that immigration into Britain was going to be a problem
11 and that so far only 100,000 had arrived, and he thought
12 it would not go to more than that.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And why does that make him a traitor, No. 1 traitor?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Because it is the duty of the custodians of government in
15 this country to look ahead and to try to ward off any kind
16 of misfortunes and tragedies that may otherwise befall the
17 country which is put into their guardianship.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So what you are really saying is they have an overriding
19 obligation to safeguard the racial purity of the mixed bag
20 of mongrels of Anglo Saxons, French, Celts, Irish and
21 goodness knows what all that you call “English”, is that
22 right?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I am not sure that the British or English would be very
24 flattered by the “mongrels” that you have called them. If
25 I were to use language like that, I could be rightly and
26 justifiably accused of vilification, of defamation and
. P-20
1 possibly even of racism.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Some of us, Mr Irving —-
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Are you calling the English half breeds then?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Exactly, one of your favourite terms, “half breeds”.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, you called them “mongrels”. If I had used the word
6 “mongrel” in my diary, then I would have been the subject
7 of massive obloquy.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Some people, Mr Irving, leaving aside yourself and some of
9 your friends from the Third Reich, do not mind having
10 mixed ancestry. Does that baffle you? Do you find that
11 shocking?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I have explained to you what my notion of patriotism
13 is. Patriotism is pride in the country that has been
14 handed down to you by your parents and by their parents
15 before them.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I will carry on with the text, if I may? There is not
17 much more. I should like to think there is somebody
18 somewhere doing what Gilbert and Sullivan would have done
19 had Mikado do which is making up a little list of named
20 people”, to be executed is the allusion, is it not?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: That is a childish remark, frankly.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, that is right, is it not? Who is childish, me or
23 you?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: To suggest that a little list, there is a little list of
25 people to be executed in some kind of Fourth Reich what
26 is, no doubt, what you will have said next.
. P-21
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am not suggesting —-
2 A. [Mr Irving]: That we have democratic processes in this country where
3 lists of people get regularly fired by the electorate,
4 but, unfortunately, we did not know in 1958 that Lord
5 Hailsham had taken this wicked decision.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am not suggesting you wanted Lord Hailsham executed,
7 though may be you did —-
8 A. [Mr Irving]: That is precisely the innuendo you placed on that phrase.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But the little list in your book, if you are the Mikado,
10 is a list of traitors and the nature of their treachery is
11 to allow large numbers of people who are not of pure
12 mongrel English stock into this country, is it not?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: That is precisely what I did not say. What I did say, he
14 is a traitor because he has not had Britain’s interests,
15 the interests of the British people at heart. He has
16 failed to see ahead to the tragedy which massive
17 immigration would inflict on this country.
18 This country was existing in a relative state of
19 peace. If you ask the family of Steven Laurence, you will
20 see the kind of tragedy that has been inflicted on an
21 individual scale by massive immigration into a foreign
22 country.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So people like the Laurences, rather like your remarks
24 about the Jews, have brought it on themselves, is that the
25 theory?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Oh, really! If this is the level of your advocacy —-
. P-22
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, what do you mean?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: — this morning, then perhaps we ought to take a break.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What do you mean, Mr Irving?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Shall I spell it out?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, please.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: I will repeat what I just said. In the 1950s, Britain was
7 a country at peace. We had defeated a major world power.
8 We were licking our wounds and recovering and, for no
9 perceptible reason, we then through the folly and
10 negligence of the government that we had voted into power,
11 as we now see, through their total negligence, through
12 their ignorance, we inflicted on this country a body wound
13 which only began at that time, the kind of wound which has
14 led to 100,000 cases of the Stephen Laurence tragedy
15 occurring on one level, and it could have been avoided.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Those tragedies —-
17 A. [Mr Irving]: It was a tragedy inflicted on the immigrants whom we
18 imported as slaves, as cheap labour into this country, and
19 it was a tragedy on this country.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, and the reason why people like Stephen Laurence or
21 Stephen Laurence, if you like, was killed was because he
22 was black, was it not?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I think you are absolutely right. Of course, we do not
24 know because there has been no formal finding in that
25 matter.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And who is to blame for the fact that Stephen Laurence was
. P-23
1 killed because he was black?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I do not want to sound legalistic, but until there
3 is a proper legal enquiry into the matter and the guilt is
4 apportioned and we find out exactly what happened, it
5 would be wrong to kind of prejudge that issue, but we can
6 talk in theoretical terms and say who is to blame if a
7 black is killed by racist white thugs.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, who is to blame?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: The racist white thugs are to blame.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Thank you very much. Now we go on, please: “Even if we
11 all pull together jointly and severally for the next 10,
12 20, or 30 years and manage to put the clock back, say,
13 half an hour of its time, the really”, capital G,
14 “Guilty”, capital P, “People” will have passed on
15 commemorated only by the bronze plaques and the statues
16 and memorials scattered around our capital. We can go
17 around and efface those monuments; but it is going to be
18 a damned sight harder to put Britain back where it was.
19 I don’t think Mrs Thatcher or her like are going to be the
20 people to do it. Even less do I think the Socialist Party
21 are going to be the people to do it. Nothing makes me —
22 Mr David Irving — shudder —-
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Can I just explain the phrase Guilty People, why it is in
24 capital letters?
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We have had all that earlier on.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Say what you want to say about it and then we
. P-24
1 will come back.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: It is a reference of course to a very famous book by
3 Michael Foot in 1938 about the appeasers.
4 MR RAMPTON: In this context it means the politicians who
5 allowed all these black, brown and Jewish people into this
6 country, does it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think we are talking about specific categories of
8 people. We are talking about the appeasers, who have
9 kowtowed to the Buddha of political correctness.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Whatever.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: And have ruined their own country in the process.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, please. Sometimes your interpretation of your
13 own words is, to say the least, bewildering. In this
14 context, it must be, must it not, that one of the
15 principal guilty people, in fact possibly the most guilty
16 because he is traitor number 1, was, for example, Lord
17 Hailsham?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: And cabinet ministers like him, quite clearly. I have
19 simply taken him as an example because that record has
20 just come into the public domain at that time, but we
21 presume that there are others like him, Harold Macmillan
22 and others of that ilk.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Anybody who, at the very least, acquiesced in the
24 admission to this country of large numbers of immigrants?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Of whatever colour. It would have made no difference if
26 they had acquiesced in the immigration into Britain of
. P-25
1 huge numbers of, shall we say, Slovaks or Poles or people
2 of whatever colour. If you import people, whatever
3 colour, into a country on that massive scale, it
4 introduces social unrest and economic unrest. There is no
5 reference in this passage, what you have read, from which
6 one can deduce that I am referring in that passage only to
7 people of colour, let alone the Jews or anybody else that
8 you are trying to shoehorn into it.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do not worry about that. We have just seen a reference in
10 the Hailsham passage to coloured immigration.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: That is what was happening at that time. Lord Hailsham
12 referred specifically in cabinet to the coloured
13 immigration.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Capital C, capital I, Coloured Immigration. Now we are
15 going to see exactly what you talking about in the next
16 sentence, if you will just let me read it:
17 “Nothing makes me shudder more than two or
18 three months, working on a new manuscript, and I arrive
19 back at Heathrow Airport – where of course, my passport is
20 checked by a Pakistani immigration officer (Laughter).
21 Isn’t that a humiliation for us English? (Applause)”.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Can we continue, please, and we will see what makes me
23 shudder.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. We will come to the rest of it in a
25 moment.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: That is the parenthesis. He has read the parenthesis as
. P-26
1 though that is what makes me shudder, and of course that
2 is not what makes me shudder.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You are going to be asked a question about that particular
4 sentence now.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Can we read the whole sentence in context?
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You can see what comes later in a moment. Just answer
7 Mr Rampton’s question first.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: He has paused at the wrong place.
9 MR RAMPTON: No, Mr Irving. I want to know what is the matter
10 with your passport stamp being put, or whatever it is, put
11 on by a Pakistani.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: “Checked by”.
13 MR RAMPTON: Checked by a Pakistani immigration official,
14 officer, which caused great laughter amongst the audience
15 apparently, or the laughter anyway, and why you should be
16 applauded for saying that such an experience is an
17 “humiliation for us English”?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, presumably, if he is a Pakistani and he is working
19 there, he has less right to check my passport than an
20 Englishman who is working there. I would expect an
21 Englishman to be better in control of immigration into
22 England than somebody who has born outside the country,
23 which is why that remark is made.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is as maybe. Mr Rampton’s question is
25 why is it humiliating?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: That is bound up in my answer to the question, my Lord,
. P-27
1 that I would have expected English people to be checking
2 the immigration. If you go to Germany, you do not have,
3 for example, Jamaicans, or you do not have Kosovans, or
4 you do not have Russians checking the passports going into
5 the country. You expect to have people of the country
6 concerned who are checking the passports of the people
7 going in and specifically at immigration control.
8 MR RAMPTON: There might be a problem if you have had an
9 immigration officer newly brought from, let us say, the
10 north west provinces of China who did not speak English.
11 Beyond that I simply do not understand what you are
12 saying, I am afraid.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: I think I have explained it relatively well. On the
14 balance of probabilities at the time that I am talking
15 about, these people have not been born in England. You
16 were referring specifically to these people, these people
17 that you have referred to. They have not been born in
18 England, but they have been granted jobs in the Customs
19 and Immigration service, and we find that they are
20 checking our right to come back into the country in which
21 we have been born, which strikes me as being paradoxical.
22 This is what I am trying to convey to the readers.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you have any idea, Mr Irving? I do not, but I can
24 easily find out if it is necessary. Do you any idea,
25 Mr Irving, how many of the so-called coloured minorities,
26 minority peoples, in this country have been born here?
. P-28
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Are you going to lead evidence on this?
