FOR THIRTY-FIVE years author David Irving has kept a private diary. It has proven useful in countless actions. For the information of his many supporters he publishes an edited text in his irregular newsletter ACTION REPORT.

A9 (Tuesday)
Ld

I post the Kurt Aumeier document on the Website.

In Court. Master Trench orders James Libson to pay me £100 costs! What glee! But they are going ahead with their application for an injunction.

At 4:55 p.m. two girls come, on behalf of Davenport and Mishcon, with their witness statements. Mishcon's fill three ring binders, and are initially very intimidating: major statements from Prof. Vladimir Tarasov, other Russians, etc. However, I see that they have not got the key Russian witness, [the KGB archive chief] Bondarev. I work putting them on the Website all weekend!

This apartment's electric lights have been flickering increasingly over the last four or five months; today there is a whiff of burning in the fax-machine area.

I can't really make out what the Russians are testifying to: their statements appear to cover everything but the kitchen sink, and leave me almost unmentioned. A lot about Elke Fröhlich, however, God bless her.

The electric lights flicker, then go right off. The main switch-box turns out to be corroded and warped inside, with badly burnt prongs. I turn off all but the most essential items and work on until five a.m., and am up at eleven. Repeated power failures. J. Brand Ltd send an electrician, who will do the job tomorrow morning.

All witness statements uploaded to Website by midday, and the first shriek comes almost immediately from Mishcon, telling me to take them down. They quote Order 32, r 2A, but there is no such thing; they mean Order 38, r 2A.

Discussion about this with my legal friends, who urge me to tough it out. They say to put in an affidavit laying it on thick and rotten about the Mozzochi fiasco as justification. But moral justification alone will not be enough to set aside Rules of Court, methinks. We shall see. I may have to unload the documents tomorrow.

I WORK until five a.m. on the Website and the affidavit. A cheerful Black electrician comes at 8:45 a.m. and replaces this apartment's burned out master switch, hammering and drilling all morning. I am up again at eleven a.m. to complete the affidavit and annexes.

A whoop from the kitchen, as the power comes back on at 11:40 and the machine churns out a ten-page fax from Professor Deborah Lipstadt's solicitors Mishcon de Reya: they have made an appointment this afternoon for a judge in chambers to hear her application for an injunction against my Website. The judge hearing the application will be Mr Justice Moses. Peals of ironic laughter from my staff. I say that I am sure that Moses J. will bend over backwards to be fair, and that if he offers to recuse himself I shall state that I find that most offensive. [...]

Complete work on all affidavits etc., leave at 1:10 p.m.; I swear it, and then by taxi to the High Court. It is 3:30 p.m. before our case comes on. Mr Justice Moses is perhaps the same age as me, elegant, slightly fleshy, educated and quiet spoken, murmuring simply "Yes," from time to time as he takes each point in. We settle down in three rows of seats -- I take a seat on the left hand of Moses, Mishcon's team of four lawyers and barrister on his right hand.

Their barrister, whose name I once more have not caught, deftly sets out Professor Lipstadt's complaint: I have offended repeatedly against the Rules of the Supreme Court, he says, by posting the most intimate documents from her Discovery on my Website last spring. This is common ground, and I un-posted them within hours of Mishcon protesting. There are just placeholders at present, marking where the embarrassing documents once were: the documents themselves will be replaced as soon as they are read out in court during the trial. The barrister smoothly continues: they served Professor Lipstadt's witness statements on me last Friday at 5 p.m., and by yesterday, Monday, at 9 a.m., on checking my Website, they find that I have posted all thirteen statements. This, they claim, breaches Order 38, rule 2A, paragraph 11, which indicates that witness statements are confidential and can not be used for any other purpose than the proceedings, until the trial begins.

MR JUSTICE MOSES at once seizes the salient points. He has read the very full affidavit which I have sworn, opposing the Mishcon application; how, he asks the barrister, can Mr Irving conduct inquiries into these witnesses and their credibility, if he is not permitted to show those statements to anybody else?

