Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day015.07 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I, before you re-examine, Mr Irving, just ask one question? Looking at what you know Mr Irving did, do you take the view that he did break an agreement? You used the term "borrow", in inverted commas, but do you take the position that he was breaking an agreement with the Russians? A. No agreement that we made specifically touched on the terms of whether or not the plates should be taken out of the archive. It may have been and it could have been understood, certainly, that they were not to be taken out, but there was no formal agreement. Q. Could have been understood? A. It could have been understood, yes. Q. Thank you. Mr Irving, you have a right to re-examine. (Re-examined by MR IRVING) Q. By the use by Mr Rampton of the word "nicked", do you understand "stolen"? A. Yes. I understood he was using it in inverted commas and I used the same verbal inverted commas around them on the way back. Q. And do you understood by the word "stolen" the permanent depriving of somebody else of their rightful property? . P-56 A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am bound to say, Mr Irving, I did not really understand Mr Rampton's use of the word "nicked" to mean that, but perhaps he would clarify that. MR IRVING: Well, your Lordship moves in different circles from myself. MR RAMPTON: No, no, not only did I put the word "nicked" in inverted commas, but I actually said to the witness,"And, of course, I do not mean stolen because they were taken back", and I knew it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That was my understanding. MR IRVING: His final words were that "Mr Irving nicked these plates", and the circles that I move in the word "nicked" certainly means permanently depriving somebody of their rightful property which is stealing. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is why I invited him to clarify and he has now done so. MR IRVING: We have now clarified. Thank you very much. (To the witness): So there can no doubt on two matters, Mr Millar, at no time have I permanently deprived the Russian archives of their property? A. Not to my knowledge. Q. Not to your knowledge. You inadvertently stated that, "the plates on the waste ground were left there overnight, in my view". Is it not true that, in fact, the plates were removed from the archives for a couple of . P-57 hours, left in the cardboard protecting container there behind the wall on the waste ground until the close of the archives and then handed to the photographer so they were not ---- A. That is correct, indeed true. The intention was to present them to Andrew Neil the next morning, and, as I recall, we went back to the archive, you should me where they were. I expressed horror and at that stage we said, "Let us take these now the archive is closed". I asked if we should take them back immediately, but the archive was then closed, so, I said, "Right, we will take them to show to the editor and, hopefully, they can be replaced first thing in the morning without anyone noticing they have ever been gone". Q. Precisely, and this, of course, had been the subject of a formal admission by myself. Once more, Mr Millar, did you or I or the Sunday Times at any time by our actions endanger these plates? A. With the exception of having left them for those few hours on the piece of waste ground, no. Q. Thank you very much. No further questions. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask you one further question, Mr Millar? Did the Sunday Times pay Mr Irving the agreed fee? A. That I think you will find is the subject of a separate legal action. There was ---- . P-58 Q. It does not stop you answering the question. A. No, there was certainly a fee agreed, but at some stage a technical argument arose (to which I am not fully privy) about whether or not Mr Irving was in breach of that contract, and a lengthy, certainly a legal case was begun (and eventually settled) as to whether or not he should be paid any or all of the sums owing to him. Q. Yes, well, I will not pursue that. Thank you very. You are free to go. A. Thank you. < (The witness stood down) < MR DAVID IRVING, recalled. < Cross-Examined by MR RAMPTON, QC, continued. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you want a break, Mr Irving? A. No, sir, I will go straight on -- unless your Lordship wishes a five-minutes adjournment or Mr Rampton? MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I am going to abbreviate this as far as I sensibly can. A. We are on Moscow now, right? Q. Yes, I am only on Moscow and then I finish. Mr Irving, you had heard of the existence of these microfiches at Moscow, I do not know when, but some time early in '92, was it? A. Around about May 6th 1992. Q. You thought you had a deal with Macmillan to publish them if you could, as it were, get your hands on them? . P-59 A. No. Q. You did not? A. No. Q. Well, what is the truth? A. I was writing a biography on Dr Joseph Goebbels which was under contract with Macmillan Limited at that time. Q. And what happened to that contract with Macmillan? A. In September 1992 I wrote them a letter asking if I could buy the rights back from them because I was not happy with them as a publisher. Q. Well, I am sorry. You are going to have to be a little bit more, what shall we say, less opaque about this in a minute. We will use the file, if we may. Can you turn to page A1? It is not the first page. It is about the tenth page. A1 in the first section of that file? A. Is this the one called "Background Information"? Q. It should be a facsimile from you to the Editor of the Sunday Times dated 26th May 1992 marked "confidential", eight