text:
Holocaust Denial on Trial, Trial Transcripts, Day 15: Electronic Edition
Pages 1 - 93 of 93
1996 I. No. 113
2Royal Courts of Justice
3Strand, London
4 Thursday, 3rd February 2000
10Claimant -and-
14The Claimant appeared in person
15MR RICHARD RAMPTON Q.C. (instructed by Messrs Davenport Lyons and Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the First and
16Second Defendants
17MISS HEATHER ROGERS (instructed by Davenport Lyons) appeared on behalf of the First Defendant Penguin Books Limited
18MR ANTHONY JULIUS (of Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of
19the Second Defendant Deborah Lipstadt
21(Transcribed from the stenographic notes of Harry Counsell
&Company, Clifford's Inn, Fetter Lane, London EC4
22Telephone: 020-7242-9346)
23(This transcript is not to be reproduced without the written permission of Harry Counsell &Company)
1 <Day 15 Thursday, 3rd February 2000
2 (10.30 a.m.)
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton and Mr Irving, really not for
4either of your benefit but for the benefit of members of
5the public who are following the trial, we are not sitting
6tomorrow and that is going to be the pattern, generally
7speaking, for the future. That is just to save anyone a
8wasted journey.
9 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship may wish to consider what happens
10next week because Monday, everything being equal, it will
11be Professor Browning. I do not know how long he will be.
12After that will be Professor Evans. Your Lordship has
13said that Mr Irving may have time, I do not know however
14long your Lordship thinks is needed, perhaps a day or
15whatever, to prepare cross-examination for Professor
16Evans. It may, therefore be that we shall be taking a day
17off before Friday next week.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. We will deal with that if and when it
19arises. I am anxious that Mr Irving should be given ample
20opportunity to prepare, because it must be exhausting, the
21burden 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
24between Professor Browning and Professor Evans.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is certainly reasonable. If you need
26more, say so.
1 MR IRVING: Monday I will be pretty well prepared, but to save
2the court time actually in session it will be better if
3I 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
6a witness who has not arrived yet, Mr Peter Millar, on the
7Moscow matter. I do not anticipate we will need more than
8one hour with him so, with Mr Rampton's consent, I would
9propose that we continue with the cross-examination of
10myself until my witness arrives, and that we then find a
11suitable point to interrupt and slot my witness in.
12 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, I was being badgered. Is that
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
19is that we mentioned yesterday the book by Gerald
20Fleming. It is right that I should say that I have now
21looked at the book and I have seen that I have marked it
22up in part. And I will give your Lordship a copy of book
23to see, which you can then pass to Mr Rampton. You will
24see that I have read, obviously, the first 22 pages of it
25from the annotations in the margin on one occasion, and
26then on another occasion I read into it specifically
1concerning the Bruns episode.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will take what you have just said as
4 MR IRVING: Perhaps I should repeat it from the box.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, do not bother because we have a
6transcript. I will take it as your evidence because it
7does arise out of your cross-examination and it is
8something that Mr Rampton can pursue as and when he wants
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
16stuck to the pages, and you will see that there are
17annotations that I made presumably about five or 10 years
18ago for the first 22 pages, pages five to 27, indicating
19that I have read into it for 22 pages, and then I went
20back at a later time, which is the second set of stickers
21and I looked just specifically at the Bruns episode, as
22I remembered yesterday.
23 MR RAMPTON: We will look at it in due course. Thank you,
24Mr 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
1Defendants to suggest that I wish to have more information
2about the provenance of that document of August 1st.
3Having seen it, it is a document I would like to know more
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
6 A. [Mr Irving] Also one other point the transcript we were reading
7yesterday of the speech I made in Bow, it is wrong by one
8year. 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
11diary and it is May 1993, by which time, of course, many
12things had happened to justify the remarks I made in my
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Rampton?
15 MR RAMPTON: One small point first, MR IRVING: do you remember
16the discussion, I think on Tuesday, that is two days ago,
171st 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
201.20 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
23document as 3052 was wrong and that, indeed, you were
24referring to 3051. Do you remember that?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I was referring to two documents in my source reference.
26The other one, if you remember, was Karl Wolff. I have
1now checked with all versions of the manuscript -- it went
2through five or six different versions -- to see how the
3error occurred in the digit because obviously I want to
4track something like that down. The actual reference is
5to Karl Wolff as Karl Wolff quoting Werner Best, who was a
6Gestapo official.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, please, can we try today to stick to the
8point? I am going to read you something which appeared on
9your web site -- this is so as to remove a point of
10controversy from the case entirely -- yesterday or this
11morning. You print reports of your own version of what
12goes 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
15all. It is full of comments and I am leaving that out.
16"In 'Goebbels Mastermind of the Third Reich' I have
17muddled one source note identified there as PS 3052, thus
18Karl Wolff (it should have been 3051)".
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 3051 is the one that was produced in court
21which 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
23Karl Wolff. You rather swallowed the word "plus". It
24should have been 3051 instead of 3052.
25 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I now would like you, in view of the
26answers you gave about the National Alliance yesterday ,
1notwithstanding the tape that we showed, to look at one
2very short part of the same tape. We will pause it still
3when we get to the right place. Then I shall ask you
4whether you still adhere to the position you took
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
8is '96, sorry.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Can you specify what position you are referring to when
10you say I am still referring to the same position?
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] You took the position that You had no idea who the
12National Alliance were, that it was a meeting organized by
13them, 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,
22because 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.
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
4know from Adam was that is. Would you know what it was if
5you 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
7my 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
10know, 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
14that I am a denier, would it not? Can I just make a
15statement, so to speak, in re-examination there and say
16that I will point out that you have had my entire
17correspondence with all organizations to whom I ever
18spoke. You have had my entire private diaries. Professor
19Evans himself says in his report that he has found no
20reference to the National Alliance in my private diaries.
21You have not so far produced to this court one single item
22of 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
26taken it on board but you do not need to get Mr Rampton to
1answer your evidence.
2 A. [Mr Irving] It is an opportunity for Mr Rampton to cross-examine on
3that point.
4 MR RAMPTON: No, Mr Irving, it was re-examination. You said so
5yourself. I do not butt in when people are re-examining.
6I let people do it to themselves.
7 A. [Mr Irving] You took away about 40 boxes of all my private files and
8papers and not one single letter between me and the
9National 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
12back to the little clip of utterances, page 37 in the
13clip, 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
16K4, apparently.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
18 MR RAMPTON: Page 3, my Lord. This is Bow 1993, I think you
19tell 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
23the clip. I am going to start a little bit before the
24clip extract begins. If Mr Irving wants to read on or
25have more, than he must do it himself, the whole text is
26there. I am going to read, Mr Irving, from the sixth line
1in the middle of the page after the words "our national
2heritage", where you say this:
3 "When people ask me about racism I say 'would
4you mind explaining to me what is the difference between
5racism and patriotism'? Journalists, television
6interviewers, I've had a great deal of these in the last 2
7or 3 weeks, you won't notice this of course, because I've
8been going to the television studios here or in Camden
9town or in Isleworth, speaking by satellite live on prime
10time Australian television, 3 or 4 times last week. New
11Zealand television as well because New Zealand always
12picks up what their big brothers do in Australia, and the
13journalist has said 'Mr Irving, we read in today's
14newspapers that you told the ABC radio" -- that is an
15Australian 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
18that's happened to Britain. Is that your opinion'?
19And I said well yes, I have admit to being born in England
20in 1938, which was totally different England, I feel
21queasy when I look and see what has happened to our
22country, nobody has stood up and objected to it' and he
23says, 'well what do you think about black people on the
24Australian, on the British cricket team then? How do you
25feel about that then, the black cricketers'? So I said,
26'that makes me even more queasy,". Pause there, please,
1Mr Irving.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am going to read on. Why does it make you feel queasy
4that black Englishmen should play cricket for England?
5 A. [Mr Irving] What is left out here is what is also stated in the
6interview that he then said exactly same question as you
7and my reply to him on air was, what a pity it is that we
8have to have blacks on the team and that they are better
9than 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
15here, just as all the Jews in England were born here, most
16of 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,
20the England I was born into, which is the England I come
21from and probably the England you come from, although
22probably a few years after mine, was different from the
23England 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
26I came from.
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
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,
7beastly foreigners.
8 A. [Mr Irving] The Bruces came from France?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Robert the Bruce was a Norman princeling, if you like.
10Where did the Irvings come from?
11 A. [Mr Irving] What do you mean, where did the Irvings come from? How
12far back are we going to go?
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is the point, is it not? How far back do you have to
14go? Does it matter, Mr Irving?
15 A. [Mr Irving] It does. You see, what I am saying in this entire
16paragraph is this. Somebody born in England of 1938, with
17all the values that I grew up in, grew to respect and
18admire and love, I regret what has happened to our country
19now. Sometimes I wish I could go Heathrow Airport and get
20on a 747 and take a ten hour flight and land back in
21England as it was, as it used to be. That is what this
22paragraph is saying.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, it is. It is saying that England has changed in this
24regrettable respect, that now we have all these black
25people in England.