It is at once clear that the peals of Homeric laughter from my staff were not justified, and that my confidence in the Court's innate integrity was. I lay aside the pen with which I have been making notes. The barrister replies that it would surely suffice for me just to list the names of the witnesses: that is already a concession.

Eventually the judge invites me to speak. I have placed the 1945 General Bruns interrogation report from my Website (overheard testimony of 1941 mass shootings of Jews in Russia) on top of my bundle, and he asks why; I remind him that Mishcon have quite gratuitously referred to me as a "Holocaust denier" at the start of their affidavit, and that I need scarcely elaborate further. He takes the point.

On the Lipstadt documents produced in Discovery the law is clear, and I do not argue. They cannot be published. Period. Until the trial.

On the witness statements, however, I argue that I have a right to regard posting them on my Website to ask my readers for facts about these witnesses, e.g. the communist agitator Daniel Levitas (left) and the KGB professor Vladimir Tarasov, as a proper use for these legal proceedings.

Somewhat to my consternation, the judge expresses profound horror that I have appended a rather smudgy photograph of Mr Levitas as a footnote to his witness statement. I reply that people who were indignant at his methods of standing up in the middle of my Atlanta lecture, and slowly photographing every section of the audience, will need to be reminded that this was the man, if they are not aware of who Levitas is.

I argue that it is not enough just to list the names: my readers must know what their separate allegations are, e.g. that I called members of the Washington State University "assholes" at the April 13, 1998 lecture (I did not, as the video will show, but two of Professor Lipstadt's witnesses, no doubted wholly independently of each other, state that I did).

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A section of the enthusiastic audience at Washington State University, Pullman, which gathered to hear Mr Irving on April 13, 1998

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Mr Justice Moses rules that I should only summarise those parts of the statements which I wish to test. Another concession, although to make such a selection, of course, puts valuable tactical information in the hands of my opponents.

I say, "I cannot see what Prof. Lipstadt is complaining about. I posted her entire Defence to my Writ, and left it uncontested for six months before I posted my Reply," although it was served on her the very day after her Defence. I add: "Now I have posted her entire witness statements, without altering one dot or comma. I would far prefer to have my witness statements posted in full, rather than in a bowdlerised or edited form." But since it has retreated into this cul de sac, the Court is unable to backtrack. This is the ruling that is made, and the edited statements will be posted in the amended form as ordered later this week.

He agrees that there should now be an injunction against me. Rejecting Mishcon's pristine typescript draft, Mr Justice Moses invites us to withdraw to draft a suitable Order.

At 5:30 p.m. we are back in his chambers. He whittles the Order down still further. Mishcon have applied for an Order that I give them a list of all my staff who have had sight of their documents; I object that they would hardly want to provide me with a list of all their staff. Chop. When I ask him to add the words "unless already in the public domain", to the order that I not post any of the documents appended to the statements -- if they add, e.g. a clipping from The Daily Telegraph, they can hardly claim that is privileged, he asserts that it belongs to the collection made by the witness and is privileged as well. Chop.

I must say I find this hard to grasp. Anthology rights in a bundle of documents? But there we are. He asks me if I have any further submissions, and I do: on costs, which will probably not run to less than £7,000 for this application.

I point out that my own affidavit ends with a statememt that if successful I ask for no order as to costs. He has moreover drastically cut back the Order as originally sought by Prof. Lipstadt -- "Less than fifty per cent of the original remains," I venture to say. I am about to ask for an order for "costs in the cause" when he takes those precise words out of my mouth.

DO I WISH leave to appeal? Indeed I do not. I would have sought leave if he had made a different order on costs, but the rest of the Order was very much what I had in mind, I say.

Most satisfactory, and my high-powered legal friends congratulate me loudly during the evening. Mr Justice Moses has now disposed that it is quite in order for me to post relevant extracts of Lipstadt's witness statements on the Website, in so far as necessary for the proceedings. His demeanour has confirmed my faith in the integrity of the British judiciary.

I am owed four hours' sleep from last night alone, and catch up on the sofa in the evening. Jessica tramples up and down on me on various pretexts.

