Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day014.09
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20

   MR RAMPTON:  --- page 75 of yesterday's transcript, line 9.
         "If you turn to page 11", my Lord, I said, "of the
        table", that is Miss Rogers' table, "it says, basing
        herself on Professor Evans ... this:  '1977, the real TB
        47 comes to light.  It is discovered by Bergander who
        found a reservist Ehrlich who had a copy cited at page 261
        of Bergander.  Evans describes Bergander as the most
        authoritative work', and so on".  Then I turn to

.          P-74

        Mr Irving:  "I dare say if you have not read Bergander,
        Mr Irving ... you will not be conscious of" ---- And you
        interrupted, Mr Irving, and said this:  "Well, Gutz
        Bergander was a very good friend of mine -- he still is a
        very good friend of mine".  Question:  "Have you read this
        1977 book of his?"  "I have not, no."
                  Then, my Lord, on page 178 also in yesterday's
        transcript:  Question:  "Look at Bergander's book.  Have
        you not read that?"  Answer: "No".
   A.   This is a reference to the Order of the Day, the
        Tagesbefehl?
   Q.   No, no.
   A.   Well, that was the page you ----
   Q.   35,000 was the question.
   A.   Well ----
   Q.   Then you said:  "I know Bergander very well as a human
        being and I respect him as a friend and he is a jolly
        decent chap, but I do not put his book in the same
        category I put Reichart's book having read Reichart book".
   A.   I assume that I had read Reichart's book at that time, yes.
   Q.   Now, was it true or not -- people make mistakes; you might
        have forgotten -- when you told me that you had not read
        Bergander's book?
   A.   I have never read Bergander's book.
   Q.   You have never read it?

.          P-75

   A.   Yes.  I may have dipped into it.  I may have looked at the
        photographs or looked to see what his sources were.
   Q.   What do we understand when on page 281 of your Dresden
        1995 edition, at footnote 10, you tell us that Bergander
         -- this is about the ACK-ACK gunners, saying that
        Bergander was one of them -- then you say this:
         "Bergander subsequently published his own well researched
        account of the raids, Dresden, in Luftrieg, Cologne
   Q.   If you had not read it, how do you know it was well
        researched?
   A.   Because he asked me to help him with the research.  That
        is why it was well researched.  He is a very good friend
        of mine.  He asked me where he should go to, what
        archives.  He got all my archives.  I give him 8,000 pages
        of my paper.  It was a well researched book he wrote.  He
        went beyond what I had done and did further research as I know.
   Q.   Is it unreasonable for me to suggest on the basis of this
        morning's discussions, Mr Irving, that everything you do
        not like is either a forgery or you have never seen it before?
   A.   Well, you put to me specific example of books and said,
         "Have you read this?" to which my answer has always been
        accurately on oath, "No, I have not read it".  We have

.          P-76

        looked at two documents today in detail, one of which is
        the crematorium capacity document which I insist is not
        genuine, and nothing that I heard this morning has changed
        my mind on that, and that is the only document I intend
        impugning in this entire legal action.  We have looked at
        another document now ----
   Q.   You have just been having a go at the Muller order of 1st August.
   A.   Well, that is because I have seen it for the first time,
        and every time I look at a document for the first time, my
        first instinct, particularly when it is not an original,
        but a Gestatnat duplicated copy which comes from an
        uncertain provenance with no kind of markings whatsoever,
        is it say, "Hello, what is this then?"  If my eye
        immediately alights on German words that have been spelt
        wrong and, as I say, are neither fish nor foul, then that
        makes me slightly more nervous about it.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, you backed off that in relation to the
        Muller document, did you not?
   A.   I did not want to waste the court's time, my Lord.
   Q.   Well, do not worry about that.
   A.   Well, I appreciate your Lordship's impatience when I start
        looking at documents in detail.
   Q.   No, no, I am not in the least bit impatient.  I am
        interested to know.
   A.   No, the reason why I backed off it, my Lord, is because

.          P-77

        I accepted that Hitler knew about these actions and there
        not much point going into that one.
   MR RAMPTON:  My Lord, I now pass on to something rather more
        central which is Mr Irving's utterances on the subject of
        Jews, blacks, etc. etc., both public and private.
   A.   Are we not dealing with Dr Goebbels today then?  The
        Goebbels diaries?
   Q.   What has Goebbels got to do with it?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  No, the Goebbels diaries.   I think the
        answer is yes if we have time.
   MR RAMPTON:  We will get to Moscow along down the road if we
        have time.
   A.   Well, we have my witness coming tomorrow, Mr Peter Millar.
   Q.   That is fine.  I do not mind.  You can interpose him if
        I have not finished.  I am not troubled about that.
        I will certainly finish tomorrow to make room for
        Professor Browning on Monday.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Rampton, may I enquire when these bundles
        that have just been handed up were generated, as it were?
   MR RAMPTON:  I think they came into court at about 29 minutes
        past 10.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Have they caused you a problem, Mr Irving,
        these new bundles?
   MR RAMPTON:  My Lord, they are not new.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I appreciate that they are somewhere in some
        bundle, but I am just asking Mr Irving if he has found it