26 A. [Mr Irving] One wonderful thing about England, Mr Rampton, you may
1disprove of it, is that privately you are allowed to have
2your own private thoughts about the way things go, what
3you would call a state of mind, and my state of mind is
4that I regret what has happened to the England I grew up
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] That, I am afraid, Mr Irving, is characteristic of people
7that one may properly and legitimately call racist, is it
9 A. [Mr Irving] Or patriotic. Patriotism is literally respecting the
10country that has been handed to you by your fathers, by
11your 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
16more 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
20disreputable about patriotism. You wish to call it racism,
21that is your choice. I call it patriotism. Respect and
22love of the country that I grew up, the England I was born
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we just go back to the cricketers? Is
25the regret you feel about them playing for England or
26wherever because of the colour of their skin?
1 A. [Mr Irving] No, it is, I think -- I feel sorry that my England was
2unable to provide enough good cricketers, if I can put it
3like that.
4 MR RAMPTON: So the answer to his Lordship's question is yes,
5is 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
10the fact, do you not, that there are not enough good white
11cricketers to keep out the black cricketers?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Well, again this is probably a tendential answer, but I am
13not very well up on cricket and I am not a great
14cricketing fan. This is an example that I am not very
15positive about.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you ever watch the English football team or any of the
17English clubs play football?
18 A. [Mr Irving] If I do not watch cricket, I certainly do not watch
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you propose that the numerous black people who play for
21first class football clubs and for England in this country
22are not patriotic, Mr Irving?
23 A. [Mr Irving] What I am probably saying is this, is that it is
24regrettable that blacks and people of certain races are
25superior athletes to whites. Now, if this is a racist
26attitude, then so be it. It is a recognition that some
1people are better at different things. And perhaps you
2may wish to legislate that state of affairs away, you may
3wish to describe it as despicable, but it is a recognition
4and it is an objective statement about the way things
5are. They run faster, they jump higher and there is no
6disputing 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
9as being a racist attitude, and there is disreputable to
10point 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
12with the National Alliance, that this country was a pure
13white Aryan race of people who went back at least as far
14as Robert the Bruce, for what difference it makes, would
15you not?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you heard what I said about taking off in that 747
17and landing back in England as it was, the England of the
18blue lamp and Jack Warner and when there was no chewing
19gum 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
22probably find that 90 per cent of Englishmen born at the
23same time as me think the same. That is what democracy is
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I am sure you have not been standing with a clipboard in
26Oxford Street either, Mr Irving?
1 A. [Mr Irving] You will have heard the word "probably", on the balance of
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I will just finish this, if I may, and then I want to pass
4to one more. Where was I? "'How do you feel about that
5then, the black cricketers?' So I said, 'That makes me
6even more queasy ...' and so he says right, and I say,
7'No, hang on, it makes me feel queasy but I would like to
8think we've got white cricketers who are as good as the
9black 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
12enlighten me -- why the journalist should have anything to
13climb out of.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Because he was wanting me to express an attitude that the
15blacks are in some way inferior to us. They are different
16from us but not inferior.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Then he says, you see, he has rather not had anything to
18climb out of, he has picked up on what you said, he says:
19"'So what you're advocating then is a kind of race
20hatred'." He was absolutely right, was he not?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Well, he obviously had his agenda of questions. He
22probably had them written down on his clipboard in front
23of him, "Ask him about race hatred. Use the word 'race'.
24Keep calling him a racist'. This is the way journalists
25keep their jobs, is it not? They are politically
26correct. They know the questions to ask and nobody fires
1them. I have never been politically correct and I am not
2ashamed of it.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] "So I said, 'Before I answer your questions, would you
4tell me what you believe in, as a journalist, an
5Australian journalist. Do you believe in mixing up all
6God's races into one super, kind of mixed up race? Are
7you in favour of racial intermarriage and racial mixing?'
8and he said, 'Well, I believe in multi-culturalism'." Do
9you believe, Mr Irving, in intermarriage between races, as
10you call it?
11 A. [Mr Irving] I have precisely the same attitude about this as the
12Second 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
19Defendant'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
23Solution 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
1passage. That is a total manipulation of that passage.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] One more and then we can pass on to Moscow, Mr Irving.
3There is a tab 3A in this file, K4. Your Lordship will
4find this, I hope, on page 37A of the clip. This is, I
5think, 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
8passage. I have mine at 37A. May I ask your Lordship to
9use the file which has got a tab 3A -- at least mine has.
10Your 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
13own new number?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Can I say here, of course, that when the tables are turned
15and it is my turn to cross-examine, I shall be putting in
16any amount of evidence which completely refutes the notion
17that 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
23 MR RAMPTON: That is too complicated for me. I cannot follow
24that. Could you turn to -- this is the Clarendon Club in
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] The numbers of the pages are at the top right-hand
2corner. There are 12 pages in all. Can you turn to page
39 of 12, please? I am going to read the whole of this.
4This block in the first half of the page, leaving aside
5the interesting historical comment in bold type. You say:
6"Thus, we follow this tangled thread. At the end of the
7war in 1945, the British Empire was at its greatest ever
8extent in history. Our armies straddled the globe. We
9were beginning to get back the territories that we had
10lost in the Far East through Churchill's foolish military
11and naval strategy. And suddenly the Empire went.
12Groping around in the darkness, we look for", capital G,
13"Guilty", capital M, "Men. Partly I think that we must
14blame sins of omission. If we look back from where
15Britain is now, with just a handful of people of true
16English, Irish, Scots and Welsh stock - apprehensive,
17furtively meeting in dinners like this, exchanging our own
18shared sensations and sorrows - then we can see where some
19of the worst errors have been made.
20 "In 1958, for example, we find Lord Hailsham
21saying at a Cabinet meeting, 'I do not think this Coloured
22Immigration is going to be much of a problem in Britain.
23We only have 100,000 of these immigrants so far, and I do
24not think the numbers are likely to grow much beyond
25that! So on chance I am against having any restrictions
26imposed". It might be "on balance", is it?
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
3Hailsham and you say: "Traitor No. 1 to the British
4cause". What do you mean by that?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Lord Hailsham, these were records that were in 1988 just
6released from the Public Record Office, Cabinet records,
7and they reveal Lord Hailsham, who later became a Lord
8Chancellor, I believe, having said at a Cabinet meeting in
91958 in a totally negligent manner that he did not think
10that immigration into Britain was going to be a problem
11and that so far only 100,000 had arrived, and he thought
12it 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
15this country to look ahead and to try to ward off any kind
16of misfortunes and tragedies that may otherwise befall the
17country which is put into their guardianship.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] So what you are really saying is they have an overriding
19obligation to safeguard the racial purity of the mixed bag
20of mongrels of Anglo Saxons, French, Celts, Irish and
21goodness knows what all that you call "English", is that
23 A. [Mr Irving] I am not sure that the British or English would be very
24flattered by the "mongrels" that you have called them. If
25I were to use language like that, I could be rightly and
26justifiably accused of vilification, of defamation and
1possibly 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
7of massive obloquy.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Some people, Mr Irving, leaving aside yourself and some of
9your friends from the Third Reich, do not mind having
10mixed ancestry. Does that baffle you? Do you find that
12 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I have explained to you what my notion of patriotism
13is. Patriotism is pride in the country that has been
14handed down to you by your parents and by their parents
15before them.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will carry on with the text, if I may? There is not
17much more. I should like to think there is somebody
18somewhere doing what Gilbert and Sullivan would have done
19had Mikado do which is making up a little list of named
20people", 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
24 A. [Mr Irving] To suggest that a little list, there is a little list of
25people to be executed in some kind of Fourth Reich what
26is, no doubt, what you will have said next.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am not suggesting ----
2 A. [Mr Irving] That we have democratic processes in this country where
3lists of people get regularly fired by the electorate,
4but, unfortunately, we did not know in 1958 that Lord
5Hailsham had taken this wicked decision.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am not suggesting you wanted Lord Hailsham executed,
7though 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,
10is a list of traitors and the nature of their treachery is
11to allow large numbers of people who are not of pure
12mongrel 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
14is a traitor because he has not had Britain's interests,
15the interests of the British people at heart. He has
16failed to see ahead to the tragedy which massive
17immigration would inflict on this country.
18 This country was existing in a relative state of
19peace. If you ask the family of Steven Laurence, you will
20see the kind of tragedy that has been inflicted on an
21individual scale by massive immigration into a foreign
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] So people like the Laurences, rather like your remarks
24about the Jews, have brought it on themselves, is that the
26 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, really! If this is the level of your advocacy ----
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
7a country at peace. We had defeated a major world power.