At 11 p.m. D. phones. The New Yorker February 1, 1999 edition has published a lengthy review of the new Boston film about Fred Leuchter, entitled "The Friendly Executioner," and makes a passing reference* to the "loathsome" Mr Irving. I have been called worse. I have Deborah Lipstadt and her book to thank for this international bile machine. The author's name is Mark Singer. Well, some of us get named after sewing machines, and others after prophets. We can't all be called Moses.

[*The quote is: "He [Leuchter] is embraced by the loathsome British historian David Irving -- described by Ron Rosenbaum, in his book, 'Explaining Hitler,' as the Führer's 'chief post-war defender' -- who extolled the 'gruesomely expert author' of 'the Leuchter Report' and labelled its results 'shattering' and 'truly astounding."]

I have Deborah Lipstadt and her book to thank for this international bile machine. The author's name is Mark Singer. Well, some of us get named after sewing-machines, and others after prophets. We can't all be called Moses.

Two girls and a young man come and serve the Moses Order and formally warn me I face prison if I violate it. Friendly enough afterwards, as we search for missing documents. What a farce the law is. I am sleepy in the evening.

To the Passport Office to get a new passport, it has to be one of the new plum-coloured "European" ones. A sell-out.

From L. comes a plaintive e-mail request to know if there is anywhere on the Internet that he can find what I posted, and then removed, about Bernie Farber. Achtung: I was warned some months ago that L. is a double-agent: this seems to clinch it. I work until far into the night and send this e-mail reply at 5:34 am:

Being served with a High Court injunction, with all the warnings read out in front of witnesses about going to prison if there are ("further") infractions and violations, makes one a bit jumpy. They've had me in jail for Contempt of Court before, in 1994. And that was accidental. So I must not even seem to be looking for that forbidden material.

I will shortly post the gist of it, but I've got to rake it over with a very fine toothcomb indeed first. . .

I place on the Website a good item about the defence witness Bernie Farber, who turns out to advocate torture against Palestinian political prisoners, in his own writing (so he can't claim he is misquoted). What a hoot:

Wonderful thing this Internet is. Somebody on the other side of the world reads what I have posted yesterday about the Canadian gentleman Mr Bernie M Farber, one of the witnesses on whom Prof. Deborah Lipstadt (Emory University, Atlanta, Ga.) will rely in her defence of my libel action: Oops -- turns out that Mr Farber is a public advocate of torturing prisoners. Not a very fashionable view.

What rotten luck Lipstadt and her star lawyer Anthony Julius are having with their witnesses: first there is the West Coast gentleman Jonathan Mozzochi, who turns out to have had a police record as a skinhead gangleader. . .

Now, I am reminded that on page 18 of Ellen Jaffe McClain's book Embracing the Stranger, BasicBooks, New York, 1995 ("an in-depth survey of the social factors and stereotypes in the Jewish community and your society at large that may affect the intermarriage experience") the author speaks of Prof. Lipstadt's trenchant opposition to the intermarriage of Jews with gentiles.

"Although people like Deborah Lipstadt, the Emory University Prof. who has written and lectured widely on Holocaust denial, have exhorted Jewish parents to just say no to intermarriage, much the same way they expect their children not to take drugs, a large majority of parents and (more than a few rabbis) are unable to lay down opposition to intermarriage as a strict operating principle."

In a piece mockingly titled, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" one Canadian noted on June 28, 1996 on the Internet: "It seems that it is other people's exclusionary chauvinism Deborah Lipstadt disapproves of; she damns it as 'racism' and what-not. . . . Different strokes for different folks, I guess."

I guess so too: in fact I guess there is a streak of hypocrisy in most of us. Here in England, we are fighting racism tooth and claw: yet nobody dares murmur, at least out loud, about the Black Police Officers' Federation that has been formed.

In Miami, where I shall be next week, the local newspaper The Miami Herald -- one of the five great newspapers of the United States -- regularly runs display advertisements from a marriage agency which rejects all non-Jewish applicants. Personally, I too am happy the way I am born; uh, hold on there, is that a racist thought too?