.          P-78

        a problem dealing with two new bundles.
   A.   Well, are they new?  To what degree are they new?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, I think the documents are not new in
        the sense that they are probably in one of the other
        files, but I am concerned that you are being presented
        with newly arranged documents and that may cause you a problem.
   A.   My Lord, my concern is not being presented with the big
        bundles.  I am very concerned about these little
        catalogues of excerpts that they are presenting your
        Lordship with, which appear to look to me not so much like
        case management as case manipulation.
   MR RAMPTON:  It is perfectly all right, Mr Irving.  Everybody
        has the full text.  You are perfectly free to refer to the
        full text or ask the judge to read the full text if you
        should be suspicious.
   A.   Well, I think ----
   Q.   If we had not -- Mr Irving, please -- had done this bundle
        of extracts, we shall be here until next Christmas.
   A.   Yes, but we have seen the kind of policy that the Defence
        uses when it makes their extracts and excerpts.  There is
        one passage by Professor Evans where  "..." stands for 86
        words and four sentences and three full stops and two or
        three semicolons.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, as we go through, Mr Irving, will you
        say when you think the context ----

.          P-79

   A.   Well, it is very difficult ----
   Q.   --- puts a different gloss on what you are recorded as
        having said.
   A.   It is very difficult just on the basis of the catalogue
        that they are going to leave your Lordship with.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I have not yet digested what I am being
        presented with because I have not seen these.
   MR RAMPTON:  What your Lordship is being presented with is, in
        effect, our selection of those passages all from
        Mr Irving's own documents and his own words -- nobody
        else's words, just his own words -- of those passages
        which best represent -- they are by no means exhaustive --
        what we say is Mr Irving's underlying frame of mind.  This
        is the only neat way we could think of doing it without
        scuttling about from one file to another and from one page
        within the file to another.
                  Mr Irving is a very wordy person and many of
        these transcripts are very long.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think I did ask at an earlier stage for a
        marked up version and I have now got that.
   MR RAMPTON:  You did, and your Lordship has three things.
        First of all, the original unvarnished speeches, etc.  etc.
        in the various D files.  Then your Lordship has what your
        Lordship first asked for which is a marked up copy of the
        important passages in those files, but those have now been
        transferred into the other two files.  Finally, what has

.          P-80

        happened is that for ease of reference and to make
        everybody's life simple, we have extracted those passages
        on which we rely.  It is as simple as that.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  And that is that, is it?
   MR RAMPTON:  And that is that.  This is going to be a long job anyway.
   A.   Well, let us see how we proceed, my Lord, is probably the
        answer, but I have waved a little red flag.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  If you find yourself in difficulties, then
        just say so.
   A.   It is not the difficulties, my Lord, it is the little
        catalogue of excerpts, the manipulation that is going on,
        that concerns me.
   Q.   Well, let us wait and see whether that is right or wrong.
   A.   If I were to do this with my books, I would be in deep
        trouble and justifiably so.
   MR RAMPTON:  Can I start on the first page of the text of this,
        please, under the heading "Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust",
        subheading -- these are our headings, I hasten to add, not
        yours.  "Jewish responsibility for anti-Semitism pogroms,
        Holocaust".
                  On 12th July 1997, your action report, "A
        Radical's Diary" is recorded as having expressed this
        thought ----
   A.   What page are we on?
   Q.   It is page 3 at the bottom of the page.  Every single one

.          P-81

        of these passages is referenced.  Top of the page, I think
        it has a 11/A in square brackets.
   A.   What bundle am I supposed to be looking at?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  This little one, I think.
   MR RAMPTON:  It is a small quote.  Some of them, I am afraid,
        are much longer.  If you would not mind looking at the
        little bundle?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I am sure he has it.  Have you got this,
        Mr Irving?
   A.   I do not think so.
   MR RAMPTON:  My Lord, Mr Irving was given one.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Was he?  Anyway, he has another one.
   A.   I strongly object to this kind of excerpting.  You are
        taking a sentence out of, I do not know what, a long
        article or a speech or something.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  We can look at them.  We have them here.  But
        let Mr Rampton ask his question and then we will look at
        the context.
   MR RAMPTON:  Mr Irving, can I suggest that every time you think
        we have tried to distort the record ----
   A.   "Manipulate" is the word I used.
   Q.   Yes, great, "manipulate the record" -- I must remember
        that -- for the purposes of presenting a skewed picture to
        the court, please mark beside whichever quote I refer to
        "check" because then when you reexamine yourself you can
        show his Lordship how bad our manipulation has been.

.          P-82

   A.   Can I ask that each time we open the full speech first and
        then find what you are taking the excerpt from?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  No, Mr Evans, but what we can do is have
        Mr Rampton ask his question and if part of your answer is,
         "Oh, well, you have taken it out of context, then we will
        look".  I think that is the right way of proceeding.
   MR RAMPTON:  But you have plenty of time to check whether we
        have taken it out of context, Mr Irving.  The full
        speeches are in those two files.
   A.   Well, this is going to be a very long procedure.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Right.  Let us make a start.
   MR RAMPTON:  Yes, but I would rather you did not do it.  Let me
        say this, I take it that every single extract that I ask
        you about you will preface your answer (and so let us take
        it as  pregnant preface) with the answer, "Ah, yes, but
        you must look at the context", all right?  Can we proceed
        on that basis because if you reply in that way every
        single time, we really are going to be here until the cows
        come home.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Rampton, I am bound to say -- I am sorry,
        this debate is going on and on -- I do think if he says in
        relation to any of your questions, "Well, yes, that is
        what I said but look at what I said immediately
        afterwards", he must be entitled to make that part of his
        answer to you.
   MR RAMPTON:  Of course, if he wishes to do so.

.          P-83

   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, right.

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