8We were licking our wounds and recovering and, for no
9perceptible reason, we then through the folly and
10negligence of the government that we had voted into power,
11as we now see, through their total negligence, through
12their ignorance, we inflicted on this country a body wound
13which only began at that time, the kind of wound which has
14led to 100,000 cases of the Stephen Laurence tragedy
15occurring 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
18imported as slaves, as cheap labour into this country, and
19it was a tragedy on this country.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, and the reason why people like Stephen Laurence or
21Stephen Laurence, if you like, was killed was because he
22was black, was it not?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I think you are absolutely right. Of course, we do not
24know because there has been no formal finding in that
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] And who is to blame for the fact that Stephen Laurence was
1killed because he was black?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I do not want to sound legalistic, but until there
3is a proper legal enquiry into the matter and the guilt is
4apportioned and we find out exactly what happened, it
5would be wrong to kind of prejudge that issue, but we can
6talk in theoretical terms and say who is to blame if a
7black 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
11all pull together jointly and severally for the next 10,
1220, or 30 years and manage to put the clock back, say,
13half an hour of its time, the really", capital G,
14"Guilty", capital P, "People" will have passed on
15commemorated only by the bronze plaques and the statues
16and memorials scattered around our capital. We can go
17around and efface those monuments; but it is going to be
18a damned sight harder to put Britain back where it was.
19I don't think Mrs Thatcher or her like are going to be the
20people to do it. Even less do I think the Socialist Party
21are going to be the people to do it. Nothing makes me --
22Mr David Irving -- shudder ----
23 A. [Mr Irving] Can I just explain the phrase Guilty People, why it is in
24capital 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
1will come back.
2 A. [Mr Irving] It is a reference of course to a very famous book by
3Michael Foot in 1938 about the appeasers.
4 MR RAMPTON: In this context it means the politicians who
5allowed all these black, brown and Jewish people into this
6country, does it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think we are talking about specific categories of
8people. We are talking about the appeasers, who have
9kowtowed 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
13own words is, to say the least, bewildering. In this
14context, it must be, must it not, that one of the
15principal guilty people, in fact possibly the most guilty
16because he is traitor number 1, was, for example, Lord
18 A. [Mr Irving] And cabinet ministers like him, quite clearly. I have
19simply taken him as an example because that record has
20just come into the public domain at that time, but we
21presume that there are others like him, Harold Macmillan
22and others of that ilk.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Anybody who, at the very least, acquiesced in the
24admission to this country of large numbers of immigrants?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Of whatever colour. It would have made no difference if
26they had acquiesced in the immigration into Britain of
1huge numbers of, shall we say, Slovaks or Poles or people
2of whatever colour. If you import people, whatever
3colour, into a country on that massive scale, it
4introduces social unrest and economic unrest. There is no
5reference in this passage, what you have read, from which
6one can deduce that I am referring in that passage only to
7people of colour, let alone the Jews or anybody else that
8you are trying to shoehorn into it.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do not worry about that. We have just seen a reference in
10the Hailsham passage to coloured immigration.
11 A. [Mr Irving] That is what was happening at that time. Lord Hailsham
12referred specifically in cabinet to the coloured
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Capital C, capital I, Coloured Immigration. Now we are
15going to see exactly what you talking about in the next
16sentence, if you will just let me read it:
17 "Nothing makes me shudder more than two or
18three months, working on a new manuscript, and I arrive
19back at Heathrow Airport - where of course, my passport is
20checked by a Pakistani immigration officer (Laughter).
21Isn't that a humiliation for us English? (Applause)".
22 A. [Mr Irving] Can we continue, please, and we will see what makes me
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. We will come to the rest of it in a
26 A. [Mr Irving] That is the parenthesis. He has read the parenthesis as
1though that is what makes me shudder, and of course that
2is not what makes me shudder.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] You are going to be asked a question about that particular
4sentence 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
7Mr 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
10with your passport stamp being put, or whatever it is, put
11on by a Pakistani.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: "Checked by".
13 MR RAMPTON: Checked by a Pakistani immigration official,
14officer, which caused great laughter amongst the audience
15apparently, or the laughter anyway, and why you should be
16applauded 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
19there, he has less right to check my passport than an
20Englishman who is working there. I would expect an
21Englishman to be better in control of immigration into
22England than somebody who has born outside the country,
23which is why that remark is made.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is as maybe. Mr Rampton's question is
25why is it humiliating?
26 A. [Mr Irving] That is bound up in my answer to the question, my Lord,
1that I would have expected English people to be checking
2the immigration. If you go to Germany, you do not have,
3for example, Jamaicans, or you do not have Kosovans, or
4you do not have Russians checking the passports going into
5the country. You expect to have people of the country
6concerned who are checking the passports of the people
7going in and specifically at immigration control.
8 MR RAMPTON: There might be a problem if you have had an
9immigration officer newly brought from, let us say, the
10north west provinces of China who did not speak English.
11Beyond that I simply do not understand what you are
12saying, I am afraid.
13 A. [Mr Irving] I think I have explained it relatively well. On the
14balance of probabilities at the time that I am talking
15about, these people have not been born in England. You
16were referring specifically to these people, these people
17that you have referred to. They have not been born in
18England, but they have been granted jobs in the Customs
19and Immigration service, and we find that they are
20checking our right to come back into the country in which
21we have been born, which strikes me as being paradoxical.
22This 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
24easily find out if it is necessary. Do you any idea,
25Mr Irving, how many of the so-called coloured minorities,
26minority peoples, in this country have been born here?
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
4oath, no.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then what is the basis for your remark that on a balance
6of probabilities that chap at the airport not been born
8 A. [Mr Irving] That is why I used the phrase "on the balance of
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is your basis for thinking there is a balance of
12 A. [Mr Irving] Because we know of the rate at which immigration occurred
13within the last ten years, within last 15 years, at the
14time this speech had been, so on the balance of
15probabilities these are recent arrivals, which is why
16I stated that. Now can we have the rest of that
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, by all means.
19 A. [Mr Irving] Nothing makes me shudder more than arriving "and I go
20outside the Terminal building and there is an Evening
21Standard placard saying, 'Kinnock in fresh Wedgwood Benn
22row'". That is what made me shudder. You tried to
23pretend it was a Pakistani immigration official that made
24me shudder. That is what I call manipulation.
25 MR RAMPTON: Oh, really? Mr Irving, I am afraid I reverse that
26arrow and throw it straight back at you, because it is
1exactly what you have just done. What you were telling
2your audience, which is why you got laughter and applause,
3is that there was a humiliating experience of having your
4passport checked by some dreadful little brown man who had
5no business to be here that made you shudder.
6 A. [Mr Irving] No. It is having it checked by a foreigner that made me
7shudder. You yourself adduced the fact that he was
8brown. Pakistanis of course are not necessarily
9brown. It is perfectly possible to be Pakistani and
10white, but you are the one who has the racist attitude and
11you automatically assume that the Pakistani is brown.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] There are some, very few we know but, Mr Irving, do
14 A. [Mr Irving] I know a number of very interesting cases of English
15people who are born in Pakistan and found difficulties
16getting back into England.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, this passage in your speech is all about
18coloured immigrants.
19 A. [Mr Irving] It is not. It is about immigration, of which the major
20element 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
23problems. I would deliver exactly the same speech now
24about immigration from central Europe which is not a
25coloured immigration problem.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is why you chose the Pakistan instead of somebody
1else of, say, German ancestry, is it not?.
2 A. [Mr Irving] It is unlikely there would be a German checking our
3passports at Passport Control. I think that probably
4everyone would draw the line at that.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why do you not say, "What makes me shudder, it is so
6humiliating, when I get back to London I too often find
7that the immigration officer is an Australian"?
8 A. [Mr Irving] You are manipulating this again. What made me shudder was
9the placard outside reading, "Kinnock in fresh row with
10Wedgwood 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
13gallery that I shuddered at arriving and finding a
14Pakistani 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
17accused of.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] I propose to pass from racism -- I have said enough about
19that, 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
22get something straight. I have got a clip, which
23I suppose consists of, I do not know, 30/40 speeches or
24extracts from the speeches.
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It seems to me that on this aspect of the
1case the position is somewhat different. The mere fact
2you 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
5are not part of the case and, Mr Irving, you should be
6clear that that is the way in which I am approaching this
7part 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
9ones on which he has not cross-examined?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think that must be right on this part
11of the case, that being the criticism, because you have
12explained very clearly, if I may say so, what your views
13are 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
16all this.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well I would have preferred that they would have marked
18those 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
21see. I have the full context..
22 A. [Mr Irving] And that you would have looked at the full text so you
23could have seen the full context.
24 MR RAMPTON: I would invite your Lordship -- I should have said
25it. I did sort of indicate it when I started, by saying,
26if we went through every single one, we would be here
1until Christmas, which we would have been.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I wanted to spell it out and have it on the
4 MR RAMPTON: I am very grateful. I do urge your Lordship, as
5far as your Lordship wishes to do, it is entirely a matter
6for yourself, to read as much of the whole of the speeches
7as is relevant, which are not necessarily just the
8passages marked.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have been through quite a lot of it before
10we even started.