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. I want to know if you know.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I have no idea whatsoever that I can state here on
4 oath, no.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then what is the basis for your remark that on a balance
6 of probabilities that chap at the airport not been born
7 here?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: That is why I used the phrase “on the balance of
9 probabilities”.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What is your basis for thinking there is a balance of
11 probabilities?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Because we know of the rate at which immigration occurred
13 within the last ten years, within last 15 years, at the
14 time this speech had been, so on the balance of
15 probabilities these are recent arrivals, which is why
16 I stated that. Now can we have the rest of that
17 sentence?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, by all means.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Nothing makes me shudder more than arriving “and I go
20 outside the Terminal building and there is an Evening
21 Standard placard saying, ‘Kinnock in fresh Wedgwood Benn
22 row'”. That is what made me shudder. You tried to
23 pretend it was a Pakistani immigration official that made
24 me shudder. That is what I call manipulation.
25 MR RAMPTON: Oh, really? Mr Irving, I am afraid I reverse that
26 arrow and throw it straight back at you, because it is
. P-29
1 exactly what you have just done. What you were telling
2 your audience, which is why you got laughter and applause,
3 is that there was a humiliating experience of having your
4 passport checked by some dreadful little brown man who had
5 no business to be here that made you shudder.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: No. It is having it checked by a foreigner that made me
7 shudder. You yourself adduced the fact that he was
8 brown. Pakistanis of course are not necessarily
9 brown. It is perfectly possible to be Pakistani and
10 white, but you are the one who has the racist attitude and
11 you automatically assume that the Pakistani is brown.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: There are some, very few we know but, Mr Irving, do
13 not—-
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I know a number of very interesting cases of English
15 people who are born in Pakistan and found difficulties
16 getting back into England.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, this passage in your speech is all about
18 coloured immigrants.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: It is not. It is about immigration, of which the major
20 element is coloured immigration, of course, at that time.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, and so that is why you chose—-
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Now of course we have other immigration which is causing
23 problems. I would deliver exactly the same speech now
24 about immigration from central Europe which is not a
25 coloured immigration problem.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is why you chose the Pakistan instead of somebody
. P-30
1 else of, say, German ancestry, is it not?.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: It is unlikely there would be a German checking our
3 passports at Passport Control. I think that probably
4 everyone would draw the line at that.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why do you not say, “What makes me shudder, it is so
6 humiliating, when I get back to London I too often find
7 that the immigration officer is an Australian”?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: You are manipulating this again. What made me shudder was
9 the placard outside reading, “Kinnock in fresh row with
10 Wedgwood Benn” and you know you are back in England again.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It speaks for itself, does it not?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: He is manipulating again, and trying to tell the public
13 gallery that I shuddered at arriving and finding a
14 Pakistani checking my passport.
15 MR RAMPTON: Now, my Lord, I propose to pass from racism —-
16 A. [Mr Irving]: That is precisely the kind of manipulation that I am
17 accused of.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I propose to pass from racism — I have said enough about
19 that, I believe — to Moscow.
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Can we then in at that case please call my witness first?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but just before you do that, I want to
22 get something straight. I have got a clip, which
23 I suppose consists of, I do not know, 30/40 speeches or
24 extracts from the speeches.
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It seems to me that on this aspect of the
. P-31
1 case the position is somewhat different. The mere fact
2 you have not cross-examined on these other speeches.
3 MR RAMPTON: I should have said that.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That does not, it seems to me, mean that they
5 are not part of the case and, Mr Irving, you should be
6 clear that that is the way in which I am approaching this
7 part of the case. Do you follow what I am saying?.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: In other words, you intend to take into account the other
9 ones on which he has not cross-examined?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think that must be right on this part
11 of the case, that being the criticism, because you have
12 explained very clearly, if I may say so, what your views
13 are on the topic of alleged racism.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes or whatever, patriotism.
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I think I am entitled therefore to look at the totality of
16 all this.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Well I would have preferred that they would have marked
18 those passages in the full text of the speeches.
19 MR RAMPTON: They are.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: They are. That is what has been done, you
21 see. I have the full context..
22 A. [Mr Irving]: And that you would have looked at the full text so you
23 could have seen the full context.
24 MR RAMPTON: I would invite your Lordship — I should have said
25 it. I did sort of indicate it when I started, by saying,
26 if we went through every single one, we would be here
. P-32
1 until Christmas, which we would have been.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I wanted to spell it out and have it on the
3 transcript.
4 MR RAMPTON: I am very grateful. I do urge your Lordship, as
5 far as your Lordship wishes to do, it is entirely a matter
6 for yourself, to read as much of the whole of the speeches
7 as is relevant, which are not necessarily just the
8 passages marked.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have been through quite a lot of it before
10 we even started.
11 MR RAMPTON: That is not excellent. That is really not for my
12 sake but for Mr Irving’s sake. My Lord, can I say
13 something before Mr Millar is called, and tell your
14 Lordship our proposal in relation to what I might call
15 Mr Irving’s right-wing associations. I mean that at the
16 moment in a neutral sense. The relevant documents, which
17 consist of letters, diary entries, and so on and so forth,
18 are spread across 14 files. Cross-examination making
19 reference to 14 different files is, we believe, simply not
20 practical. What we — I say “we”, I mean Miss Rogers —
21 is actually going to do is to produce a single file, as we
22 have for Moscow and for Dresden and for this topic that we
23 are have been dealing with, which shall have — this is
24 not necessarily written in stone — but documents
25 relating to the IHR, and these will all be the plaintiffs
26 documents, sorry Mr Irving’s documents, correspondence
. P-33
1 with Zundel, correspondence with German right-wing
2 persons, the DVU, somebody called Woch, Kristofferson,
3 Altsans and Karl Philip. Then there will be some diary
4 entries as well relating to all over the world, but they
5 will be in sequence. Whether we divide them up by
6 country, I do not know.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is fine by me. I am anxious that it
8 does not prejudice Mr Irving. I do not think it will,
9 will it, Mr Irving?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Once again, as we have frequently seen in the past when
11 they have done this kind of selection exercise, they have
12 left out sometimes replies which are germane to the issue,
13 and they have left out other letters which tend to
14 neutralize the effect of the first. And, of course, I am
15 also preparing a very extensive selection of extracts from
16 the diaries which neutralise their extraction from the
17 diaries.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do know how you want deal with that
19 physically because it is a problem. You are perfectly
20 entitled, if a document is put to you, to say, well, that
21 is fine but you must also have available the reply,
22 whatever it may be.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: At present we are intending to come back with our counter
24 attack when we have the chance of cross-examining each
25 witness concerned, Professor Funke and the others.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In the context of this case I think that is
. P-34
1 probably a reasonable way of dealing with it.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: It makes more sense, but of course it is going to produce
3 a very lopsided effect to start with and I would ask your
4 Lordship to bear that in mind.
5 MR RAMPTON: What will also be in the file, my Lord, is the
6 statement of case on this part of the case, which will be
7 cross-referenced to the contents of the file, and also the
8 relevant request for information and Mr Irving’s
9 responses. Mr Irving will necessarily and obviously get a
10 copy of the file. I hope he will get one before your
11 Lordship sees it. If he has any objection to it, aside
12 from the fact that he may want your Lordship to see other
13 stuff, then no doubt he will say so.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When are you thinking we are going to embark
15 on this? We are going get that when? On Monday?
16 MR RAMPTON: It will be ready by Monday, yes, but at the moment
17 my sense of direction if I can use that, tells me that,
18 unless your Lordship thinks it right that I should do so,
19 or unless we have a change of heart overnight, it may not
20 be necessary for me to cross-examine on that topic at all.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is entirely a matter for you.
22 MR RAMPTON: I know it is. What I am not proposing at the
23 moment is that the file should be produced on Monday and
24 that I should carry on cross-examining Mr Irving. If,
25 when everybody has digested the contents of the file,
26 I would have to have your Lordship’s permission if
. P-35
1 I wanted to cross-examine, your Lordship could ask me to
2 do so, and I would do so, if asked, or Mr Irving might
3 want me to.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will have to wait and see what is in the
5 file. Mr Irving may have a view about this as well.
6 MR RAMPTON: Of course. I add this. For fairly obvious
7 reasons, the one witness on this that we are going to call
8 is Dr Funke from Berlin, who is an expert in this area in
9 academic life in Germany, and he will be called as a
10 witness.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then I think it has to be put.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: In view of the undertones in that remark, can I ask what
13 other witnesses they do not intend calling, because we
14 have prepared very extensively for cross-examination of
15 Professor Levin, and Professor Eatwell.
16 MR RAMPTON: He is not coming.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: This is news, of course.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It will help Mr Irving if he knows what he
19 does not have to deal with.
20 MR RAMPTON: He does not have to bother with Professor Eatwell
21 or Professor Levin.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: This is news which I am hearing for the first time. We
23 have spent many weeks preparing documents for the purpose
24 of cross-examination of those two witnesses, and this is
25 not the way that a case should be conducted.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it would be helpful if, to the extent
. P-36
1 that witnesses are not going to be called, that Mr Irving
2 should be, as it were, the first to hear.
3 MR RAMPTON: He is.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In this case that is quite important.
5 MR RAMPTON: It is a decision that I made, I think probably
6 yesterday.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
8 MR RAMPTON: The reasons for it I am certainly not going to go
9 into. I do not have to at all.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No.
11 MR RAMPTON: What Mr Irving knows, because I think I have told
12 him before in open court, my Lord, is this. If there is
13 material which in his eyes undermines or affects the
14 credibility of witnesses who are not to be called as live
15 witnesses, he is entitled to put those materials before
16 the court.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: You are not telling me anything I do not know, of course.
