Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day029.20
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25

   MR IRVING:  Yes, but the difference is of course I have had the
        chance to cross-examine and Mr Rampton has had the chance
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        to re-examine on those documents.  On this of course
        I have no possibility of making any comment at all.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  No, you have every opportunity to make
        comments about it.  What you cannot do is cross-examine
        Professor van Pelt because he is in Canada presumably.
   MR IRVING:  It is neither fish nor foul really.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  No, on the contrary, it is further evidence.
        You are perfectly right, you have not had the opportunity
        to cross-examine him.  I am not quite sure what you could
        really have put to him in cross-examination that you did
        not already put to Dr Longerich.
   MR IRVING:  Your Lordship says further evidence; it is a
        further statement, it is a further opinion.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  In the way we use the term evidence experts'
        reports are evidence.
   MR IRVING:  I am sure your Lordship will attach the proper
        weight to it.
   MR RAMPTON:  I protest at that.  Mr Irving pulled out of his
        back pocket far too late for us to get Professor van Pelt
        to deal with it in the witness boxes, long after he had
        gone back to Canada, expecting poor Dr Longerich, who is
        not a Holocaust expert, to deal with it, and then
        complains because I get the proper witness to deal with it
        on paper.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I am afraid that is why it seems to me to be
        fair to let it in, which I have done.  I have already said

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        it could go in.  You must deal with it, Mr Irving, by
        making any submissions you want in relation to it.  It
        seemed to me actually when Dr Longerich was in the box, it
        was fairly obviously right that it was dealing only with
        what one might call camp inmates in the proper sense
        rather than people who never got as far as the camp itself.
   MR IRVING:  It is difficult to fit in with the accepted picture
        of the extermination programme which is the reason why ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That is the sort of point you can develop in
        your final speech.
   MR IRVING:  It goes to the scale operation again, which is one
        of the main planks of my case.
   MR RAMPTON:  So Mr Irving says.  Let us deal with all that in a
        week or so hence, if we may.  Then, my Lord, I have the
        little clip of documents relating to Mr Irving's, in our
        book, misrepresentation of what Judge Biddle wrote in his
        notes at Nuremberg about the evidence of Mme
        Valliant-Couturier.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  What extra do I need on that?
   MR RAMPTON:  You do not. You just need the papers in one
        convenient lump.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I have them already.
   MR RAMPTON:  I see, well, that is fine.  We were told by
        somebody that your Lordship had not got them.  It is K2,

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        it is Auschwitz, tab 7.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Did I tell that you or not?
   MR RAMPTON:  Not your Lordship.  Maybe it has been Chinese
        whispers that we got from somewhere.  It is tab 7 of K2.
   MS ROGERS:  Mr Rampton hates filing more than me, my Lord.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  The answer is I have some of the file but not
        all of it.
   MS ROGERS:  I think it is sensible for your Lordship to have
        the lot in one place.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I agree, yes.
   MS ROGERS:  I am taking over on the housekeeping.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think that is a good idea.
   MS ROGERS:  It is too boring for Mr Rampton.  Your Lordship has
        been asking for the denial statements put together in one lump.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes.
   MS ROGERS:  In a sense the hard copy form is going to be less
        useful than the disk copy which will follow, but for now
        could this go into the front of K3?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes.  That effectively means I can discard K3.
   MS ROGERS:  I think not.  Mr Irving relies on context so much
        that I think ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  For that purpose, yes.
   MS ROGERS:  --- it is better to keep them there, and the
        passages on that document are the passages which have been

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        highlighted in the K3 files.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes.  Mr Irving will get the ----
   MS ROGERS:  Mr Irving will have exactly what your Lordship has.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Good.
   MS ROGERS:  Then going into an N file, this is a document which
        Mr Irving had but I do not think your Lordship does have.
        It is the Moscow chronology derived from the diaries and
        letters.  All of the documents -- there are extracts from
        the documents -- all of the documents extracted are
        contained in the file, but for convenience it is a sort of
        chronology of the relevant events in Moscow.  If that
        clipped at the front of N.  Then hot of the press there is
        a transcript of part of the tape your Lordship saw, the
        Leuchter Congress.  This is an extract of the speech by Ahmed Rami.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  In French.
   MS ROGERS:  In French and translated into German and what the
        translator has done, which has just been produced in the
        course of the afternoon, is to translate both the French
        and the German for reasons which will be become apparent
        on reading it.  Can I suggest that goes into the Rami
        section which is RWE 2 tab 18?  I hope that that completes
        the filing part of the exercise.  Mr Berry has been most
        helpful in liaising on indexes.  I would invite your
        Lordship, through Mr Berry, if there are any loose papers
        that do not have a home, to let us know and then we will