11 MR RAMPTON: That is not excellent. That is really not for my
12sake but for Mr Irving's sake. My Lord, can I say
13something before Mr Millar is called, and tell your
14Lordship our proposal in relation to what I might call
15Mr Irving's right-wing associations. I mean that at the
16moment in a neutral sense. The relevant documents, which
17consist of letters, diary entries, and so on and so forth,
18are spread across 14 files. Cross-examination making
19reference to 14 different files is, we believe, simply not
20practical. What we -- I say "we", I mean Miss Rogers --
21is actually going to do is to produce a single file, as we
22have for Moscow and for Dresden and for this topic that we
23are have been dealing with, which shall have -- this is
24not necessarily written in stone -- but documents
25relating to the IHR, and these will all be the plaintiffs
26documents, sorry Mr Irving's documents, correspondence
1with Zundel, correspondence with German right-wing
2persons, the DVU, somebody called Woch, Kristofferson,
3Altsans and Karl Philip. Then there will be some diary
4entries as well relating to all over the world, but they
5will be in sequence. Whether we divide them up by
6country, I do not know.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is fine by me. I am anxious that it
8does not prejudice Mr Irving. I do not think it will,
9will it, Mr Irving?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Once again, as we have frequently seen in the past when
11they have done this kind of selection exercise, they have
12left out sometimes replies which are germane to the issue,
13and they have left out other letters which tend to
14neutralize the effect of the first. And, of course, I am
15also preparing a very extensive selection of extracts from
16the diaries which neutralise their extraction from the
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do know how you want deal with that
19physically because it is a problem. You are perfectly
20entitled, if a document is put to you, to say, well, that
21is fine but you must also have available the reply,
22whatever it may be.
23 A. [Mr Irving] At present we are intending to come back with our counter
24attack when we have the chance of cross-examining each
25witness concerned, Professor Funke and the others.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In the context of this case I think that is
1probably a reasonable way of dealing with it.
2 A. [Mr Irving] It makes more sense, but of course it is going to produce
3a very lopsided effect to start with and I would ask your
4Lordship to bear that in mind.
5 MR RAMPTON: What will also be in the file, my Lord, is the
6statement of case on this part of the case, which will be
7cross-referenced to the contents of the file, and also the
8relevant request for information and Mr Irving's
9responses. Mr Irving will necessarily and obviously get a
10copy of the file. I hope he will get one before your
11Lordship sees it. If he has any objection to it, aside
12from the fact that he may want your Lordship to see other
13stuff, then no doubt he will say so.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When are you thinking we are going to embark
15on this? We are going get that when? On Monday?
16 MR RAMPTON: It will be ready by Monday, yes, but at the moment
17my sense of direction if I can use that, tells me that,
18unless your Lordship thinks it right that I should do so,
19or unless we have a change of heart overnight, it may not
20be 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
23moment is that the file should be produced on Monday and
24that I should carry on cross-examining Mr Irving. If,
25when everybody has digested the contents of the file,
26I would have to have your Lordship's permission if
1I wanted to cross-examine, your Lordship could ask me to
2do so, and I would do so, if asked, or Mr Irving might
3want me to.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will have to wait and see what is in the
5file. Mr Irving may have a view about this as well.
6 MR RAMPTON: Of course. I add this. For fairly obvious
7reasons, the one witness on this that we are going to call
8is Dr Funke from Berlin, who is an expert in this area in
9academic life in Germany, and he will be called as a
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
13other witnesses they do not intend calling, because we
14have prepared very extensively for cross-examination of
15Professor 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
19does not have to deal with.
20 MR RAMPTON: He does not have to bother with Professor Eatwell
21or Professor Levin.
22 A. [Mr Irving] This is news which I am hearing for the first time. We
23have spent many weeks preparing documents for the purpose
24of cross-examination of those two witnesses, and this is
25not the way that a case should be conducted.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it would be helpful if, to the extent
1that witnesses are not going to be called, that Mr Irving
2should 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
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
8 MR RAMPTON: The reasons for it I am certainly not going to go
9into. 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
12him before in open court, my Lord, is this. If there is
13material which in his eyes undermines or affects the
14credibility of witnesses who are not to be called as live
15witnesses, he is entitled to put those materials before
16the court.
17 A. [Mr Irving] You are not telling me anything I do not know, of course.
18I am perfectly entitled to do that under the
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, we are trying to be constructive
21about this and I am actually trying to save you some----
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I deeply regret this because we have informed the
23defence at every stage which witnesses we are calling and
24which we are not calling.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I have just said to Mr Rampton what you
26heard me say, and I am sure he will let you know if and
1when he is abandoning any other witnesses. But if
2Professor Funke is going to be called, then surely what he
3has to say, for whatever it may be worth, ought to be put.
4 MR RAMPTON: If your Lordship pleases. That is what I said.
5I might do it in very broad outline only.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a matter for you, but something has
7to be put to give Mr Irving the opportunity to deal with
9 A. [Mr Irving] It makes it very difficult for me to put in a rebuttal
10document unless these witnesses are there to put them to,
11which may very well be why they have adopted this tactic.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we see how much of a problem that
13proves to be? I think less than perhaps you think.
14Having cleared the decks in that way, shall we now have
15your Mr Millar? Do you need to speak to him before he
16goes into the box?
17 MR IRVING: No.
18 MR RAMPTON: I do not know which file his witness statement is
19in, I am afraid. C4, my Lord, tab 3. < (The witness stood down)
20 < Mr Peter Millar, sworn.
21Examined by Mr Irving.
22 Q. [Mr Irving] Mr Millar, do you have a copy of your witness statement
23with 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.
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
8witness statement. In the third paragraph you say that
9the Russian archives were in a very dilapidated building
10and that the filing system extremely archaic. Is that
12 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Absolutely.
13 Q. [Mr Irving] In a minute or two I will be taking you through the
14diary which I wrote, one entry, one day's entry,
15concerning our discussion with the Russian archivists. Is
16it correct to say that, as you say in your witness
17statement, no written agreement was made, everything was
18arranged verbally?
19 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Absolutely.
20 Q. [Mr Irving] If you turn back to the first page in your witness
21statement, please, at the bottom of that paragraph, "After
22Mr Irving was allowed access, he told me that the boxes of
23microfiches were stored in a very bad condition, in weak
24cardboard boxes, with the individual boxes over filled and
25no kind of special packaging to protect them". Can the
26witness be given a bundle of photographs, five photographs
1showing the boxes, or a number of boxes, and a number of
2microfiches, the glass plates, and a number of photographs
3made 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
7particular the contemporary 1940s packaging.
8 Q. [Mr Irving] In other words, these were the original 50 year old boxes
9that 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
12am going by your statement again, were unfamiliar with the
13concept of outsiders having access to their material?
14I lived in the Soviet Union for three years and Russian
15archivists are completely unused to anyone having access
16to anything.
17 Q. [Mr Irving] So a research room is something they are not familiar
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
25your recollection?
26 A. [Mr Peter Millar] I am not actually -- we looked at them at the time. They
1were not full script. You had a magnifying glass, and
2possibly a light source behind.
3 Q. [Mr Irving] When I went to Moscow, had the Sunday Times provided me
4with a list of episodes to look specifically for?
5 A. [Mr Peter Millar] We had certainly at the Sunday Times, and I advising them,
6looked at certain episodes that we were particularly
7interest 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
11browsed at length in the diaries for passages which were
12not 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
15written agreement between us and the Russians?
16 A. [Mr Peter Millar] There was no written agreement that I was aware of.
17Whether or not anything else had been arranged between the
18legal department of the Sunday Times I have no idea. That
19was not my capacity.
20 Q. [Mr Irving] There was no verbal agreement between us and the Russians
21to your recollection or, if there was an agreement, what
22nature did the agreement have, to your best recollection?
23 A. [Mr Peter Millar] My best recollection was verbal agreement that we would
24have access to the plates, that we would look at them and
25eventually this would be with a view to publishing some of
26the contents.
1 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes. You say to publishing some of the contents. Was
2that restricted to a book or any kind of publication that
3we 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
8you double checked some of the transcriptions that I had
9made, and the translations. Did you find any reason to
10criticise the work that I had done?
11 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Certainly the translations -- I am a fluent German speaker
12and the translations were excellent. The transcripts
13I had some difficulty because the archaic Gothic script is
14difficult to decipher, but in those stretches where
15I could make out words it seemed to be accurate.
16 Q. [Mr Irving] Moving rapidly on, the final matter on your witness
17statement is that you have visited me on several occasions
18in my office in London, in my study.
19 A. [Mr Peter Millar] At the time when we were negotiating over the Goebbels
20diaries, 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
24office 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
1or anything like that?
2 A. [Mr Peter Millar] There was, as I refer to in the statement, a water colour
3which I was extremely interested in, and you said that it
4had been painted by Adolf Hitler and I said it was rather
5better 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
8that and you told me it was.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Your mother-in-law has got a picture by
10Hitler 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
13bundle of the diary? Is it lying around there somewhere?
14Otherwise, I will hand one up to you. I would ask you to
15just to go to one entry of June 9th 1992.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you have a copy for me, Mr Irving, or have
17you handed it up before?
18 MR IRVING: It has been handed up before about four or five
19days 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
21line "invitation needed"?
22 MR IRVING: Almost certainly, my Lord. It looks like a diary.
23There are obviously many entries referring to Mr Millar,
24but I think we will stick with the one day in Moscow when
25we negotiated with the Russians, June 9th 1992, Tuesday.
26Does your Lordship have it?