18 I am perfectly entitled to do that under the
19 circumstances.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, we are trying to be constructive
21 about this and I am actually trying to save you some—-
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. I deeply regret this because we have informed the
23 defence at every stage which witnesses we are calling and
24 which we are not calling.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I have just said to Mr Rampton what you
26 heard me say, and I am sure he will let you know if and
. P-37
1 when he is abandoning any other witnesses. But if
2 Professor Funke is going to be called, then surely what he
3 has to say, for whatever it may be worth, ought to be put.
4 MR RAMPTON: If your Lordship pleases. That is what I said.
5 I might do it in very broad outline only.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a matter for you, but something has
7 to be put to give Mr Irving the opportunity to deal with
8 it.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: It makes it very difficult for me to put in a rebuttal
10 document unless these witnesses are there to put them to,
11 which may very well be why they have adopted this tactic.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we see how much of a problem that
13 proves to be? I think less than perhaps you think.
14 Having cleared the decks in that way, shall we now have
15 your Mr Millar? Do you need to speak to him before he
16 goes into the box?
17 MR IRVING: No.
18 MR RAMPTON: I do not know which file his witness statement is
19 in, I am afraid. C4, my Lord, tab 3. < (The witness stood down)
Part III: Peter Millar (38.20-59.11)
Section 38.20-49.9
20 < Mr Peter Millar, sworn.
21 Examined by Mr Irving.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Mr Millar, do you have a copy of your witness statement
23 with you?
24 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: No I do not.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Your Lordship will find it in —-
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have got it.
. P-38
1 MR IRVING: Mr Millar, when was the last time we met?
2 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Several years ago.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: About eight years ago?
4 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: About eight years ago, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: We have not rehearsed today’s discussion in any way?
6 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: In no way at all.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: No way at all. I just take you very rapidly through your
8 witness statement. In the third paragraph you say that
9 the Russian archives were in a very dilapidated building
10 and that the filing system extremely archaic. Is that
11 correct?
12 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Absolutely.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: In a minute or two I will be taking you through the
14 diary which I wrote, one entry, one day’s entry,
15 concerning our discussion with the Russian archivists. Is
16 it correct to say that, as you say in your witness
17 statement, no written agreement was made, everything was
18 arranged verbally?
19 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Absolutely.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you turn back to the first page in your witness
21 statement, please, at the bottom of that paragraph, “After
22 Mr Irving was allowed access, he told me that the boxes of
23 microfiches were stored in a very bad condition, in weak
24 cardboard boxes, with the individual boxes over filled and
25 no kind of special packaging to protect them”. Can the
26 witness be given a bundle of photographs, five photographs
. P-39
1 showing the boxes, or a number of boxes, and a number of
2 microfiches, the glass plates, and a number of photographs
3 made on those microfiches?
4 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: (Same handed) Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are those the boxes that, as far as you can recall —-
6 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Indeed, I remember them very well. I remember noticing in
7 particular the contemporary 1940s packaging.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, these were the original 50 year old boxes
9 that the glass plates were still stored in?
10 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Oh, yes, quite clearly.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you gain the impression that the Russian archivists, I
12 am going by your statement again, were unfamiliar with the
13 concept of outsiders having access to their material?
14 I lived in the Soviet Union for three years and Russian
15 archivists are completely unused to anyone having access
16 to anything.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: So a research room is something they are not familiar
18 with?
19 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: They would not even have ones to cope with.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did they facilities for reading these glass plates?
21 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Not at the time, no.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: So they had no microfilm reader?
23 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: There was no microfilm reader.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Nothing at all? How did I manage to read them, then, to
25 your recollection?
26 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: I am not actually — we looked at them at the time. They
. P-40
1 were not full script. You had a magnifying glass, and
2 possibly a light source behind.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: When I went to Moscow, had the Sunday Times provided me
4 with a list of episodes to look specifically for?
5 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: We had certainly at the Sunday Times, and I advising them,
6 looked at certain episodes that we were particularly
7 interest in, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was I going to be there only for a limited space of time?
9 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: As far as we knew.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Would it therefore have been practicable for me to have
11 browsed at length in the diaries for passages which were
12 not on the list?
13 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: I do not think so.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. I just want to ask you once again. There was no
15 written agreement between us and the Russians?
16 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: There was no written agreement that I was aware of.
17 Whether or not anything else had been arranged between the
18 legal department of the Sunday Times I have no idea. That
19 was not my capacity.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: There was no verbal agreement between us and the Russians
21 to your recollection or, if there was an agreement, what
22 nature did the agreement have, to your best recollection?
23 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: My best recollection was verbal agreement that we would
24 have access to the plates, that we would look at them and
25 eventually this would be with a view to publishing some of
26 the contents.
. P-41
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. You say to publishing some of the contents. Was
2 that restricted to a book or any kind of publication that
3 we desired?
4 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: I do not recall that being discussed.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did they limit in it in any way?
6 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: I do not recall them doing so.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the third page of your witness statement you say that
8 you double checked some of the transcriptions that I had
9 made, and the translations. Did you find any reason to
10 criticise the work that I had done?
11 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Certainly the translations — I am a fluent German speaker
12 and the translations were excellent. The transcripts
13 I had some difficulty because the archaic Gothic script is
14 difficult to decipher, but in those stretches where
15 I could make out words it seemed to be accurate.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Moving rapidly on, the final matter on your witness
17 statement is that you have visited me on several occasions
18 in my office in London, in my study.
19 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: At the time when we were negotiating over the Goebbels
20 diaries, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: This was 1992, is that correct?
22 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: That is correct.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you see hanging over my desk or anywhere in that
24 office an Adolf Hitler portrait?
25 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: No. I would have noticed that.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was there an Adolf Hitler signature on the desk in a frame
. P-42
1 or anything like that?
2 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: There was, as I refer to in the statement, a water colour
3 which I was extremely interested in, and you said that it
4 had been painted by Adolf Hitler and I said it was rather
5 better than my mother-in-law’s.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was it an original or a duplicate?
7 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: It was, as far as I was aware, an original. I asked you
8 that and you told me it was.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Your mother-in-law has got a picture by
10 Hitler as well?
11 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: My mother-in-law does water colours, sir.
12 MR IRVING: Finally, Mr Millar, would you turn to the little
13 bundle of the diary? Is it lying around there somewhere?
14 Otherwise, I will hand one up to you. I would ask you to
15 just to go to one entry of June 9th 1992.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you have a copy for me, Mr Irving, or have
17 you handed it up before?
18 MR IRVING: It has been handed up before about four or five
19 days ago with a green corner on it. I have one here.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I will have it here. Is the first
21 line “invitation needed”?
22 MR IRVING: Almost certainly, my Lord. It looks like a diary.
23 There are obviously many entries referring to Mr Millar,
24 but I think we will stick with the one day in Moscow when
25 we negotiated with the Russians, June 9th 1992, Tuesday.
26 Does your Lordship have it?
. P-43
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not got there yet but I think I have.
2 MR IRVING: This is the famous diary. There are no little
3 racist ditties in it, I am afraid.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us stick to the task in hand.
5 MR IRVING: “9.30 a.m. collected Millar at Metropole”. That is
6 the hotel. I would ask Mr Millar, would you read rapidly
7 through those two paragraphs?
8 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes, I have read them.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not so can you give me a moment?
10 (Pause for reading).
11 MR IRVING: In fact, I am going to ask you to read the first
12 four paragraphs down to the words “Left at 5 p.m.”
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: (Pause for reading) Yes.
14 MR IRVING: Very well. I think there is no need to read them
15 out in court is there, my Lord?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is really a matter for you. There is
17 certainly no need to.
18 MR IRVING: I would just ask him to paraphrase it. Am I
19 correct in saying this shows us arriving at the archives,
20 dealing with a man called Dr Bondarev?
21 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Who was Dr Bondarev to your recollection?
23 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: He was curator in charge of the archives. Certainly he
24 was the man who controlled access.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was he in overall charge of the Russian archive system?
26 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: No, only of that particular building.
. P-44
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Who was in overall charge of the Russian Federation
2 archive system?
3 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: The man whom we had to contact to gain access was
4 Bevininski at the Russian Federation Archives building.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Who?
6 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Sorry, Tarasov. I am confusing the two.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor Tarasov. You negotiated with him in Russian?
8 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: That is right.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: And I talked with him in English and German?
10 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: That is correct.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: And eventually he lifted the telephone and he telephoned
12 Bondarev.
13 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes, he did.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: What kind of directions did he give to Bondarev in general
15 terms?
16 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: He confirmed — we had already seen Bondarev — that we
17 were to be allowed to see the plates and to work with
18 them.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Was any kind of restriction placed on that access in
20 that telephone call, do you remember?
21 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: No, certainly not in that telephone call.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was there any kind of written paper passed between myself
23 and Bondarev and Tarasov on that occasion?
24 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: No.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: I only have one other point I wish to examine you on,
26 Mr Millar, and that is as follows. Two or three days
. P-45
1 later, I borrowed two of the glass plates from the
2 archives without permission.
3 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is correct. Did I put the plates back to the best of
5 your knowledge on the following day?
6 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: At my insistence.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was there any indication that I was intending not to put
8 them back?
9 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: No, there was not.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: What did we do with those plates on the night that they
11 had their night out, so to speak?
12 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: What was done with those plates was that you took them
13 and, using two pieces of cardboard, left them outside the
14 archive building.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but what did we do with them?
16 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: They were then shown to the Sunday Times representative.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did we have prints made on that night by a man called
18 Sacha?
19 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: That is right. They were taken away and used to take a
20 photographic copy.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: You expressed your disapproval of this technique?
22 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: I expressed my disapproval of the fact that they had been
23 removed from the archive because I thought it was
24 jeopardising the chances of our continued access.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Quite right. On the following day, did the archive allow
26 us to remove plates with permission?
. P-46
1 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: After some discussion with them, yes, that is right.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: And this permission was granted on more than one occasion?