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        produce indexes which are final versions of the files so
        your Lordship will know what is in them.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think everything that matters has got a home now.
   MS ROGERS:  I hope so, but if something turns up, then we will file it.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes.  Right.
   MR RAMPTON:  I wonder if your Lordship would want to take away
        any of the tapes we have been showing in court?  I am
        going to comment on them in closing the case, but whether
        your Lordship wants to have them in the meantime or simply
        we hand them over when we finish speaking because I
        obviously now (and I do not know that your Lordship has
        either) do not have any idea how long it will be before
        your Lordship is able to give judgment.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I am hoping not tremendously long.  It
        depends a little bit.  The only one that perhaps one might
        need to look at it is the Halle video, but we will
        probably be doing that anyway in the context of any
        argument that may be going to take place on its admissibility.
   MR RAMPTON:  We do not want to burden your Lordship with them,
        so we will hang on to it in the meantime.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes.  I am not terribly keen on looking
        through them.
   MR RAMPTON:  No.  There will be coming a transcript of

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        Mr Irving's home made tape [German] which places him,
        I think, in Germany after he has been banned.  I think it
        means "I am coming back" -- "I will be back".
   MR IRVING:  "I shall return".
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  "Come again".  I do not know what you are
        proposing to do about reducing any part of the final
        speech into writing.
   MR RAMPTON:  My Lord, I am going to write the whole thing, at
        least Miss Rogers and I are together, and I am going when
        the time comes obviously to give a copy to your Lordship
        and to Mr Irving.  However, what I will not do, unless
        otherwise ordered to do, is give Mr Irving a copy in
        advance of his giving me a copy of what he is going to
        say.  I am not saying he should write it for exchange.  If
        there is not going to be an exchange, because he does not
        want an exchange because he is not going to write it out,
        then I will hang on to mine and I will give your Lordship
        a copy after I have read it.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I certainly would not ----
   MR RAMPTON:  As I read it.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  -- order that there should anything other
        than exchange.
   MR IRVING:  An exchange on the day perhaps?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  What I am really driving at is this, that if
        it were to prove to be possible to exchange, even if it is
        only one day in advance of actually having the argument,

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        I suspect we would save a lot of time because I could, you
        know, spend a bit of the previous day having a look and
        perhaps going to the bits that I would like more help on
        as opposed to the other bits.
   MR IRVING:  In theory, yes, my Lord, but, of course, I would
        then forfeit the advantage which comes to the person who
        makes the closing speech which is answering specific
        points that have been made.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, that is true.  That is a perfectly fair
        point.  Well, I will leave it this way, that if you could
        on Friday, first thing on Friday, agree to exchange, that
        would help me but if ----
   MR RAMPTON:  I think that will be too soon.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I do not mean tomorrow, obviously, I mean Friday week.
   MR RAMPTON:  No, no, I doubt it will be ready before the Monday
        morning anyway.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  So be it.
   MR RAMPTON:  If it is, so be it, but I doubt it will be.  What
        I would like to do, since your Lordship said I think
        yesterday that Monday 13th was not a fixed day for
        delivery of the speeches, as it were, in court, what
        I would possibly like to do is to let your Lordship have
        it as soon as I can, and I hope it might be before the
        Monday morning but it might not be, and then come to court
        (which is what I did in another long case I finished

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        recently) and answer questions, as it were, when your
        Lordship has had a chance to read it.  But in the
        particular and peculiar circumstances of this case, there
        will be quite a lot that I will want court time to read out.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, I think we want to regard Monday 13th as
        being pretty much a fixed date when we are going to have speeches.
   MR IRVING:  I may have over misheard something there.  Is the
        intention that the speeches should be read out and not
        just taken as read?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Oh, no, no, not read out at all, no.  I think
        one has to play it by ear.  I do not know what you are
        proposing to do.  You do not have to write a word down.
   MR IRVING:  No, I propose to write mine, yes.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, I suspect then there may be odd points
        I want to pick up with you.  I mean, do not feel the need
        to just read out your prepared final speech.  That would,
        I think, be a complete waste of time.
   MR IRVING:  Right, so it is a written submission rather than --
        that point I had not appreciated.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  But I do not know what you are going to say
        so I cannot really ----
   MR IRVING:  That I am right and that they are wrong, basically.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- predict how I would want to deal with it.

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        Good.  Anything else, Mr Irving?
   MR IRVING:  No, my Lord.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  So I am assuming next Monday for any argument
        that is going to take place on the Halle speech.
   MR IRVING:  This coming Monday?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  This coming Monday, which will be the 6th.
   MR IRVING:  It will be a short session.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes.

           (The court adjourned until Monday, 6th March 2000)


















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