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
3racist 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
6the hotel. I would ask Mr Millar, would you read rapidly
7through 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
12four 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
15out in court is there, my Lord?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is really a matter for you. There is
17certainly no need to.
18 MR IRVING: I would just ask him to paraphrase it. Am I
19correct in saying this shows us arriving at the archives,
20dealing 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
24was 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.
1 Q. [Mr Irving] Who was in overall charge of the Russian Federation
2archive system?
3 A. [Mr Peter Millar] The man whom we had to contact to gain access was
4Bevininski 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
13 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Yes, he did.
14 Q. [Mr Irving] What kind of directions did he give to Bondarev in general
16 A. [Mr Peter Millar] He confirmed -- we had already seen Bondarev -- that we
17were to be allowed to see the plates and to work with
19 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes. Was any kind of restriction placed on that access in
20that 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
23and 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,
26Mr Millar, and that is as follows. Two or three days
1later, I borrowed two of the glass plates from the
2archives 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
5your 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
8them 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
11had their night out, so to speak?
12 A. [Mr Peter Millar] What was done with those plates was that you took them
13and, using two pieces of cardboard, left them outside the
14archive 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
19 A. [Mr Peter Millar] That is right. They were taken away and used to take a
20photographic 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
23removed from the archive because I thought it was
24jeopardising the chances of our continued access.
25 Q. [Mr Irving] Quite right. On the following day, did the archive allow
26us to remove plates with permission?
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
4memory is very vague on that part.
5 Q. [Mr Irving] Very well. Did we take two plates, or did I take two
6plates, back to England by the same method for the purpose
7of 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
11been granted at that stage. Certainly two plates were
12taken back to England and were copied and as soon as
13valuation -- primarily because at the time we were very
14concerned about the authenticity. The Sunday Times had
15been caught with its pants down over the Hitler diaries.
16It did not want to repeat the same thing with Mr Goebbels.
17 Q. [Mr Irving] I should really have identified you formally at the
18beginning of this examination-in-chief by saying you were
19acting on behalf of the Sunday Times at all times on this
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
23between myself and Mr Andrew Neil?
24 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Yes, after you had initially made the contact with him,
26 Q. [Mr Irving] And the Sunday Times quite properly insisted on having the
1plates authenticated?
2 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Very much so. That was our major concern at that stage,
3to make sure that these were genuine.
4 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes. To the best of your knowledge, did we have these
5plates tested by a glass company, a glass laboratory?
6 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Yes. I remember quite clearly that they were tested.
7I think possibly it was Pilkingtons. They were tested to
8make sure that they were of an age and manufacture that
9they purported to be.
10 Q. [Mr Irving] Did we have the emulsion of those photographic plates or
11did the Sunday Times emulsion of those photographic
13 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Every possible test was done with a great concern about
14the authenticity, and at no stage did we want to be seen
15that we had got diaries that could be called into question
16as to their genuine nature.
17 Q. [Mr Irving] Did you at any time see me handing the plates in a way
18that might have caused severe damage to them?
19 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Certainly not handling, apart from the occasion when they
20were removed. You did not handle them in any way, but
21I do think that the treatment on that night was perhaps
22unwise, 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
26explain to you why he brought two of the plates, or
1whatever it was, back to England?
2 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Yes. It was clearly understood at the time that was for
3the purposes of establishing the authenticity and, as I
4say, it was part of the whole agreement that every check
5had to be made to be certain that these were genuine 1940s
6microfiche 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.
10 < Cross-Examined by MR RAMPTON, QC.
11 MR RAMPTON: I have very few. Mr Millar, can we just look at
12your witness statement, please? It is probably best if
13Mr 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
16trying enquire -- your Lordship has a Moscow file,
17I 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
22witness statement which is tab 3 of C4 -- not that one,
23Mr Millar, I am sorry. I want you to have both. It is
24not your fault at all. There should be a file there
25marked C4 containing witness statements.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is not, so can he have a C4? It is
1blue, I think.
2 MR RAMPTON: It is tab 3, I think, of that witness statement.
3This is very confusing, Mr Millar. It is certainly not
4your 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
7file at all. Can you turn to the second page of your
8witness statement, please? In the middle of the page
9there is a paragraph which begins "On one occasion", do
10you see that?
11 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am going to read it. "On one occasion, after the
13archives for the day, to my extreme annoyance, Mr Irving
14told me that he had secretly removed two plates from the
15archives to show to Andrew Neil, the Sunday Times editor
16who was also in Moscow at the time. These plates he had
17concealed in a James Bond-style fashion outside the
18Institute. I told him this was foolish and risked
19jeopardising the whole agreement - an opinion he thought
20to be rather 'wimpish'. I insisted they be replaced the
21next day, which, to the best of my knowledge, they duly
23 Then if you skip a paragraph you see that, so as
24far as you were aware, you were not, I do not think, a
25party to this directly, the same thing seems to have
26happened with two more plates; is that right?
1 A. [Mr Peter Millar] That is correct.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. I only want to ask you two questions about that
3paragraph that I read out. First of all, are its contents
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
9question is this. What do you mean when you write,
10"These plates he had concealed in a James Bond-style
11fashion outside the Institute"?
12 A. [Mr Peter Millar] He had, to the best of my recollection, prepared two
13postcards which were slightly larger than the glass
14plates, or of cardboard material, one of which certainly
15had a postcard picture on it, had wrapped the plates in
16these and left them on a piece of waste ground about 100
17yards from the Institute.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] So it was clear to you that he knew that he should not be
19taking the plates?
20 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Quite.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then only one other thing: now will you please take the
22other file, the one you were first given, which is that
23one, and turn in it to I think it is page A37? It is in
24the front tab of the file. At A36 you see what the
25document is. It looks like a document from a memo from
26you and John Witheroe to the Editor of the Sunday Times.
1It 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
4look at paragraph 10: "We have also carried out our own
5handwriting and forensic tests on the glass plates and
6microfilm. These are not conclusive, but all indicate
7that the plates are not recently made and that the writing
8is that of Goebbels, although one of the tests seemed to
9indicate that they could have been copies. (We have not
10been able to do all tests because this would have meant
11destroying or severely damaging the plates. See below in
12case this becomes an issue).
13 "Asked how we got hold of two of the plates for
14tests, I suggest we fudge it by saying we have been
15supplied with two plates and that they are now safely back
16in the archives".
17 I am not criticising you for anything, Mr Millar
18-- apart from anything else, you are not a party to this
19action -- but what was it that suggested to you the need
20to fudge?
21 A. [Mr Peter Millar] There was nothing that suggested that we need to fudge it.
22If you see, it was hypothetical. The question is if we
23are asked. The point was that the Times, as I repeat, the
24Sunday Times was very concerned about authenticity of
25these plates because of the Hitler's Diaries fiasco and,
26therefore, there was some concern that we should be seen
1to avoid any mistake again, and the question was whether
2and how we had got hold of these, we were obviously very
3concerned at this time nothing had been made known about
4the diaries. We did not want any other newspapers to get
5wind of what we were doing.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] In particular, you did not want it to be known that these
7two plates which you brought back to this country via
8Munich to be tested for authenticity that they had been
9nicked -- I know they were returned -- if I may use a
10common expression?
11 A. [Mr Peter Millar] No, actually. I am going to disagree. As far as I know,
12the two plates that were nicked, as you put it, were those
13that 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
16with these -- we are talking about two separate plates
17here and, as you will see from my witness statement, I was
18not present at the time the second two plates were taken
19back to the UK. I do not know the exact circumstances,
20I 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
24page? I will put it this way: do you know now,
25Mr Millar, that they were not taken with permission?
26 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Sorry, was that a question?
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, it was. I am sorry. It is difficult when I
2am asking you a question and somebody else answers it.
3Mr Millar, you do know now, do you not, that those two
4plates that were brought back to England were not taken
5with 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,
8Mr Millar, could you look, in the light of that last
9answer, at page A28 in the front section of the file?
10There is a document whose format is not familiar to me,
11but I expect you will recognize it. What is it exactly?
12It is headed: "Catch gubby" -- is it some kind of
13computer 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
19internal 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
24great detail, if you would like me to take a minute I can
25do that, but it appears to have been done on Susan
26Douglas's computer.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Maybe it was done on her computer, but where would
2show get her information from?
3 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Would you like me to spend a few minutes just reading the
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes of course, do.
6 MR RAMPTON: Well, look, just let us hurry up because I do not
7want to detain you longer than you need be here. Can you
8just read the third paragraph?
9 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Actually, I would like to read the whole thing if we are
10going 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
13that was composed by myself and Susan Douglas jointly for
14submission 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
19and will shamelessly take more. I would be very wary, as
20I am sure would John and Matthew, of giving any impression
21over there that Irving represents us in any way except in
22this affair. He is not above trading on our reputation
23for 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
1back 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
5ask one question?
6 Looking at what you know Mr Irving did, do you
7take the view that he did break an agreement? You used
8the term "borrow", in inverted commas, but do you take the
9position that he was breaking an agreement with the
11 A. [Mr Peter Millar] No agreement that we made specifically touched on the
12terms of whether or not the plates should be taken out of
13the archive. It may have been and it could have been
14understood, certainly, that they were not to be taken out,
15but 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
21understand "stolen"?