3 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: To the best of my knowledge, it may have been, but my
4 memory is very vague on that part.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very well. Did we take two plates, or did I take two
6 plates, back to England by the same method for the purpose
7 of evaluation?
8 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: I am not sure what you mean by “the same method”.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, without permission?
10 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: There was some question of whether or not permission had
11 been granted at that stage. Certainly two plates were
12 taken back to England and were copied and as soon as
13 valuation — primarily because at the time we were very
14 concerned about the authenticity. The Sunday Times had
15 been caught with its pants down over the Hitler diaries.
16 It did not want to repeat the same thing with Mr Goebbels.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: I should really have identified you formally at the
18 beginning of this examination-in-chief by saying you were
19 acting on behalf of the Sunday Times at all times on this
20 occasion?
21 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: That is correct, yes — in a freelance capacity.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: In a freelance capacity, but you were the go-between
23 between myself and Mr Andrew Neil?
24 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes, after you had initially made the contact with him,
25 yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: And the Sunday Times quite properly insisted on having the
. P-47
1 plates authenticated?
2 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Very much so. That was our major concern at that stage,
3 to make sure that these were genuine.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. To the best of your knowledge, did we have these
5 plates tested by a glass company, a glass laboratory?
6 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes. I remember quite clearly that they were tested.
7 I think possibly it was Pilkingtons. They were tested to
8 make sure that they were of an age and manufacture that
9 they purported to be.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did we have the emulsion of those photographic plates or
11 did the Sunday Times emulsion of those photographic
12 plates?
13 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Every possible test was done with a great concern about
14 the authenticity, and at no stage did we want to be seen
15 that we had got diaries that could be called into question
16 as to their genuine nature.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you at any time see me handing the plates in a way
18 that might have caused severe damage to them?
19 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Certainly not handling, apart from the occasion when they
20 were removed. You did not handle them in any way, but
21 I do think that the treatment on that night was perhaps
22 unwise, to say the least.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, the elicit nature of the removal?
24 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Sorry?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, can I ask this, did Mr Irving
26 explain to you why he brought two of the plates, or
. P-48
1 whatever it was, back to England?
2 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes. It was clearly understood at the time that was for
3 the purposes of establishing the authenticity and, as I
4 say, it was part of the whole agreement that every check
5 had to be made to be certain that these were genuine 1940s
6 microfiche plates.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Did you know in advance that he was going to do that?
8 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes.
9 MR IRVING: I have no further questions, my Lord.
Section 49.10-59.11
10 < Cross-Examined by MR RAMPTON, QC.
11 MR RAMPTON: I have very few. Mr Millar, can we just look at
12 your witness statement, please? It is probably best if
13 Mr Millar is given the Moscow file.
14 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Sorry, could I ask you to speak up slightly?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, I am sorry. It sounds very discourteous, I was
16 trying enquire — your Lordship has a Moscow file,
17 I think?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know. Has Mr Irving had this?
19 MR RAMPTON: Oh, yes. On Tuesday, I think.
20 MR IRVING: What document are you going to refer to?
21 MR RAMPTON: I am, first of all, going to refer to Mr Millar’s
22 witness statement which is tab 3 of C4 — not that one,
23 Mr Millar, I am sorry. I want you to have both. It is
24 not your fault at all. There should be a file there
25 marked C4 containing witness statements.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is not, so can he have a C4? It is
. P-49
1 blue, I think.
2 MR RAMPTON: It is tab 3, I think, of that witness statement.
3 This is very confusing, Mr Millar. It is certainly not
4 your fault. That is your witness statement?
5 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: I have that anyway, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have that anyway? There we go. You did not need the
7 file at all. Can you turn to the second page of your
8 witness statement, please? In the middle of the page
9 there is a paragraph which begins “On one occasion”, do
10 you see that?
11 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am going to read it. “On one occasion, after the
13 archives for the day, to my extreme annoyance, Mr Irving
14 told me that he had secretly removed two plates from the
15 archives to show to Andrew Neil, the Sunday Times editor
16 who was also in Moscow at the time. These plates he had
17 concealed in a James Bond-style fashion outside the
18 Institute. I told him this was foolish and risked
19 jeopardising the whole agreement – an opinion he thought
20 to be rather ‘wimpish’. I insisted they be replaced the
21 next day, which, to the best of my knowledge, they duly
22 were.”
23 Then if you skip a paragraph you see that, so as
24 far as you were aware, you were not, I do not think, a
25 party to this directly, the same thing seems to have
26 happened with two more plates; is that right?
. P-50
1 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: That is correct.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. I only want to ask you two questions about that
3 paragraph that I read out. First of all, are its contents
4 true?
5 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have to say “yes” because of the microphone.
7 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: I am sorry, yes, they are true.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is a recording microphone. Thank you. The only other
9 question is this. What do you mean when you write,
10 “These plates he had concealed in a James Bond-style
11 fashion outside the Institute”?
12 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: He had, to the best of my recollection, prepared two
13 postcards which were slightly larger than the glass
14 plates, or of cardboard material, one of which certainly
15 had a postcard picture on it, had wrapped the plates in
16 these and left them on a piece of waste ground about 100
17 yards from the Institute.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So it was clear to you that he knew that he should not be
19 taking the plates?
20 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Quite.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then only one other thing: now will you please take the
22 other file, the one you were first given, which is that
23 one, and turn in it to I think it is page A37? It is in
24 the front tab of the file. At A36 you see what the
25 document is. It looks like a document from a memo from
26 you and John Witheroe to the Editor of the Sunday Times.
. P-51
1 It is dated 2nd July ’92. Do you have that?
2 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If you turn over to the second page, which is A37, and
4 look at paragraph 10: “We have also carried out our own
5 handwriting and forensic tests on the glass plates and
6 microfilm. These are not conclusive, but all indicate
7 that the plates are not recently made and that the writing
8 is that of Goebbels, although one of the tests seemed to
9 indicate that they could have been copies. (We have not
10 been able to do all tests because this would have meant
11 destroying or severely damaging the plates. See below in
12 case this becomes an issue).
13 “Asked how we got hold of two of the plates for
14 tests, I suggest we fudge it by saying we have been
15 supplied with two plates and that they are now safely back
16 in the archives”.
17 I am not criticising you for anything, Mr Millar
18 — apart from anything else, you are not a party to this
19 action — but what was it that suggested to you the need
20 to fudge?
21 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: There was nothing that suggested that we need to fudge it.
22 If you see, it was hypothetical. The question is if we
23 are asked. The point was that the Times, as I repeat, the
24 Sunday Times was very concerned about authenticity of
25 these plates because of the Hitler’s Diaries fiasco and,
26 therefore, there was some concern that we should be seen
. P-52
1 to avoid any mistake again, and the question was whether
2 and how we had got hold of these, we were obviously very
3 concerned at this time nothing had been made known about
4 the diaries. We did not want any other newspapers to get
5 wind of what we were doing.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In particular, you did not want it to be known that these
7 two plates which you brought back to this country via
8 Munich to be tested for authenticity that they had been
9 nicked — I know they were returned — if I may use a
10 common expression?
11 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: No, actually. I am going to disagree. As far as I know,
12 the two plates that were nicked, as you put it, were those
13 that were put on the piece of waste land overnight.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What about the next two?
15 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Those were nicked and returned, and that had nothing to do
16 with these — we are talking about two separate plates
17 here and, as you will see from my witness statement, I was
18 not present at the time the second two plates were taken
19 back to the UK. I do not know the exact circumstances,
20 I did assume that they were with permission.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You assumed they were with permission?
22 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes, I did.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Look back at your witness statement, will you, the second
24 page? I will put it this way: do you know now,
25 Mr Millar, that they were not taken with permission?
26 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Sorry, was that a question?
. P-53
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, it was. I am sorry. It is difficult when I
2 am asking you a question and somebody else answers it.
3 Mr Millar, you do know now, do you not, that those two
4 plates that were brought back to England were not taken
5 with permission?
6 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: No, I do not actually. I do not know that.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am grateful to Miss Rogers. In the Moscow file,
8 Mr Millar, could you look, in the light of that last
9 answer, at page A28 in the front section of the file?
10 There is a document whose format is not familiar to me,
11 but I expect you will recognize it. What is it exactly?
12 It is headed: “Catch gubby” — is it some kind of
13 computer print out?
14 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Sorry?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Is it some kind of computer print out?
16 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes, oh, it is. I recognize it. Yes, it is —-
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You do recognize it?
18 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: It is — yes, I do recognize it. Indeed, it is an
19 internal print out on the Old News International printer.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So it is a Sunday Times document?
21 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: It is.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, and do you know who wrote it?
23 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: It tells me at the top. It was, without looking at in
24 great detail, if you would like me to take a minute I can
25 do that, but it appears to have been done on Susan
26 Douglas’s computer.
. P-54
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Maybe it was done on her computer, but where would
2 show get her information from?
3 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Would you like me to spend a few minutes just reading the
4 document?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes of course, do.
6 MR RAMPTON: Well, look, just let us hurry up because I do not
7 want to detain you longer than you need be here. Can you
8 just read the third paragraph?
9 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Actually, I would like to read the whole thing if we are
10 going to talk about it.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: OK.
12 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes, I am not familiar with it and, in fact, it is a memo
13 that was composed by myself and Susan Douglas jointly for
14 submission to Andrew Neil.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So may I now read the third paragraph on page A28?
16 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Irving has taken liberties in our name in Moscow
18 ‘borrowing’ two plates and taking them out of the country
19 and will shamelessly take more. I would be very wary, as
20 I am sure would John and Matthew, of giving any impression
21 over there that Irving represents us in any way except in
22 this affair. He is not above trading on our reputation
23 for his own profit”. Now, are those your thoughts?
