Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day010.04 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think one may be the mirror image of the other but I am not sure it matters very much whether they are the same photographs? A. So the question posed to me was the size of the objects. It is very difficult to determine the size of the objects, because of the way the shadow works. If one looks at the shadow of the chimney, one sees that the chimney really projects considerably out of the building, the shadow of the chimney. So it seems to be the sun is coming in this . P-26 case from the southeast. I do not know exactly what time, maybe it comes from the east more. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would not build too much on that, because I think it could be the same photograph which has been put in the wrong way round, as it were. A. No, they are exactly the same. MR IRVING: I accept they are the same photographs. Would you agree that both the chimney of the crematorium and whatever these pipe like objects you say are would all be vertical? They would not be leaning in any one direction? A. The object, you mean? Q. Yes? A. The chimney itself and the ---- Q. Both the crematorium chimney and the protruberances on the roof which you think these dots are, would they all be vertical? A. Yes. Q. So they would all cast shadows in the same direction, at the same angle, would they not, if that were so? A. Yes, that is quite likely. Q. On this photograph they clearly do not cast shadows in the same direction. The smudges or dots appear to be first one way and then another? A. Yes, that is the indeed true. Q. Are these dots visible on any of the other air photographs taken of that building? . P-27 A. Yes they are. Q. Either before or after? A. Yes. Q. Are you going to show these photographs to us? A. No. I just selected one. Q. Well, might I suggest that it would have been helpful to the court if you had produced the other photographs that you allege exist containing these dots? A. I thought that this was sufficient, but I presume the court can obtain them if they want it. But I think that these dots show very clearly that there are four introduction devices in morgue No. 1, or four something on top of that roof. Q. Professor, I strongly suggest that is a major quantum leap to suggest that a dot which on the face of it is about 15 feet long on the roof of this crematorium building can have anything at all to do with the protruberances that you were talking about earlier, which at its largest extent in the eyewitness evidence that I have seen is of the order of 36 inches. A. Mr Irving, the whole of the width of what you call the alleged gas chamber I think is something like, what is it, a little less than 20 feet. So, if you look at the width of this room and you look then at the dots, we are certainly not talking about dots which are 15 feet wide. We are more looking at dots which are probably 3 feet . P-28 wide. Q. I strongly disagree. They are over one quarter of the width of that roof in all their versions and manifestations on these various photographs. A. I am not going to argue at moment about the width. Q. Moreover, they cast no shadow. A. It is impossible to say what kind of shadow they cast. Q. They cast no shadow. A. Mr Irving, we are looking at an immensely enlarged image from a small negative. These negatives, by the way, my Lord, have been preserved. They are sitting all on a roll and they have been preserved. These photos have been analysed by two different parties. Q. Would you name those two different parties please? A. Mr John Ball in Canada and in British Columbia was the first one who analysed these photos in the early 1990s. Q. Is it not correct they were first analysed by a man called Mr Brigioni? A. Yes, the CIA. I am sorry, indeed the CIA published these photos in 1979. Q. About 1974, I believe? A. Whatever, 1974, 1979. Q. Are you aware of the fact that Mr Brigioni, the author of that publication of photographs, the CIA operative who, with a fellow author, first published these photographs, has recently published a book called Photo Fakery? . P-29 A. I am not. Q. In which he sets out chapter by chapter how easy it is to forge photographs, as we all know. Using modern computers and this kind of thing you can take people out of photographs and move people around. This same Mr Brigioni is an expert on photo forgery. Are you aware of that fact? A. I was not. I presume that, with today's computer technology, he indeed would be able to do this. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you suggesting, Mr Irving, that these photographs are forgeries? MR IRVING: I am not suggesting that per se, my Lord, but what I am suggesting is that one has to be alert to the possibility that somebody, for whatever reason, has put a smudge on these photographs. The National Archives of the United States, where the original photographs were housed in the cartographic division, at the time they were issued by the CIA, the National Archives issued a disclaimer saying these photographs, as they are housed in the National Archives Cartographic Branch, do not contain the labelling which the CIA has attached. They made no references to these actual dots or anything. They just dissociated themselves from the kind of treatment. A. My Lord, may I continue? Because I was asked ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. What question do you think you are answering? . P-30 MR IRVING: Do you have any opinion as to the integrity of these photographs? A. I have an opinion on the integrity of the photographs which is based on an analysis by Dr. Neville Bryant at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasodena done in 1996, and I actually was present in the room with him when he got his job. I was not present when he actually handed in the report. Q. Professor van Pelt, is this report of the Pasodena Jet Propulsion Laboratory in evidence before us? A. It is not, but I have testimony of Mr Michael Schurmer, who