22 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Yes. I understood he was using it in inverted commas and
23I used the same verbal inverted commas around them on the
24way back.
25 Q. [Mr Irving] And do you understood by the word "stolen" the permanent
26depriving of somebody else of their rightful property?
1 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Yes.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am bound to say, Mr Irving, I did not
3really understand Mr Rampton's use of the word "nicked" to
4mean that, but perhaps he would clarify that.
5 MR IRVING: Well, your Lordship moves in different circles from
7 MR RAMPTON: No, no, not only did I put the word "nicked" in
8inverted commas, but I actually said to the witness,"And,
9of course, I do not mean stolen because they were taken
10back", and I knew it.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That was my understanding.
12 MR IRVING: His final words were that "Mr Irving nicked these
13plates", and the circles that I move in the word "nicked"
14certainly means permanently depriving somebody of their
15rightful property which is stealing.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is why I invited him to clarify and he
17has 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,
20Mr Millar, at no time have I permanently deprived the
21Russian 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
25overnight, in my view". Is it not true that, in fact, the
26plates were removed from the archives for a couple of
1hours, left in the cardboard protecting container there
2behind the wall on the waste ground until the close of the
3archives and then handed to the photographer so they were
4not ----
5 A. [Mr Peter Millar] That is correct, indeed true. The intention was to
6present them to Andrew Neil the next morning, and, as I
7recall, we went back to the archive, you should me where
8they were. I expressed horror and at that stage we said,
9"Let us take these now the archive is closed". I asked
10if we should take them back immediately, but the archive
11was then closed, so, I said, "Right, we will take them to
12show to the editor and, hopefully, they can be replaced
13first thing in the morning without anyone noticing they
14have ever been gone".
15 Q. [Mr Irving] Precisely, and this, of course, had been the subject of a
16formal admission by myself. Once more, Mr Millar, did you
17or I or the Sunday Times at any time by our actions
18endanger these plates?
19 A. [Mr Peter Millar] With the exception of having left them for those few hours
20on 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,
23Mr Millar? Did the Sunday Times pay Mr Irving the agreed
25 A. [Mr Peter Millar] That I think you will find is the subject of a separate
26legal action. There was ----
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
3technical argument arose (to which I am not fully privy)
4about whether or not Mr Irving was in breach of that
5contract, and a lengthy, certainly a legal case was begun
6(and eventually settled) as to whether or not he should be
7paid 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
9are free to go.
10 A. [Mr Peter Millar] Thank you.
11 < (The witness stood down)
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
16wishes a five-minutes adjournment or Mr Rampton?
17 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I am going to abbreviate this as far as
18I 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,
21you had heard of the existence of these microfiches at
22Moscow, I do not know when, but some time early in '92,
23was 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
26if you could, as it were, get your hands on them?
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
6under 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
9buy the rights back from them because I was not happy with
10them as a publisher.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, I am sorry. You are going to have to be a little
12bit more, what shall we say, less opaque about this in a
13minute. We will use the file, if we may. Can you turn to
14page A1? It is not the first page. It is about the tenth
15page. 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
18Sunday Times dated 26th May 1992 marked "confidential",
19eight pages in.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Eight pages in?
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] The numbers to look for, though they sometimes look like
224s, are called A1, etc., in a black circle at the bottom
23right-hand corner of the page. I am sorry, as with all
24the other documents, there is even one called 007 which is
25interesting in the context.
26 A. [Mr Irving] I have my A01 begins "Background Information", is that
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, that is 01. I am sorry. It is a complete muddle. If
3you 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" --
6this 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,
9thanks to the prissiness of my New York publishers who
10felt it was unethical". Now, is that a reference to your
11Macmillan 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
156th, I was informed in Munich by a personal friend of the
16existence 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
19I took 10 or $20,000 in cash I could buy these glass
20plates from the archivists. I contacted the American
21publishers of my Goebbels biography and asked if they
22would increase the advance on the book to provide the
23dollars necessary for this adventure. For four or five
24days the American publishers were very excited.
25I arranged the trip to Moscow, or I began arranging it,
26and when I was far advanced, suddenly the American
1publishers decided that the idea of buying glass plates
2from the Moscow archives looked unethical and they were
3not prepared to get involved with it.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right, and you say that those American publishers were not
5called Macmillan?
6 A. [Mr Irving] That Goebbels book went through so many hands, I would
7have remind myself.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
9 A. [Mr Irving] When you said Macmillan, of course, I am assuming that you
10are referring to the English Macmillan publisher who did
11have the rights in the book.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, I am sorry. I did not know they were different.
13I am awfully sorry. I am sure that they are related --
14they would have to be, would they not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] They were not related. They spell themselves differently
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: They were not, oddly enough, no. I think
18that is right.
19 MR RAMPTON: Were not? Oh, well, that is my ignorance. I am
20sorry. Let us turn ----
21 A. [Mr Irving] I know the Editor concerned was Don Fehr, but he also
22meant from -- that is F-E-H-R -----
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is a perfectly natural confusion on your part brought
24about by my ignorance. Can we turn to your diaries,
25please, your diary entries, section B of this file?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
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."
6Never mind the next bit. "A hectic day from which Telecom
7much profited with calls to and from Moscow, New
8York, ... (reading to the words) ... Frohlich. Susie
9Terplar 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
12Moscow invitation needed, then tickets, then visas.
13Finally, at 5 p.m. came a totally unexpected fax from
14Macmillan Inc". So you were, sort of, preparing to go on
15behalf of Macmillan at this stage if I have understood --
16Macmillan Inc?
17 A. [Mr Irving] On behalf of myself as the author, but I was obviously
18raising the funds by hook or by crook.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, plainly. "Refusing [to] put up the funds after all,
20as 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.
24Their message said, "It looks like we are trying to bribe
25a Russian official" ----
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
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
3position was that you might need to pay for the right to
4use them?
5 A. [Mr Irving] In two lines: The Soviet Union had collapsed. The
6archive system was in total disarray. They could not even
7afford to pay their own wages. We were doing the
8archivist a favour by bringing him $20,000 in cash.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I do not think any criticism is being
10made or could be made.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, well, having been publicly flogged for the last three
12or four days, I always assumed that was going to be ----
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but you are not being at the moment.
14That is the point I am trying to make.
15 MR RAMPTON: I deliberately read that so that everybody should
16know that you put the word "bribe" in quotes and then put
17an exclamation mark after it.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Whatever your publishers might have thought, it was not
20something you agreed with?
21 A. [Mr Irving] No. It was not. The Hoover Library, the Stamford
22University, very many major American institutions had
23already bought large parts of the Russian archives over
24the 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
26of this as quickly as I can. I know you suspect me and
1I understand why, but you must not always be suspicious.
2Is it right that you were also concerned, and again I say
3quite properly concerned, as an historian and an author
4that 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
7to call it?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do historians take perfectly natural pride in being the
10first there?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now I want to whiz on, if I may? Did you eventually enter
13into a contract with the Sunday Times?
14 A. [Mr Irving] After -- it was a contract in two stages. There was a
15letter of agreement that they would fund the first
16exploratory trip which I made with Mr Millar to Moscow in
17mid June 1992 ----
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
19 A. [Mr Irving] --- when we would establish whether this was feasible,
20whether the plates were there, whether they were genuine,
21what their contents were, and whether the Russians were
22open to a piece of horse trading; and then after I came
23back from Moscow and we established to the satisfaction of
24the Sunday Times that I had obtained the material, or was
25in the process of obtaining it, then a contract was drawn
26up in a proper legal manner.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] And I know that you fell out in some way (and I am not
2interested in why unless you want to tell his Lordship in
3re-examination) you fell out with them for some reason and
4they did not actually pay you, the contract ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the reason is, of course, material to this case --
6we will find that later -- but the deal was they would pay
7me £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
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
13the discovery. They came under immense world wide
14pressure. Andrew Neil said he had never experienced
15anything like it.
16 MR RAMPTON: Oh, you mean we are back at the traditional enemy,
17sort 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
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] But none of them from anybody who is a Defendant in this
23case, I hope?
24 A. [Mr Irving] No.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then I do not see that it is material. Mr Irving, so you
26had two incentives to make this exercise a success?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Three incentives.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] One was that you would then, as I say, quite properly get
3the ----
4 A. [Mr Irving] Kudos.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- kudos for having the job which, I have no doubt, you
6properly 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
9good contract?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the third incentive was that I wanted the material
11for my biography of Dr Goebbels.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Right, that is three very sensible (and I make no
13criticism) three strong incentives to be the first there?
14 A. [Mr Irving] That is right, and the people you call the traditional
15enemy had precisely the same incentives for stopping me.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] You knew, however, that the Sunday Times -- this is after
17the 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
20wary, and no doubt they told you so, of getting their
21fingers burned a second time?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Andrew Neil sad to me, "We are very wary about this here
23in the office, as soon as we hear the word Nazis and
24everybody gets very nervous", and my response was,
25"Andrew, this is the chance, I am giving the Sunday Times
26a chance to rehabilitate themselves".