24 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: They are the thoughts of Susan and myself combined, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So you were — I do not blame you for getting in a muddle
26 — then that the second two plates which were brought
. P-55
1 back here were also nicked?
2 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: At the time it certainly appears that I was, yes.
3 MR RAMPTON: Thank you, Mr Millar.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I, before you re-examine, Mr Irving, just
5 ask one question?
6 Looking at what you know Mr Irving did, do you
7 take the view that he did break an agreement? You used
8 the term “borrow”, in inverted commas, but do you take the
9 position that he was breaking an agreement with the
10 Russians?
11 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: No agreement that we made specifically touched on the
12 terms of whether or not the plates should be taken out of
13 the archive. It may have been and it could have been
14 understood, certainly, that they were not to be taken out,
15 but there was no formal agreement.
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Could have been understood?
17 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: It could have been understood, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Thank you. Mr Irving, you have a right to re-examine.
19 < Re-examined by MR IRVING
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: By the use by Mr Rampton of the word “nicked”, do you
21 understand “stolen”?
22 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes. I understood he was using it in inverted commas and
23 I used the same verbal inverted commas around them on the
24 way back.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: And do you understood by the word “stolen” the permanent
26 depriving of somebody else of their rightful property?
. P-56
1 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Yes.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am bound to say, Mr Irving, I did not
3 really understand Mr Rampton’s use of the word “nicked” to
4 mean that, but perhaps he would clarify that.
5 MR IRVING: Well, your Lordship moves in different circles from
6 myself.
7 MR RAMPTON: No, no, not only did I put the word “nicked” in
8 inverted commas, but I actually said to the witness,”And,
9 of course, I do not mean stolen because they were taken
10 back”, and I knew it.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That was my understanding.
12 MR IRVING: His final words were that “Mr Irving nicked these
13 plates”, and the circles that I move in the word “nicked”
14 certainly means permanently depriving somebody of their
15 rightful property which is stealing.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is why I invited him to clarify and he
17 has now done so.
18 MR IRVING: We have now clarified. Thank you very much.
19 (To the witness): So there can no doubt on two matters,
20 Mr Millar, at no time have I permanently deprived the
21 Russian archives of their property?
22 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Not to my knowledge.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Not to your knowledge. You inadvertently stated that,
24 “the plates on the waste ground were left there
25 overnight, in my view”. Is it not true that, in fact, the
26 plates were removed from the archives for a couple of
. P-57
1 hours, left in the cardboard protecting container there
2 behind the wall on the waste ground until the close of the
3 archives and then handed to the photographer so they were
4 not —-
5 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: That is correct, indeed true. The intention was to
6 present them to Andrew Neil the next morning, and, as I
7 recall, we went back to the archive, you should me where
8 they were. I expressed horror and at that stage we said,
9 “Let us take these now the archive is closed”. I asked
10 if we should take them back immediately, but the archive
11 was then closed, so, I said, “Right, we will take them to
12 show to the editor and, hopefully, they can be replaced
13 first thing in the morning without anyone noticing they
14 have ever been gone”.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Precisely, and this, of course, had been the subject of a
16 formal admission by myself. Once more, Mr Millar, did you
17 or I or the Sunday Times at any time by our actions
18 endanger these plates?
19 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: With the exception of having left them for those few hours
20 on the piece of waste ground, no.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Thank you very much. No further questions.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask you one further question,
23 Mr Millar? Did the Sunday Times pay Mr Irving the agreed
24 fee?
25 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: That I think you will find is the subject of a separate
26 legal action. There was —-
. P-58
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: It does not stop you answering the question.
2 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: No, there was certainly a fee agreed, but at some stage a
3 technical argument arose (to which I am not fully privy)
4 about whether or not Mr Irving was in breach of that
5 contract, and a lengthy, certainly a legal case was begun
6 (and eventually settled) as to whether or not he should be
7 paid any or all of the sums owing to him.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes, well, I will not pursue that. Thank you very. You
9 are free to go.
10 A. [Mr Peter Millar]: Thank you.
11 < (The witness stood down)
Part IV: David Irving Cross-examined by Richard Rampton, continued (59.12-88.21)
Section 59.12 to 75.25
12 < MR DAVID IRVING, recalled.
13 < Cross-Examined by MR RAMPTON, QC, continued.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you want a break, Mr Irving?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: No, sir, I will go straight on — unless your Lordship
16 wishes a five-minutes adjournment or Mr Rampton?
17 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I am going to abbreviate this as far as
18 I sensibly can.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: We are on Moscow now, right?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, I am only on Moscow and then I finish. Mr Irving,
21 you had heard of the existence of these microfiches at
22 Moscow, I do not know when, but some time early in ’92,
23 was it?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Around about May 6th 1992.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You thought you had a deal with Macmillan to publish them
26 if you could, as it were, get your hands on them?
. P-59
1 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You did not?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, what is the truth?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: I was writing a biography on Dr Joseph Goebbels which was
6 under contract with Macmillan Limited at that time.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And what happened to that contract with Macmillan?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: In September 1992 I wrote them a letter asking if I could
9 buy the rights back from them because I was not happy with
10 them as a publisher.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, I am sorry. You are going to have to be a little
12 bit more, what shall we say, less opaque about this in a
13 minute. We will use the file, if we may. Can you turn to
14 page A1? It is not the first page. It is about the tenth
15 page. A1 in the first section of that file?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Is this the one called “Background Information”?
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It should be a facsimile from you to the Editor of the
18 Sunday Times dated 26th May 1992 marked “confidential”,
19 eight pages in.
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Eight pages in?
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The numbers to look for, though they sometimes look like
22 4s, are called A1, etc., in a black circle at the bottom
23 right-hand corner of the page. I am sorry, as with all
24 the other documents, there is even one called 007 which is
25 interesting in the context.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: I have my A01 begins “Background Information”, is that
. P-60
1 correct?
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, that is 01. I am sorry. It is a complete muddle. If
3 you could find A1 without the O?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: How could I be so stupid? Right, now I have it.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In strictest confidence to Andrew Neil. “Dear Mr Neil” —
6 this is your document, is it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “I have just had an important deal collapse under my feet,
9 thanks to the prissiness of my New York publishers who
10 felt it was unethical”. Now, is that a reference to your
11 Macmillan deal?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What is it a reference to?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: On May 6th — I will be very brief — or approximately May
15 6th, I was informed in Munich by a personal friend of the
16 existence of the glass plates in the Moscow archives.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: This friend suggested that I should go to Moscow and if
19 I took 10 or $20,000 in cash I could buy these glass
20 plates from the archivists. I contacted the American
21 publishers of my Goebbels biography and asked if they
22 would increase the advance on the book to provide the
23 dollars necessary for this adventure. For four or five
24 days the American publishers were very excited.
25 I arranged the trip to Moscow, or I began arranging it,
26 and when I was far advanced, suddenly the American
. P-61
1 publishers decided that the idea of buying glass plates
2 from the Moscow archives looked unethical and they were
3 not prepared to get involved with it.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Right, and you say that those American publishers were not
5 called Macmillan?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: That Goebbels book went through so many hands, I would
7 have remind myself.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: When you said Macmillan, of course, I am assuming that you
10 are referring to the English Macmillan publisher who did
11 have the rights in the book.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, I am sorry. I did not know they were different.
13 I am awfully sorry. I am sure that they are related —
14 they would have to be, would they not?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: They were not related. They spell themselves differently
16 too.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: They were not, oddly enough, no. I think
18 that is right.
19 MR RAMPTON: Were not? Oh, well, that is my ignorance. I am
20 sorry. Let us turn —-
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I know the Editor concerned was Don Fehr, but he also
22 meant from — that is F-E-H-R —–
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is a perfectly natural confusion on your part brought
24 about by my ignorance. Can we turn to your diaries,
25 please, your diary entries, section B of this file?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
. P-62
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: On page B2 is your entry for 26th May.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now —-
4 A. [Mr Irving]: “Macmillan Incorporated”, that is correct, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Rose 6.45 a.m., ran round Mayfair 97 per cent hot.”
6 Never mind the next bit. “A hectic day from which Telecom
7 much profited with calls to and from Moscow, New
8 York, … (reading to the words) … Frohlich. Susie
9 Terplar was the person that actually typed the entries.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: She was my assistant, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “The fuss was engendered first by attempts to get the
12 Moscow invitation needed, then tickets, then visas.
13 Finally, at 5 p.m. came a totally unexpected fax from
14 Macmillan Inc”. So you were, sort of, preparing to go on
15 behalf of Macmillan at this stage if I have understood —
16 Macmillan Inc?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: On behalf of myself as the author, but I was obviously
18 raising the funds by hook or by crook.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, plainly. “Refusing [to] put up the funds after all,
20 as they could not be party to a ‘bribe’!”
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That was their position?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, you have seen all the correspondence in discovery.
24 Their message said, “It looks like we are trying to bribe
25 a Russian official” —-
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
. P-63
1 A. [Mr Irving]: — “and this looks unethical to us”.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, whereas — I am not taking any point on this — your
3 position was that you might need to pay for the right to
4 use them?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: In two lines: The Soviet Union had collapsed. The
6 archive system was in total disarray. They could not even
7 afford to pay their own wages. We were doing the
8 archivist a favour by bringing him $20,000 in cash.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I do not think any criticism is being
10 made or could be made.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, well, having been publicly flogged for the last three
12 or four days, I always assumed that was going to be —-
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but you are not being at the moment.