commissioned the report, of the results and I just want do explain the position of Dr Bryant. He is the supervisor of cartographic applications and image processing applications at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and he seems to be the most experienced analyst of air photos in the United States. Q. Is Mr Schurmer a friend of yours? A. No, he is not. We have met a couple of times. Q. Is there any reason why he would not have provided any written version of that testimony to you for the purposes you needed it for? A. I do not think that at the moment it is necessary to have a testimony by Dr Bryant in court. You will have to prove this is a fakery, Mr Irving. These photos are at the moment evidence as photos. If you want to say that this . P-31 is a fake, I would say prove it and then we can get the report of Dr Bryant. Q. Professor van Pelt, I think that his Lordship will educate you as to the burden of proof in an English defamation action. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure that is really quite right. If you are not saying that these are fakes, and I think you just told me that you were not putting forward that positive case, then it does not seem to me that it is necessary for this witness to refer to the expert analysis at all. But, if you are saying it is a forgery or has been tampered with in some way, then it may be that we do need to see what the expert said. MR IRVING: In that case, my Lord, I think we ought to ask the witness as to the nature of the expertise given by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which did not go to the forgery aspect, as I understand it, but to the aspect of what those objects were and how large they were. Am I right, Professor? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that right? A. No. The question which was asked to Dr Bryant was very simple. The first question was: Had these negatives been tampered with? It was partly based on a suggestion by Mr Ball who had analysed them in 1990, using analogue machines, which means he did not use computer enhancement but he used analogue machine, in which Mr Ball . P-32 had said that in the CIA report things had been added to the photo, and this went very specifically to groups of prisoners being marched around the camp where at a certain moment one could see something like a little ---- MR IRVING: Brush marks? A. Brush marks which had been drawn in. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not these photographs, anyway, is it? A. It is actually in these photographs, but it is too small. But that was one of the"proofs". It was that group of prisoners which is not seen in this enlargement. They are walking around in the camp. Q. Can we remain with these photographs, please? A. They are in these photographs but not visual. I am just trying to explain the brief which Mr Bryant got. Q. Was he given the original negatives to look at or copies of the negatives? A. The negatives are in Jerusalem. Q. The original negatives are in Jerusalem? A. Yes, there is a roll of negatives in Jerusalem. Q. How did the American government negatives come into the possession of the Jerusalem authorities? A. I have no idea. They are in the Abfashen(?) Q. Are you sure this is not just a duplicate made by the National Archives of the United States? A. I am not sure. I know there is a roll of negatives in the Abfashen and I have been always under the impression that . P-33 it is the original roll of negatives given to Israel because of the importance of this material. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I think we are really looking for is what was the was conclusion at which Mr Bryant arrived? A. What Dr Bryant did was analyse these images by using computer technology, and he said that the problem which occurred in marching these prisoners which were marching around is that the size of a head of a person is the same as the size of a grain in the negative, and that the result of that was that a morey effect which occurs when also in the newspaper when you photograph a picture which has been screened twice. This is one of the problems. When you go to the very small scale, it becomes very difficult to exactly understand the behaviour of these individual grains at that level. MR IRVING: Can we remain with the dots on the roof, please? Is there any morey effect visible on them? A. We are basically talking about very small objects, and I do not know if there is morey effect on them. But the issue which Bryant had to address was that the so- called proof Ball had for the tampering with these photos were these lines of prisoners. Once Bryant showed that these had not been tampered with, that there had been absolutely no tampering with this image, then the issue of if they had been tampered with, the dots on top of the Leichenkeller No. 1, became in some way irrelevant, . P-34 because the issue which Ball had brought to him was based on those groups of prisoners. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. So Bryant did not actually address the question whether these dots that we see on the enlargements were added, forged additions? A. No. He looked if there was any proof of addition to it and he had said no. Q. Generally speaking? A. Yes, generally speaking. There is a second one and this is quite an interesting one. Again, the big problem with all of this of course is that nothing of this has been published. It would have been published by Schurmer if it was not for this libel case. People are waiting to see what the outcome of this libel case is. That is that these photos were taken in sequence, which means that it is a mechanical camera which starts running, and photos were taken for bombing raids on the Bunaplatz in Monowitz. So what happened is that, as the bomber starts to approach, this was probably taken by a Mosquito, the camera starts to run 10 to 15 minutes ahead of time, and starts taking photographs as it is approaching the bombing site.
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