pages in. A. Eight pages in? Q. The numbers to look for, though they sometimes look like 4s, are called A1, etc., in a black circle at the bottom right-hand corner of the page. I am sorry, as with all the other documents, there is even one called 007 which is interesting in the context. A. I have my A01 begins "Background Information", is that . P-60 correct? Q. No, that is 01. I am sorry. It is a complete muddle. If you could find A1 without the O? A. How could I be so stupid? Right, now I have it. Q. In strictest confidence to Andrew Neil. "Dear Mr Neil" -- this is your document, is it not? A. Yes. Q. "I have just had an important deal collapse under my feet, thanks to the prissiness of my New York publishers who felt it was unethical". Now, is that a reference to your Macmillan deal? A. No. Q. What is it a reference to? A. On May 6th -- I will be very brief -- or approximately May 6th, I was informed in Munich by a personal friend of the existence of the glass plates in the Moscow archives. Q. Yes. A. This friend suggested that I should go to Moscow and if I took 10 or $20,000 in cash I could buy these glass plates from the archivists. I contacted the American publishers of my Goebbels biography and asked if they would increase the advance on the book to provide the dollars necessary for this adventure. For four or five days the American publishers were very excited. I arranged the trip to Moscow, or I began arranging it, and when I was far advanced, suddenly the American . P-61 publishers decided that the idea of buying glass plates from the Moscow archives looked unethical and they were not prepared to get involved with it. Q. Right, and you say that those American publishers were not called Macmillan? A. That Goebbels book went through so many hands, I would have remind myself. Q. Yes. A. When you said Macmillan, of course, I am assuming that you are referring to the English Macmillan publisher who did have the rights in the book. Q. Well, I am sorry. I did not know they were different. I am awfully sorry. I am sure that they are related - - they would have to be, would they not? A. They were not related. They spell themselves differently too. MR JUSTICE GRAY: They were not, oddly enough, no. I think that is right. MR RAMPTON: Were not? Oh, well, that is my ignorance. I am sorry. Let us turn ---- A. I know the Editor concerned was Don Fehr, but he also meant from -- that is F-E-H-R ----- Q. That is a perfectly natural confusion on your part brought about by my ignorance. Can we turn to your diaries, please, your diary entries, section B of this file? A. Yes. . P-62 Q. On page B2 is your entry for 26th May. A. Yes. Q. Now ---- A. "Macmillan Incorporated", that is correct, yes. Q. "Rose 6.45 a.m., ran round Mayfair 97 per cent hot." Never mind the next bit. "A hectic day from which Telecom much profited with calls to and from Moscow, New York, ... (reading to the words) ... Frohlich. Susie Terplar was the person that actually typed the entries. A. She was my assistant, yes. Q. "The fuss was engendered first by attempts to get the Moscow invitation needed, then tickets, then visas. Finally, at 5 p.m. came a totally unexpected fax from Macmillan Inc". So you were, sort of, preparing to go on behalf of Macmillan at this stage if I have understood -- Macmillan Inc? A. On behalf of myself as the author, but I was obviously raising the funds by hook or by crook. Q. Well, plainly. "Refusing [to] put up the funds after all, as they could not be party to a 'bribe'!" A. Yes. Q. That was their position? A. Well, you have seen all the correspondence in discovery. Their message said, "It looks like we are trying to bribe a Russian official" ---- Q. Yes. . P-63 A. --- "and this looks unethical to us". Q. Yes, whereas -- I am not taking any point on this -- your position was that you might need to pay for the right to use them? A. In two lines: The Soviet Union had collapsed. The archive system was in total disarray. They could not even afford to pay their own wages. We were doing the archivist a favour by bringing him $20,000 in cash. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I do not think any criticism is being made or could be made. A. Yes, well, having been publicly flogged for the last three or four days, I always assumed that was going to be -- -- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but you are not being at the moment. That is the point I am trying to make. MR RAMPTON: I deliberately read that so that everybody should know that you put the word "bribe" in quotes and then put an exclamation mark after it. A. Yes. Q. Whatever your publishers might have thought, it was not something you agreed with? A. No. It was not. The Hoover Library, the Stamford University, very many major American institutions had already bought large parts of the Russian archives over the previous weeks. There was a major sale going on. Q. As I say, I really do want to rattle through the periphery of this as quickly as I can. I know you suspect me and . P-64 I understand why, but you must not always be suspicious. Is it right that you were also concerned, and again I say quite properly concerned, as an historian and an author that the people in Munich might get there first? A. Oh, yes. Q. And spoil your coup, your scoop, whatever you would like to call it? A. Yes. Q. Do historians take perfectly natural pride in being the first there? A. Yes. Q. Now I want to whiz on, if I may? Did you eventually enter into a contract with the Sunday Times? A. After -- it was a contract in two stages. There was a letter of agreement that they would fund the first exploratory trip which I made with Mr Millar to Moscow in mid June 1992 ----
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