14 That is the point I am trying to make.
15 MR RAMPTON: I deliberately read that so that everybody should
16 know that you put the word “bribe” in quotes and then put
17 an exclamation mark after it.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Whatever your publishers might have thought, it was not
20 something you agreed with?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: No. It was not. The Hoover Library, the Stamford
22 University, very many major American institutions had
23 already bought large parts of the Russian archives over
24 the previous weeks. There was a major sale going on.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: As I say, I really do want to rattle through the periphery
26 of this as quickly as I can. I know you suspect me and
. P-64
1 I understand why, but you must not always be suspicious.
2 Is it right that you were also concerned, and again I say
3 quite properly concerned, as an historian and an author
4 that the people in Munich might get there first?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Oh, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And spoil your coup, your scoop, whatever you would like
7 to call it?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do historians take perfectly natural pride in being the
10 first there?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now I want to whiz on, if I may? Did you eventually enter
13 into a contract with the Sunday Times?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: After — it was a contract in two stages. There was a
15 letter of agreement that they would fund the first
16 exploratory trip which I made with Mr Millar to Moscow in
17 mid June 1992 —-
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: — when we would establish whether this was feasible,
20 whether the plates were there, whether they were genuine,
21 what their contents were, and whether the Russians were
22 open to a piece of horse trading; and then after I came
23 back from Moscow and we established to the satisfaction of
24 the Sunday Times that I had obtained the material, or was
25 in the process of obtaining it, then a contract was drawn
26 up in a proper legal manner.
. P-65
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And I know that you fell out in some way (and I am not
2 interested in why unless you want to tell his Lordship in
3 re-examination) you fell out with them for some reason and
4 they did not actually pay you, the contract —-
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, the reason is, of course, material to this case —
6 we will find that later — but the deal was they would pay
7 me £75,000 plus VAT for the particular —-
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Did they ever pay any of that?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: They paid one-third of it, yes, and they welshed on the
10 rest.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did you say it was not material?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: The reasons why they welshed on the deal is evident from
13 the discovery. They came under immense world wide
14 pressure. Andrew Neil said he had never experienced
15 anything like it.
16 MR RAMPTON: Oh, you mean we are back at the traditional enemy,
17 sort of thing, are we?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, if you wish to encapsulate it in that phrase —-
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, I am trying to use shorthand.
20 A. [Mr Irving]: — but you have seen the discovery, you have seen the
21 documents.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But none of them from anybody who is a Defendant in this
23 case, I hope?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then I do not see that it is material. Mr Irving, so you
26 had two incentives to make this exercise a success?
. P-66
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Three incentives.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: One was that you would then, as I say, quite properly get
3 the —-
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Kudos.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — kudos for having the job which, I have no doubt, you
6 properly did when you had done it?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And the second incentive was financial because you had a
9 good contract?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, the third incentive was that I wanted the material
11 for my biography of Dr Goebbels.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Right, that is three very sensible (and I make no
13 criticism) three strong incentives to be the first there?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: That is right, and the people you call the traditional
15 enemy had precisely the same incentives for stopping me.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You knew, however, that the Sunday Times — this is after
17 the Hitler diaries fiasco, was it not?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: The Hitler diary fiasco in April 1993.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Exactly. So you knew that the Sunday Times would be very
20 wary, and no doubt they told you so, of getting their
21 fingers burned a second time?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Andrew Neil sad to me, “We are very wary about this here
23 in the office, as soon as we hear the word Nazis and
24 everybody gets very nervous”, and my response was,
25 “Andrew, this is the chance, I am giving the Sunday Times
26 a chance to rehabilitate themselves”.
. P-67
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: One of the conditions, therefore, of this deal was no
2 doubt that the Sunday Times had to be satisfied of the
3 authenticity of the plates?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: At some stage, either before or after the first trip, they
5 made a contractual condition that I should obtained the
6 opinion of experts on the content of the diaries, and that
7 they should have other means of verifying of the integrity
8 of the actual material.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And that in due is what happened, was it not?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. You will see have seen from this trial that I attach
11 great importance to the integrity of the document.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can you turn in the same tab of the same file to page B7
13 to your diary entry of 10th June 1992?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Rose 7.45 a.m. wretched breakfast at Cosmo”, is that an
16 anagram of Moscow or a misprint?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: I think it is “Cosmos”.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Cosmos, is it?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: To looks to me like an anagram of Moscow, but never mind.
21 “With dried salami”, etc., yes, I sympathise with you.
22 “At 10 a.m. at the archives continued methodically
23 reading the microfiches and flagging in catalogue. It was
24 drizzling with rain. I illicitly borrowed the fiche we
25 had found covering the weeks before the war broke out, and
26 took it out of the archives at lunch for copying (in case
. P-68
1 the Germans managed to prevent this)”.
2 Will you explain exactly what that means?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: I knew from my contact in Munich that the head of the
4 German Federal Archive System, Professor Karlenburg, was
5 due to visit Moscow a few days later, and he was coming
6 effectively with a large empty suitcase to pick up all the
7 looted Nazis’ documents, and my experience then was that
8 when these documents get back into German archives they
9 vanish for several years and are unable to the
10 international community for historians. This has happened
11 again and again and again. So it was important on the
12 basis of what you have is what you have got, by hook or by
13 crook to get these vital materials out of the KGB archives
14 and make them available to the world of historians, which
15 is what I did.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, whether or not you had a written agreement with
17 the Russians, which I understand you did not have, you
18 describe to your own diary your conduct in taking this
19 fiche as illicit?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Totally illicit. I am deeply ashamed to have done that.
21 You do not normally go into archives and remove materials,
22 even though of course they are going to put them back the
23 next day, but desperate situations call for desperate
24 remedies. This was an archive with no copying
25 facilities. It had no microfiche reader. There was no
26 means of reading the materials they had. They did not
. P-69
1 know what they had.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: When you took it outside, and I do not know what Mr Millar
3 really meant, I did not really understand it, but he put
4 it in some kind of envelope when he took it outside
5 disguised as something, that is why he said “James Bond”?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, it was not disguised as something. Obviously these
7 were glass plates.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am not interested in that.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: You just mentioned this. I just said they were properly
10 packaged.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. I am not suggesting they were not. You took it
12 out. You say: “I tucked the envelope with the glass plate
13 into a hiding place before re-entering”?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What sort of a hiding place?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Behind a wall.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Was it still raining?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: No. Certainly I would not have left it standing in the
19 rain obviously. It was very well wrapped in plastic and
20 cardboard.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I see. We can take this quite shortly now I think?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I am not following. What was the
23 point of tucking the envelope into a hiding place before
24 re-entering?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: I took it out at the lunch break, concealed it, noting
26 where I concealed it, and I would come out then at the end
. P-70
1 of the archive closing, pick it up, take it to the
2 photographers, the Sunday Times office, have all pictures,
3 the images printed.
4 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: It was prior to taking it back to England?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: No, my Lord. This was in the middle of my visit to
6 Moscow. We then had these glass plates printed up in
7 Moscow and took them back the first thing the next morning
8 and put them back in the box. That same day the archivist
9 said, “Sure, borrow some more”, and he allowed us to
10 borrow more and we did the same again.
11 MR RAMPTON: Can you turn over page to your entry of 11th June
12 which is B8. Can I start at 10.30 because I think we have
13 had enough of your breakfasts in Moscow: “10.30 a.m. taxi
14 to the archives. I return the borrow August 1939 fiche”,
15 that is the one we were talking about, is it not?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Why.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So it had stayed out overnight, had it not?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but not out in the open.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, I understand that.
20 A. [Mr Irving]: It had gone walkies.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Millar was wrong in saying it was returned the same
22 day?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think he did say that.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then I misunderstood. “I returned the borrowed August
25 1939 fiche and borrowed two by the same means”, that means
26 illicitly, does it not?
. P-71
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is March, June, September 1934, that is the night of
3 the long knives period?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: A vitally important period in Nazi history. It has been
5 concealed from the world for 55 years up to that point and
6 I found it.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Including the Rome purge”?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “I was overjoyed to find these two fiches. That clinches
10 the importance of this stay”. Over the page, please: “We
11 left the archives at 5 p.m. I passed the hidden plates”,
12 is it?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “To Peter Millar to get it”, it must be “them” “printed up
15 tonight”?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then you took them via —-
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Actually it looks like one plate rather than two.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I know. Never mind. It was in fact I think two because
20 we know from the documents that two plates were brought
21 back for testing.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, these obviously were not the ones brought back
23 because we had them printed up that night and, therefore,
24 put back the next morning.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So you borrow one illicitly put it back and then two more
26 and put them back, but the two that came to England, I do
. P-72
1 not really mind which they were, the two that came to
2 England were also taken illicitly?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I have to halt you there and say that this is now
4 June 11th which is the day before I returned to England.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Exactly.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: I do think that these ones were borrowed illicitly,
7 because certainly on that first trip Dr Bondarev allowed
8 us, he permitted us to take some plates out and have them
9 printed up overnight. So that may be these two.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. The two that went back to London via Munich were
11 taken illicitly, were they not? There were five in all.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but if Peter Millar had them printed up overnight
13 I would not have had to take them back to England to get
14 printed. The ones that I took out, which would have been,
15 I would have taken them out on June 12th —-
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, I do not know what time you —-
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Presumably.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not think you went back to the institute of whatever
19 it was before you left for Munich. We had better look at
20 the diary.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I am not going to argue about this, because of
22 course I have made a total admission in writing to you on
23 the question we of which ones were taken out and which
24 ones were left.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I know. I will finish now with one question. For the
26 sake of your good name and good standing as an historian,
. P-73
1 for the sake of £75,000, for the sake of beating the
2 Munich Institute to the line and for the sake of your
3 Goebbels book, on two occasions at least you illicitly
4 took valuable slides out of this Institute and on one of
5 those occasions you transferred them via aeroplane to
6 London?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Are you proud of yourself?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: I said earlier, no, I am not. It is not kind of thing one
10 wants to do as an historian. But when you are dealing
11 with the Russian archives which at any moment may seal up
12 again, as they have in the meantime, so these plates are
13 no longer available and the Germans are sitting on the
14 plates too, they are just beginning to publish them now
15 eight years after I was there. I think I did a valuable
16 service to the community. Every single plate that I had
17 copied I gave copies of the prints that I made to both
18 German archives, both in Koblenz and also to the Goebbels’
19 archives at his home town. So I made them immediately
20 available to the world of historians. So I did a service.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The end may have been worthy. The result may have been
22 desirable, but the means that you used, perhaps you would
23 agree, were, morally speaking, I am not interested in the
24 legality —-
25 A. [Mr Irving]: They were illicit.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Illicit and would you accept the word rather shabby?