Alexis completes scanning the Kurt Aumeier interrogation. It has cost nearly £100 in labour to do! Thought-provoking expense, and is it worth it?

Like a bad penny, who should ring the doorbell at seven p.m. but T., anxious for a gossip. Must have known I'm going away. He has got to be a plant.

3:30 p.m. pick up Jessica; she earns one Loveable Bear.

Down to High Court at midday; I get a Mar. 12 date for the restored summons against Lovell White (re Sereny), but the Order I have drafted against Lipstadt is defective and I must retype it.

In the afternoon Mishcon return my documents. They are in a shocking state, and I am speechless with dismay. I write to them at once:

Damage to my Papers. In front of witnesses here I have now opened and examined the boxes of documents which your staff returned, and I am deeply concerned by the condition of both the boxes and their contents. Three-quarters of the archive boxes will have to be replaced; the fitted internal boxes were in some cases ripped open at the bottom, instead of the top.

Your print room has ripped volumes, taken spiral bound files apart, and broken the backs of bound volumes. More serious is that the file contents have been tossed back into the boxes in total disarray, and have frequently been placed in the wrong numbered files and boxes, making nonsense of the indexing which I have worked six months to create. If you wished to sabotage my documentary case, you have done so very effectively.

I am particularly concerned about the torn and battered state of the papers, which your staff sometimes just wrapped in rubber bands and tossed into the boxes. Since I am negotiating with an American university to acquire my papers, this vandalism is unforgivable. I have instructed my staff to buy replacement archive boxes and to replace the damaged boxes and labels but it will take months to sort them back into the proper files.

My entrusting my original records to you was a serious misjudgement on my part, and I now have the greatest misgivings about the condition of my diaries and tapes.

And I write to Lovell White, representing Gitta Sereny:

I do not feel it would be proper to delay issuing this Summons for further directions. With respect, you might continue asking for further documents and letters-within-letters for months, and indeed for years to come, and complain each time at how long it takes me either to find them or to ascertain that they are lost without trace or transferred to foreign archives.

I have a huge backlog to deal with before leaving London in a few hours' time.

I work all night. Jessica shows up sleepily around 7:15 a.m., baffled that I have got up so early. Her Mama explains that I am leaving for America in a few minutes time. "Is it Thursday, then?" asks Jessica. It is, and already she is spelling out her list of desiderata, most of which involve Barbies.

Benté asks my phone number in Key West. I say she is to give it out to nobody -- anybody with a computer can find out the street address of any phone number in the United States. I want to write in peace.

I stay awake until the Virgin Atlantic 747 is aloft, then drop off into several long and unsatisfying sleeps; my head snaps forward, I slump into the seat, I miss the meals, I wake, I read a book -- I have started Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem -- then fall asleep again.

I work for three hours on the Website until the battery runs out. Once or twice I go to the rear and look down through almost solid banks of white snow clouds onto the southern tip of Greenland, then Gander as we fly high overhead.

Miami at 3:15 p.m, a ten hour flight and hot-wet-flannel hits you as you step out into this climate.

Hertz refuses to rent a car to me, so I walk in sweltering heat round to Avis, five dollars cheaper. A car which in England would be luxury in size rents here for $26 a day; in England it would cost ten times as much. I call in at Office Max: A packet of 500 regular white envelopes costs $3.39. How cheaply the Americans live, in every aspect of their lives.

I head off down US.1 to a month of total anonymity.

It is still light here at seven p.m.; in England it is dark at four. At the Rusty Anchor at nine p.m., I have a quick bite of fish and chips. Smiles all round. Here everybody knows me, but nobody knows my name.

I pick up the keys of the tiny cottage I have rented for a month -- it is smaller than the brick slave-quarters I saw years ago at the plantation in South Carolina where they filmed Gone with the Wind (Goebbels' favourite Hollywood movie).

Aaargh: none of the keys fits the door. Numbed by exhaustion, I slump in the car's front seat instead, and fall fast asleep.

