Irving v. Lipstadt

 1Q. [Mr Rampton]     What does that mean?
 2A. [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.
 4Q. [Mr Rampton]     This is one of the borrowed plates?
 5A. [Mr Irving]     That is correct, yes.
 6Q. [Mr Rampton]     That you had printed?
 7A. [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.
10Q. [Mr Rampton]     Who took the plates back to Moscow after they had been
11tested in this country?
12A. [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.
15Q. [Mr Rampton]     Can we turn on ----
16A. [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.
20Q. [Mr Rampton]     Carry on, will you.
21A. [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

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 1about where they came from, the glass plates.
 2Q. [Mr Rampton]     I will read the next bit if you are not willing to.
 3A. [Mr Irving]     I beg your pardon?
 4Q. [Mr Rampton]     I wanted you to read the next paragraph. It is my fault.
 5A. [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".
11Q. [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?
14A. [Mr Irving]     That I borrowed for London and had now come back from
15London and they are put back where they belonged.
16Q. [Mr Rampton]     After about three weeks?
17A. [Mr Irving]     That is correct.
18Q. [Mr Rampton]     We will go, if we may, to the bottom of the page at 1.50.
19A. [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."
24Q. [Mr Rampton]     That was not true, was it?
25A. [Mr Irving]     Well, it was, I suppose, suppressio vale rather than
26suppressio falsi. I have no original items from their

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 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.
 5Q. [Mr Rampton]     So, technically speaking, that was true of course.
 6A. [Mr Irving]     Yes.
 7Q. [Mr Rampton]     Do you know the legal, it is a boring expression, but do
 8you know the lawyers' expression swearing by the card?
 9A. [Mr Irving]     Swearing by?
10Q. [Mr Rampton]     The card?
11A. [Mr Irving]     No. That is legalese.
12Q. [Mr Rampton]     In other words, literally true but, as a matter of
13reality, a false declaration. Do you agree?
14A. [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?
20Q. [Mr Rampton]     Yes. Sorry.
21A. [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

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 1to conceal that I had those plates.
 2Q. [Mr Rampton]     Except from the Russians?
 3A. [Mr Irving]     Except from Russians.
 4MR JUSTICE GRAY:    What Tatiana's response when you revealed
 5that you had actually removed them from the archive?
 6A. [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
 9missing.
10Q. [Mr Justice Gray]     But was she shocked and horrified? That is what I am
11really getting at.
12A. [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".
22MR 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?
25A. [Mr Irving]     Yes.
26Q. [Mr Rampton]     Taken overnight and put back. You did not have permission

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 1for that?
 2A. [Mr Irving]     Yes.
 3Q. [Mr Rampton]     Did you have permission to take two plates which were
 4later replaced?
 5A. [Mr Irving]     Two and two. They gave us permission to take two and two,
 6so we took out four plates with permission.
 7Q. [Mr Rampton]     Yes, they did not give you permission to take plates back
 8to England for testing?
 9A. [Mr Irving]     No.
10Q. [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?
13A. [Mr Irving]     No.
14Q. [Mr Rampton]     Right, thank you.
15A. [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.
18Q. [Mr Rampton]     I am grateful.
19A. [Mr Irving]     It is not really material in the issue anyway, in my
20submission.
21MR 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?
25A. [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

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 1have the chance of -- I have not seen any evidence put in
 2to that effect.
 3Q. [Mr Rampton]     I am asking you whether you are aware of any?
 4A. [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.
 8MR JUSTICE GRAY:    I see the force of that.
 9A. [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.
12MR 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.
15MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Can I just ask you because it is something
16that went through my mind in fact this morning about
17Dresden?
18MR RAMPTON:    Yes.
19MR JUSTICE GRAY:    The position on Dresden is that there is
20quite a lot of material on it.
21MR RAMPTON:    Yes. It is all in that file.
22MR 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.

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