. P-74
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I just want to be clear about
3 this. Shabby, something not to be proud of, but is it the
4 case that is put to Mr Irving that he broke an agreement?
5 MR RAMPTON: It must be, if he uses the word “illicitly”, it
6 must be that he knows impliedly he does not have
7 permission, which is a breach of an agreement.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we ask Mr Irving that. Did you know that
9 what you were doing amounted to breach of an
10 agreement —-
11 A. [Mr Irving]: I disagree in view of the fact —-
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: — with the archivists?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: — in view of the act that they allowed us to borrow the
14 plates anyway, it was obviously neither here nor there to
15 them, and there was certainly no agreement either verbal
16 or written.
17 MR RAMPTON: There is no written or verbal agreement, but —-
18 A. [Mr Irving]: On the contrary.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — as I think you told us earlier, no self-respecting
20 historian would deliberately remove such valuable material
21 from an archive without the permission of the archivist in
22 the ordinary way?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think that I damaged the world of historians one
24 bit. In fact I think I benefited them by having done it
25 the way I did.
Section 75.26 to 88.21
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is not an answer to my question, but it really does
. P-75
1 not matter. Are you quite certain in your own mind that
2 at no stage during the trip of these plates illicitly
3 taking plates from Moscow to London, they were in any
4 danger of being damaged en route?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: You should have seen the packaging I put them in.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Where did you put them, in a suitcase or your hand
7 luggage?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: They were put into this hard suitcase down there. They
9 were heavily wrapped in foam packaging and with layers of
10 cardboard. They were safer with me than they had been for
11 55 years in the Russian archives.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Hand luggage?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Hand luggage, and they were safer with me than they had
14 been in those flimsy boxes for 55 years with the Russians
15 boxes, in which boxes many of the plates were already
16 broken.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Had you any idea what means might be used to test the
18 plates for authenticity when you got home?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. It was obvious they were going to test the plates
20 glass by probably spectroscopy or by similar non-invasive
21 methods, and similarly also the emulsion. They would have
22 chosen the part of the emulsion that was not written upon,
23 so to speak.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, in the event the emulsion test was not done for fear
25 of damage, that is right, is it not?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: If you say so.
. P-76
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am only telling you what the Sunday Times tells me on a
2 piece of paper.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: We produced the reports in discovery from Pilkington and
4 from the laboratories, the photographic laboratories. We
5 carried out the appropriate or rather the Sunday Times
6 carried out the appropriate test.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You broke your journey I think in Munich, did you not?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: The flight to Moscow was made from Munich because there
9 were —-
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, but did you not break your journey and go to Rome?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: On June 9th?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. That was from Moscow?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: No. On June 9th I flew from Munich to Rome and back.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I think it was 13th. If we look at the diary page
15 B10 —-
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — I think you went on 13th from Munich to Rome and back
18 again?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Where were the plates when you went to Rome?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: They were with me at all times. No, I am sorry. I am
22 sorry, they were not. When I went to Rome I carried just
23 a very small bag with me containing not even my
24 typewriter. It contained just my overnight things for the
25 stay in the university and then to come back to Munich,
26 and I left that case in the hotel safe.
. P-77
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: With the plates in it?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You were not concerned there might be a fire or something
4 of that kind or are the safes fireproof?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, that thought did not cross my mind admittedly.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: While you were in Munich, can you turn the page to B11,
7 four paragraphs down —-
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — you say that you phoned Susie, that is Susie Terplar,
10 from airport?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Book me into … room 727. 7 p.m. back down to her and
13 phoned Altans.” Who is Altans?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: He is a young German hot head.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What do you mean by a “hot head”?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: He turned out to be a hot head.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What is a hot head in this context?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: A typical — a political hot head. He started off pretty
19 level and respectable, but he gradually flaked out.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In which direction does his hot headedness lead him?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, over the map really. He was right-winger, he was a
22 left-winger. He went to Israel. He ended up in the pay
23 of the German Intelligence services. It is difficult to
24 fix him on the map at all.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Was he on the right at this stage in history?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know what you would call the right.
. P-78
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If he is arranging a big meeting for Ernst
2 Zundel, it is fair to say he is not on the left.
3 MR RAMPTON: Put it this way, anything —-
4 A. [Mr Irving]: I think he was a revisionist. I think that is a fair word
5 to pin on him.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Certainly I would accept that he was a revisionist. By
7 “on the right” I mean somebody who would not approve of
8 coloured immigration into Germany or anywhere else in
9 Europe.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think he would actively advocate it.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “He is delighted to hear my voice. Has arranged a big
12 meeting for Ernst Zundel.” That is our old friend from
13 Toronto, is it not?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I cannot see any reference in this paragraph to coloured
15 immigration.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. I ask you a question. You have answered it. “Has
17 arranged a big meeting for Ernst Zundel”?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is our old friend from Toronto, is it not?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “To address this evening at the Zunfthouse restaurant.
22 Would I come and speak too. Answer: Provided you take
23 three boxes of my books along to sell”, and then you add
24 the wry note, “All’s well that ends well.”
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Did Mr Zundel speak at this meeting?
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1 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why? You were there.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I have a record or a habit of not bothering to
4 attend other people’s speeches if I can possibly avoid it,
5 and if I have had an exhausting day flying down to Rome
6 and back I would not have hung around to listen to
7 somebody speaking.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am not sure I can really accept that answer, I am
9 afraid.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: You were not listening what I just said. I had had an
11 exhausting flight down to Rome and back under the
12 circumstances you are familiar with and I was not likely
13 to hang around to listen to somebody speak.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am sorry, what time in the evening does Zundel speak
15 then or do you not even know that?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Why should I know after eight years?
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I will tell you. Look at the bottom of the page: “8 p.m.
18 taxi Zunfthouse, around 120 people packed into the
19 restaurant, much applause, Zundel spoke”?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Then after an interval I spoke half an hour on Goebbels’
22 plans”?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You were then when Zundel was speaking?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: I was certainly in the restaurant, but that does not mean
26 to say that I am listening to what he is saying. If you
. P-80
1 know what he has said you can put it to me and I will say,
2 yes, I heard him say this it or not.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I have no idea what he said. I am asking you. You were
4 there.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: I confirmed from this diary I was in the restaurant. It
6 is a very big restaurant like a typical German beer hall.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, you told us a moment ago that you would not
8 have got there in time to here Mr Zundel speak because you
9 would not have been interested.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: That is not exactly what I said.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is simply false statement.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry, I do not make false statements under oath.
13 I am careful not to and the words you have used are not
14 the words I said. I did not say “I did not get there in
15 time to hear him speak”.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You tried to give us the impression you were not there
17 when Zundel spoke.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: No. I gave the impression that if I have had an
19 exhausting day flying to Rome and back, exhausting for the
20 reasons you are familiar with, then I would not have hung
21 around to hear somebody speaking. I would have gone and
22 tucked myself down somewhere with a glass of beer or with
23 a cup of coffee and read the local newspaper.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Then after an interval I spoke half an hour on the
25 Goebbels’ finds. I one ‘plate'”?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
. P-81
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What does that mean?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: We had had some prints made, I had had some prints made
3 that day in the Munich archives I think, in the Institute.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is one of the borrowed plates?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That you had printed?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: That is right. If I put it in quotation marks then that
8 tells me I did not show the actual glass, but I showed the
9 print I had made of it.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Who took the plates back to Moscow after they had been
11 tested in this country?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: It should be evident. I think it was July 4th or July
13 3rd — July 2nd the two slides were legally borrowed or
14 returned by Sasha during the date of the archives.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can we turn on —-
16 A. [Mr Irving]: “July 3rd at 11.58 a.m. I walked out. He was seated in a
17 car across the street.” That was Jonathan Bastable who
18 had arrived from London as a courier bringing the plates
19 from the laboratories.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Carry on, will you.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Still July 3rd: At 11.58 a.m. I walked out. He was
22 seated in a car across the street. He handed the glass
23 plates back to me. I asked him to conduct the interviews
24 requested by Andrew Neil re the authenticity of the
25 provenance of the microfiche”. In other words, he was to
26 speak with the Russian archivists to ask what they knew
. P-82
1 about where they came from, the glass plates.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I will read the next bit if you are not willing to.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: I beg your pardon?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I wanted you to read the next paragraph. It is my fault.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: “I replaced the two plates, March to September 1934, in
6 the box of 13, making a total of 15. Unfortunately, the
7 archivist told me today that the archives will not under
8 their new agreement with ‘the Germans’ let me see the
9 other big boxes again. Operation stable door, I already
10 have nearly all that was necessary”.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I can understand that. It does not need an explanation.
12 So you put back the two plates that you borrowed from
13 London, is that right?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: That I borrowed for London and had now come back from
15 London and they are put back where they belonged.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: After about three weeks?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We will go, if we may, to the bottom of the page at 1.50.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: “At 1.50 p.m. archivist asked me outside into the corridor
20 and with embarrass asked me if I had taken plates out of
21 the collection. I replied that we had borrowed plates
22 with permission but had returned all those that we had
23 borrowed intact.”