Awake at seven a.m. The car's windows are steamed up. I drive to the Croissant Shop for a snack. I am totally anonymous; one of the town's nameless visitors. A comforting, velvety famelessness.

At eight a.m., Roger at the estate agency sheepishly admits that he mixed up the keys. I carry the heavy trunks of equipment into the cottage, and set up my office to write.

I rescue a bicycle from under the tree where I chained it in August; it is beginning to rust, and I take it to a bike shop for minor repairs. Several times I stop at the barber shop. Each time the sign has advanced an hour: Back at 2:30 becomes Back at 3:30 and so on. At five p.m. he is at last in.

"How much off?" he asks.

"All of it," I say, "Right down to the bone. I don't want anybody recognising me down here."

I go on line. There are 42 e-mails to deal with. I go over to a Cuban Restaurant for a snack.

As I pay, the middle-aged waitress, with whom I have conversed in Spanish all evening, sidles up to me: "Excuse me señor, but aren't you a writer? Isn't your name Irving?" She continues, "I am in Spain some years ago, and I read a book with your picture in the cover. La Guerra de Hitler," she confirms. Aaargh.

I escape as fast as I decently can. Later I return and slip a two-dollar tip into her hand. The game is up: She knows my name, and I can't have people putting it around that David Irving doesn't tip handsomely.

I ask one of the locals what damage was done by Hurricane Georges in August. He drawls, "Nothing, but now there's chickens everywhere." I fail to grasp the connection, and foolishly say: "Chickens? Where do they come from, then?"

"Eggs," he snarls. Aaargh again.

I am ill from ten hours of breathing in the Virgin Atlantic passengers' assorted infections. A truly awful night, awake on and off, feverish, hallucinations, senseless meanderings of the mind, thirst, pains, aches, coughing up rusty-coloured phlegm -- in short all the signs of a return of that pneumonia. Lo que me faltava.

This e-mail to Benté:

It is now Wednesday. I feel listless and apathetic. I haven't eaten for three or four days; I ordered the usual breakfast at Harpoon Harry's this morning, but left nine-tenths of it, as I could not face it. I think I have beaten it however, with the aid of about 100 hypochondradene's [aspirins] so far.

I had another bad night, and am perspiring and feverish all the time. My living costs so far are minimal: $2.50 per day!

I see that Christopher Browning is in London giving evidence for the prosecution of a Yugoslav (alleged) war criminal. He would make an interesting opponent.

I finally resume work on editing Churchill's War, vol. ii.

Lunch at Higgs Beach. Crazy family with a barking dog. Everybody irritated by it. When I express mild annoyance, her macho husband threatens a punch up; she stands up on leaving and tips a bowl of garlic soup over me, to general astonishment including my own. Have a nice day to you too, sir.

Mishcon fax that the Lipstadt trial is set down for Jan. 11, 2000, to last an estimated twelve weeks.

E-mails start arriving like artillery: from one Brian Behrend, comes this highly suspicious letter:

I am a high school student at York Suburban High School in York, Pennsylvania. Recently, we had an homework assignment that dealt with the segregation of schools. We were supposed to describe the position of a senator in the 1950's for segregation and a senator against segregation. For the senator for segregation, I gave him a racist point of view. He is quoted as saying, "If you allow blacks in educational institutions where whites are, it will have a negative effect on the whites' education because blacks are less intelligent." My teacher circled the "less intelligent " part of the writing and wrote "no" next to it. My teacher then proceeded to use my paper as an example of poor logic for the homework assignment. My teacher says that politicians during the 1950's were not openly racist and would only use Plessy versus Ferguson for justification of segregation. I disagree with him and believe that there were openly racist politicians. However, my resources are limited and I have been unable to find conclusive evidence to substantiate my claims. Could you please provide me with any information that would corroborate my position? I specifically need quotes that would verify openly racist statements that involve senators claiming African Americans are less intelligent. I am concerned we are not learning the full truth about our past. Thank-you for your time and any help that you may provide. Sincerely, Brian Behrend

I respond as I do to all agents provocateurs.

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