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] One of the conditions, therefore, of this deal was no
2doubt that the Sunday Times had to be satisfied of the
3authenticity of the plates?
4 A. [Mr Irving] At some stage, either before or after the first trip, they
5made a contractual condition that I should obtained the
6opinion of experts on the content of the diaries, and that
7they should have other means of verifying of the integrity
8of 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
11great 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
13to 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
16anagram 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
23reading the microfiches and flagging in catalogue. It was
24drizzling with rain. I illicitly borrowed the fiche we
25had found covering the weeks before the war broke out, and
26took it out of the archives at lunch for copying (in case
1the 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
4German Federal Archive System, Professor Karlenburg, was
5due to visit Moscow a few days later, and he was coming
6effectively with a large empty suitcase to pick up all the
7looted Nazis' documents, and my experience then was that
8when these documents get back into German archives they
9vanish for several years and are unable to the
10international community for historians. This has happened
11again and again and again. So it was important on the
12basis of what you have is what you have got, by hook or by
13crook to get these vital materials out of the KGB archives
14and make them available to the world of historians, which
15is what I did.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, whether or not you had a written agreement with
17the Russians, which I understand you did not have, you
18describe to your own diary your conduct in taking this
19fiche as illicit?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Totally illicit. I am deeply ashamed to have done that.
21You do not normally go into archives and remove materials,
22even though of course they are going to put them back the
23next day, but desperate situations call for desperate
24remedies. This was an archive with no copying
25facilities. It had no microfiche reader. There was no
26means of reading the materials they had. They did not
1know what they had.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] When you took it outside, and I do not know what Mr Millar
3really meant, I did not really understand it, but he put
4it in some kind of envelope when he took it outside
5disguised as something, that is why he said "James Bond"?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it was not disguised as something. Obviously these
7were 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
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. I am not suggesting they were not. You took it
12out. You say: "I tucked the envelope with the glass plate
13into 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
19rain obviously. It was very well wrapped in plastic and
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
23point of tucking the envelope into a hiding place before
25 A. [Mr Irving] I took it out at the lunch break, concealed it, noting
26where I concealed it, and I would come out then at the end
1of the archive closing, pick it up, take it to the
2photographers, the Sunday Times office, have all pictures,
3the 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
6Moscow. We then had these glass plates printed up in
7Moscow and took them back the first thing the next morning
8and put them back in the box. That same day the archivist
9said, "Sure, borrow some more", and he allowed us to
10borrow more and we did the same again.
11 MR RAMPTON: Can you turn over page to your entry of 11th June
12which is B8. Can I start at 10.30 because I think we have
13had enough of your breakfasts in Moscow: "10.30 a.m. taxi
14to the archives. I return the borrow August 1939 fiche",
15that 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
23 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think he did say that.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then I misunderstood. "I returned the borrowed August
251939 fiche and borrowed two by the same means", that means
26illicitly, does it not?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is March, June, September 1934, that is the night of
3the long knives period?
4 A. [Mr Irving] A vitally important period in Nazi history. It has been
5concealed from the world for 55 years up to that point and
6I 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
10the importance of this stay". Over the page, please: "We
11left the archives at 5 p.m. I passed the hidden plates",
12is it?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] "To Peter Millar to get it", it must be "them" "printed up
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
20we know from the documents that two plates were brought
21back for testing.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Well, these obviously were not the ones brought back
23because we had them printed up that night and, therefore,
24put back the next morning.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] So you borrow one illicitly put it back and then two more
26and put them back, but the two that came to England, I do
1not really mind which they were, the two that came to
2England were also taken illicitly?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I have to halt you there and say that this is now
4June 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,
7because certainly on that first trip Dr Bondarev allowed
8us, he permitted us to take some plates out and have them
9printed up overnight. So that may be these two.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. The two that went back to London via Munich were
11taken illicitly, were they not? There were five in all.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but if Peter Millar had them printed up overnight
13I would not have had to take them back to England to get
14printed. The ones that I took out, which would have been,
15I 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
19it was before you left for Munich. We had better look at
20the diary.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I am not going to argue about this, because of
22course I have made a total admission in writing to you on
23the question we of which ones were taken out and which
24ones were left.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] I know. I will finish now with one question. For the
26sake of your good name and good standing as an historian,
1for the sake of £75,000, for the sake of beating the
2Munich Institute to the line and for the sake of your
3Goebbels book, on two occasions at least you illicitly
4took valuable slides out of this Institute and on one of
5those occasions you transferred them via aeroplane to
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
10wants to do as an historian. But when you are dealing
11with the Russian archives which at any moment may seal up
12again, as they have in the meantime, so these plates are
13no longer available and the Germans are sitting on the
14plates too, they are just beginning to publish them now
15eight years after I was there. I think I did a valuable
16service to the community. Every single plate that I had
17copied I gave copies of the prints that I made to both
18German archives, both in Koblenz and also to the Goebbels'
19archives at his home town. So I made them immediately
20available 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
22desirable, but the means that you used, perhaps you would
23agree, were, morally speaking, I am not interested in the
24legality ----
25 A. [Mr Irving] They were illicit.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Illicit and would you accept the word rather shabby?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I just want to be clear about
3this. Shabby, something not to be proud of, but is it the
4case that is put to Mr Irving that he broke an agreement?
5 MR RAMPTON: It must be, if he uses the word "illicitly", it
6must be that he knows impliedly he does not have
7permission, which is a breach of an agreement.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we ask Mr Irving that. Did you know that
9what you were doing amounted to breach of an
10agreement ----
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
14plates anyway, it was obviously neither here nor there to
15them, and there was certainly no agreement either verbal
16or 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
20historian would deliberately remove such valuable material
21from an archive without the permission of the archivist in
22the ordinary way?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think that I damaged the world of historians one
24bit. In fact I think I benefited them by having done it
25the way I did.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is not an answer to my question, but it really does
1not matter. Are you quite certain in your own mind that
2at no stage during the trip of these plates illicitly
3taking plates from Moscow to London, they were in any
4danger 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
8 A. [Mr Irving] They were put into this hard suitcase down there. They
9were heavily wrapped in foam packaging and with layers of
10cardboard. They were safer with me than they had been for
1155 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
14been in those flimsy boxes for 55 years with the Russians
15boxes, in which boxes many of the plates were already
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Had you any idea what means might be used to test the
18plates for authenticity when you got home?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. It was obvious they were going to test the plates
20glass by probably spectroscopy or by similar non-invasive
21methods, and similarly also the emulsion. They would have
22chosen the part of the emulsion that was not written upon,
23so to speak.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, in the event the emulsion test was not done for fear
25of damage, that is right, is it not?
26 A. [Mr Irving] If you say so.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am only telling you what the Sunday Times tells me on a
2piece of paper.
3 A. [Mr Irving] We produced the reports in discovery from Pilkington and
4from the laboratories, the photographic laboratories. We
5carried out the appropriate or rather the Sunday Times
6carried 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
9were ----
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
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- I think you went on 13th from Munich to Rome and back
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
22sorry, they were not. When I went to Rome I carried just
23a very small bag with me containing not even my
24typewriter. It contained just my overnight things for the
25stay in the university and then to come back to Munich,
26and I left that case in the hotel safe.
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
4of 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,
7four paragraphs down ----
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- you say that you phoned Susie, that is Susie Terplar,
10from airport?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Book me into ... room 727. 7 p.m. back down to her and
13phoned 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
19level 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
22left-winger. He went to Israel. He ended up in the pay
23of the German Intelligence services. It is difficult to
24fix 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.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If he is arranging a big meeting for Ernst
2Zundel, 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
5to 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
8coloured immigration into Germany or anywhere else in
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
12meeting for Ernst Zundel." That is our old friend from
13Toronto, is it not?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I cannot see any reference in this paragraph to coloured
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. I ask you a question. You have answered it. "Has
17arranged 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.
22Would I come and speak too. Answer: Provided you take
23three boxes of my books along to sell", and then you add
24the wry note, "All's well that ends well."
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did Mr Zundel speak at this meeting?
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
4attend other people's speeches if I can possibly avoid it,
5and if I have had an exhausting day flying down to Rome
6and back I would not have hung around to listen to
7somebody speaking.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am not sure I can really accept that answer, I am
10 A. [Mr Irving] You were not listening what I just said. I had had an
11exhausting flight down to Rome and back under the
12circumstances you are familiar with and I was not likely
13to hang around to listen to somebody speak.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sorry, what time in the evening does Zundel speak
15then 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.
18taxi Zunfthouse, around 120 people packed into the
19restaurant, much applause, Zundel spoke"?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Then after an interval I spoke half an hour on Goebbels'
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
26to say that I am listening to what he is saying. If you
1know what he has said you can put it to me and I will say,
2yes, 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
5 A. [Mr Irving] I confirmed from this diary I was in the restaurant. It
6is 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
8have got there in time to here Mr Zundel speak because you
9would 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.
13I am careful not to and the words you have used are not
14the words I said. I did not say "I did not get there in
15time to hear him speak".
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] You tried to give us the impression you were not there
17when Zundel spoke.