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That was not true, was it?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, it was, I suppose, suppressio vale rather than
26 suppressio falsi. I have no original items from their
. P-83
1 collection in my possession. Only the copies we or they
2 had made. I then voluntarily hand wrote a declaration
3 stating this and had it translated into Russian and signed
4 both text and took a photocopy.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So, technically speaking, that was true of course.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you know the legal, it is a boring expression, but do
8 you know the lawyers’ expression swearing by the card?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Swearing by?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The card?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: No. That is legalese.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In other words, literally true but, as a matter of
13 reality, a false declaration. Do you agree?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but no attempt had been made to conceal the fact that
15 I had those glass plates. In Munich, for example, I took
16 them into the printing room in the basement, showed them
17 to the staff there, had them properly printed by the staff
18 there. While I was in Munich I then had two of the
19 pages — I am sorry, do I have your attention?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Sorry.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: While I was in Munich I had two of pages sent upstairs to
22 the Institute and asked them: Will you please verify
23 these pages I have obtained from Moscow. I also
24 simultaneously sent two pages to the German Federal
25 archives in Koblenz and asked them to verify the
26 handwriting as well. So I made not the slightest attempt
. P-84
1 to conceal that I had those plates.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Except from the Russians?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Except from Russians.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What Tatiana’s response when you revealed
5 that you had actually removed them from the archive?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: I then wrote the declaration, my Lord, saying that
7 everything that had been removed the archives, using, so
8 to speak, the passive voice, was back and that nothing was
9 missing.
10 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: But was she shocked and horrified? That is what I am
11 really getting at.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: No, because, of course, they had allowed my to. They knew
13 perfectly well they had allowed me to take plates out as
14 well. So when I gave her that statement which was really
15 the statement she was asking for, and if you read on, my
16 Lord — I am not sure if it is continued — she then told
17 me a few minutes later at 2.05 p.m. that they were most
18 grateful for this, as this was an allegation that had come
19 from Munich. In other words, my rivals had ratted on me
20 and had sent a fax to Moscow saying, “He has got some of
21 the plates”.
22 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I believe his Lordship may not have
23 quite got the whole of the picture. One plate was removed
24 and hidden for overnight?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Taken overnight and put back. You did not have permission
. P-85
1 for that?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Did you have permission to take two plates which were
4 later replaced?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Two and two. They gave us permission to take two and two,
6 so we took out four plates with permission.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, they did not give you permission to take plates back
8 to England for testing?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And Tatiana never knew about the first plate and she never
11 knew (because you did not tell her) about the trip those
12 plates made to England and back?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Right, thank you.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: But all this, of course, is the subject of a formal
16 written admission which I made to you in this case over a
17 year ago. So we could have spared a lot of this time.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am grateful.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: It is not really material in the issue anyway, in my
20 submission.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, are you aware of serious concern
22 in archival circles that you might have significantly
23 damaged the plates when you had them copied without
24 archival permission?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: This is the allegation made in the book. We are not going
26 to be able to test that allegation because we will not
. P-86
1 have the chance of — I have not seen any evidence put in
2 to that effect.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am asking you whether you are aware of any?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: No, I am not aware of it, my Lord. We now hear that the
5 Russian archivists are not going to be called either. So
6 it is going to be very difficult to establish the truth of
7 that allegation.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see the force of that.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: But I shall try to lead evidence when my time comes to the
10 effect that I have benefited the community of historians
11 rather than having disadvantaged them.
12 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, for the moment at least, until we get
13 back, if we do, to right-wing extremism perhaps next week,
14 that concludes my cross-examination at the moment.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask you because it is something
16 that went through my mind in fact this morning about
17 Dresden?
18 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The position on Dresden is that there is
20 quite a lot of material on it.
21 MR RAMPTON: Yes. It is all in that file.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. We really spent, I am probably wrong
23 about this, but it seemed to me that we really spent most
24 of the time on Tagesbefehl 47. There is a good deal more
25 and I just wondered again what the position in relation to
26 Professor Evans’ other points on Dresden is.
. P-87
1 MR RAMPTON: Well, again, if Mr Irving wishes to challenge
2 Professor Evans, that no doubt will be flooding back into
3 the arena. For my part, again, one has to make judgments
4 in a case of this magnitude.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I quite understand.
6 MR RAMPTON: Or we are going to be here for ever. I am, I am
7 afraid, not one of those advocates who takes every point
8 under the sun in the hope that something will come out.
9 If there are points on Evans’ report that I have not
10 taken, it is because I have made a deliberate decision not
11 to.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: I shall certainly be cross-examining Evans on matters
13 relating to Dresden and putting documents to him.
14 MR RAMPTON: Might I enquire, before I sit down, through your
15 Lordship of Mr Irving how long he expects that his
16 cross-examination of Professor Evans might be?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Evans or Browning?
18 MR RAMPTON: Evans. Both actually, because I need to schedule
19 both of them.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you want to go back to your other role?
21 < (The witness stood down)
Part V: Closing Proceedings (88.22-93.5)
22 MR IRVING: I now wear my other hat and say that, in view of
23 the revelation today that the defence are not proposing to
24 call Professors Levin and Eatwell, a lot of the
25 cross-examination that would have fallen on them will now
26 fall on Professor Evans, who relied in part on their
. P-88
1 expert reports.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are perfectly entitled to cross-examine
3 any of the experts on anything subject to their
4 entitlement to say, “I have not a clue and I do not know
5 about that”.
6 MR IRVING: I can only do that of course if they are present.
7 I do not propose to subpoena them because I do not suppose
8 that would have much point.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You cannot do that for all sorts of reasons
10 but there is no reason why you should not cross-examine
11 Professor Evans about what is said in the other experts’
12 reports that I am aware of anyway.
13 MR IRVING: I can put to Professor Evans the documents that
14 I would have been putting to Professors Levin or Eatwell.
15 It is an unsatisfactory state of affairs but it also means
16 inevitably that Professor Evans had better check into a
17 hotel for some length of time.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we take them one at a time? Browning
19 we have on Monday. His report is quite short, which is a
20 virtue.
21 MR IRVING: Browning has many enemies around the world who have
22 been funding me with material with which to challenge him.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How long is the challenge going to take?
24 MR IRVING: Two days for Professor Browning, I think.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is Monday and Tuesday. Then Evans
26 next?
. P-89
1 MR IRVING: Yes. February 7th we have probably half an hour or
2 one hour of Sir John Kegan.
3 MR RAMPTON: Maybe Mr Irving would like to take Sir John Kegan
4 first before we start on Browning?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would think that is better.
6 MR IRVING: That would make far more sense.
7 MR RAMPTON: Browning for two days, which brings us to the end
8 of Tuesday, perhaps the beginning of Wednesday. Then
9 Mr Irving’s day or whatever he needs to prepare, which
10 would be Wednesday.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Start Professor Evans on Thursday.
12 MR RAMPTON: I would provisionally schedule Professor Evans for
13 Thursday. That also has, from Mr Irving’s point of view,
14 the convenience that he then has three days off if he is a
15 bit behind in prep, as some of us sometimes are, to get
16 the ball rolling again on the following Monday.
17 MR IRVING: That is quite right. It sounds admirable.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What you have not yet answered is the enquiry
19 about how long you are likely to cross-examine Professor
20 Evans for?
21 MR IRVING: I shall have to reschedule my thinking on that
22 because I shall have now to go through my two filing
23 cabinet drawers full of stuff that I was going to use
24 against the other two and put it into the Evans slot. So
25 it will be, I would say, probably four days.
26 MR RAMPTON: That is very helpful. That takes us to Wednesday
. P-90
1 16th, I think. A day off will be the Thursday but, if I
2 schedule Dr Longerich for Friday 18th, there is a risk
3 that he will not be needed because Professor Evans does
4 not finish until Thursday.
5 MR IRVING: Longerich is based in England, is he not?
6 MR RAMPTON: He is partly based in England and partly in
7 Munich. If your Lordship would like me to, I will
8 provisionally schedule him for Friday 18th, subject to
9 Thursday being a clear day. If it is not, then we can
10 bring him on Monday of the following week.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is kind of the last in the band anyway.
12 MR RAMPTON: He is the most flexible.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is the last too, is he not?
14 MR RAMPTON: No. There is Professor Funke, the Berlin
15 political scientist.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. We have it mapped out for a sufficient
17 period of time to enable plans to be made.
18 MR RAMPTON: Yes we have.
19 MR RAMPTON: Yes certainly.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So what now?
21 MR RAMPTON: I am bit sterile about ideas because I do not have
22 further questions on anything else.
23 MR IRVING: You are not going to cross-examine on the
24 Adjutants?
25 MR RAMPTON: No. I think probably I am not going to.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When you say probably, it is getting towards
. P-91
1 the time when it has to be certain.
2 MR RAMPTON: If I say I am not going to examine on the
3 Adjutants and then I come back next week and say, Oh,
4 I would like to cross-examine on the Adjutants, I foresee
5 a problem. I prefer to leave it in the air, although the
6 air in that particular balloon, if I do not do it now, is
7 probably going to be fairly restricted. Can I put it like
8 that?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think that is right really.
10 MR RAMPTON: I well understand the problem.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know you have had quite a task too.
12 MR RAMPTON: If I do not take the opportunity now I may have a
13 problem, I well understand, in trying to find another way.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not going to make a ruling one way or
15 the other at the moment.
16 MR RAMPTON: I am grateful for that.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it is a bad thing from
18 Mr Irving’s point of view or, to be honest, from my point
19 of view if we have a short day today because I have fallen
20 a bit behind, too.
21 MR RAMPTON: I am not only slightly behind, I am, like
22 Mr Irving and no doubt your Lordship, quite tired as well
23 so I would not at all mind.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, does it not really suit you quite
25 well that we should have a short day?
26 MR IRVING: It does indeed, my Lord. I have a business to run
. P-92
1 and a family to run.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course. So what it comes to is 10.30 on
3 Monday.
4 MR RAMPTON: I am grateful.
5 (Adjourned until 10.30 on Monday, 7th February 2000)
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. P-93