18 A. [Mr Irving] No. I gave the impression that if I have had an
19exhausting day flying to Rome and back, exhausting for the
20reasons you are familiar with, then I would not have hung
21around to hear somebody speaking. I would have gone and
22tucked myself down somewhere with a glass of beer or with
23a cup of coffee and read the local newspaper.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Then after an interval I spoke half an hour on the
25Goebbels' finds. I one 'plate'"?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] What does that mean?
2 A. [Mr Irving] We had had some prints made, I had had some prints made
3that 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
8tells me I did not show the actual glass, but I showed the
9print I had made of it.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Who took the plates back to Moscow after they had been
11tested in this country?
12 A. [Mr Irving] It should be evident. I think it was July 4th or July
133rd -- July 2nd the two slides were legally borrowed or
14returned 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
17car across the street." That was Jonathan Bastable who
18had arrived from London as a courier bringing the plates
19from 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
22seated in a car across the street. He handed the glass
23plates back to me. I asked him to conduct the interviews
24requested by Andrew Neil re the authenticity of the
25provenance of the microfiche". In other words, he was to
26speak with the Russian archivists to ask what they knew
1about 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
6the box of 13, making a total of 15. Unfortunately, the
7archivist told me today that the archives will not under
8their new agreement with 'the Germans' let me see the
9other big boxes again. Operation stable door, I already
10have nearly all that was necessary".
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] I can understand that. It does not need an explanation.
12So you put back the two plates that you borrowed from
13London, is that right?
14 A. [Mr Irving] That I borrowed for London and had now come back from
15London 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
20and with embarrass asked me if I had taken plates out of
21the collection. I replied that we had borrowed plates
22with permission but had returned all those that we had
23borrowed intact."
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] That was not true, was it?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it was, I suppose, suppressio vale rather than
26suppressio falsi. I have no original items from their
1collection in my possession. Only the copies we or they
2had made. I then voluntarily hand wrote a declaration
3stating this and had it translated into Russian and signed
4both 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
8you 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
13reality, a false declaration. Do you agree?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but no attempt had been made to conceal the fact that
15I had those glass plates. In Munich, for example, I took
16them into the printing room in the basement, showed them
17to the staff there, had them properly printed by the staff
18there. While I was in Munich I then had two of the
19pages -- 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
22the Institute and asked them: Will you please verify
23these pages I have obtained from Moscow. I also
24simultaneously sent two pages to the German Federal
25archives in Koblenz and asked them to verify the
26handwriting as well. So I made not the slightest attempt
1to 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
5that you had actually removed them from the archive?
6 A. [Mr Irving] I then wrote the declaration, my Lord, saying that
7everything that had been removed the archives, using, so
8to speak, the passive voice, was back and that nothing was
10 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But was she shocked and horrified? That is what I am
11really getting at.
12 A. [Mr Irving] No, because, of course, they had allowed my to. They knew
13perfectly well they had allowed me to take plates out as
14well. So when I gave her that statement which was really
15the statement she was asking for, and if you read on, my
16Lord -- I am not sure if it is continued -- she then told
17me a few minutes later at 2.05 p.m. that they were most
18grateful for this, as this was an allegation that had come
19from Munich. In other words, my rivals had ratted on me
20and had sent a fax to Moscow saying, "He has got some of
21the plates".
22 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I believe his Lordship may not have
23quite got the whole of the picture. One plate was removed
24and hidden for overnight?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Taken overnight and put back. You did not have permission
1for that?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you have permission to take two plates which were
4later replaced?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Two and two. They gave us permission to take two and two,
6so we took out four plates with permission.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, they did not give you permission to take plates back
8to England for testing?
9 A. [Mr Irving] No.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] And Tatiana never knew about the first plate and she never
11knew (because you did not tell her) about the trip those
12plates 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
16written admission which I made to you in this case over a
17year 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
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, are you aware of serious concern
22in archival circles that you might have significantly
23damaged the plates when you had them copied without
24archival permission?
25 A. [Mr Irving] This is the allegation made in the book. We are not going
26to be able to test that allegation because we will not
1have the chance of -- I have not seen any evidence put in
2to 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
5Russian archivists are not going to be called either. So
6it is going to be very difficult to establish the truth of
7that 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
10effect that I have benefited the community of historians
11rather than having disadvantaged them.
12 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, for the moment at least, until we get
13back, if we do, to right-wing extremism perhaps next week,
14that concludes my cross-examination at the moment.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask you because it is something
16that went through my mind in fact this morning about
18 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The position on Dresden is that there is
20quite 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
23about this, but it seemed to me that we really spent most
24of the time on Tagesbefehl 47. There is a good deal more
25and I just wondered again what the position in relation to
26Professor Evans' other points on Dresden is.
1 MR RAMPTON: Well, again, if Mr Irving wishes to challenge
2Professor Evans, that no doubt will be flooding back into
3the arena. For my part, again, one has to make judgments
4in 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
7afraid, not one of those advocates who takes every point
8under the sun in the hope that something will come out.
9If there are points on Evans' report that I have not
10taken, it is because I have made a deliberate decision not
12 A. [Mr Irving] I shall certainly be cross-examining Evans on matters
13relating to Dresden and putting documents to him.
14 MR RAMPTON: Might I enquire, before I sit down, through your
15Lordship of Mr Irving how long he expects that his
16cross-examination of Professor Evans might be?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Evans or Browning?
18 MR RAMPTON: Evans. Both actually, because I need to schedule
19both of them.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you want to go back to your other role?
21 < (The witness stood down)
22 MR IRVING: I now wear my other hat and say that, in view of
23the revelation today that the defence are not proposing to
24call Professors Levin and Eatwell, a lot of the
25cross-examination that would have fallen on them will now
26fall on Professor Evans, who relied in part on their
1expert reports.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are perfectly entitled to cross-examine
3any of the experts on anything subject to their
4entitlement to say, "I have not a clue and I do not know
5about that".
6 MR IRVING: I can only do that of course if they are present.
7I do not propose to subpoena them because I do not suppose
8that would have much point.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You cannot do that for all sorts of reasons
10but there is no reason why you should not cross-examine
11Professor Evans about what is said in the other experts'
12reports that I am aware of anyway.
13 MR IRVING: I can put to Professor Evans the documents that
14I would have been putting to Professors Levin or Eatwell.
15It is an unsatisfactory state of affairs but it also means
16inevitably that Professor Evans had better check into a
17hotel for some length of time.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we take them one at a time? Browning
19we have on Monday. His report is quite short, which is a
21 MR IRVING: Browning has many enemies around the world who have
22been 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
1 MR IRVING: Yes. February 7th we have probably half an hour or
2one hour of Sir John Kegan.
3 MR RAMPTON: Maybe Mr Irving would like to take Sir John Kegan
4first 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
8of Tuesday, perhaps the beginning of Wednesday. Then
9Mr Irving's day or whatever he needs to prepare, which
10would be Wednesday.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Start Professor Evans on Thursday.
12 MR RAMPTON: I would provisionally schedule Professor Evans for
13Thursday. That also has, from Mr Irving's point of view,
14the convenience that he then has three days off if he is a
15bit behind in prep, as some of us sometimes are, to get
16the 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
19about how long you are likely to cross-examine Professor
20Evans for?
21 MR IRVING: I shall have to reschedule my thinking on that
22because I shall have now to go through my two filing
23cabinet drawers full of stuff that I was going to use
24against the other two and put it into the Evans slot. So
25it will be, I would say, probably four days.
26 MR RAMPTON: That is very helpful. That takes us to Wednesday
116th, I think. A day off will be the Thursday but, if I
2schedule Dr Longerich for Friday 18th, there is a risk
3that he will not be needed because Professor Evans does
4not 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
7Munich. If your Lordship would like me to, I will
8provisionally schedule him for Friday 18th, subject to
9Thursday being a clear day. If it is not, then we can
10bring 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
15political scientist.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. We have it mapped out for a sufficient
17period 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
22further questions on anything else.
23 MR IRVING: You are not going to cross-examine on the
25 MR RAMPTON: No. I think probably I am not going to.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When you say probably, it is getting towards
1the time when it has to be certain.
2 MR RAMPTON: If I say I am not going to examine on the
3Adjutants and then I come back next week and say, Oh,
4I would like to cross-examine on the Adjutants, I foresee
5a problem. I prefer to leave it in the air, although the
6air in that particular balloon, if I do not do it now, is
7probably going to be fairly restricted. Can I put it like
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
13problem, I well understand, in trying to find another way.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not going to make a ruling one way or
15the 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
18Mr Irving's point of view or, to be honest, from my point
19of view if we have a short day today because I have fallen
20a bit behind, too.
21 MR RAMPTON: I am not only slightly behind, I am, like
22Mr Irving and no doubt your Lordship, quite tired as well
23so I would not at all mind.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, does it not really suit you quite
25well that we should have a short day?
26 MR IRVING: It does indeed, my Lord. I have a business to run
1and a family to run.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course. So what it comes to is 10.30 on
4 MR RAMPTON: I am grateful.
5 (Adjourned until 10.30 on Monday, 7th February 2000)