David Irving

David Irving

[Photoby David Gamble, for
The Independent on Sunday]


Letter to the Director
of the Central Intelligence Agency

 

[seeking help in overcoming the publishing boycott]

Mr William J. Casey,
The Director,
The Central Intelligence Agency,
Washington D.C. 20505,
U.S.A.

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London, December 19, 1983

Dear Bill,

REVIEWING MY files, I came across this letter [not posted on this site] you wrote back in 1977, when you spoke kind words of praise about my book Hitler's War.

Now, following your recent career, I see that you too have had your share of criticism. The fact that we were in personal touch six years ago encourages me to ask you for advice. Two years ago my latest book, Uprising identified the [post-war Hungarian communist] regime as Jewish -- not something to be shouted too loudly in New York city, I agree. I also identified the real heroes [of the 1956 anti-Communist uprising in Hungary] as the working class, rather than the more effete intellectuals.

The book clearly has an important purpose for the free world: the narrative of how one people tried, and bloodily failed, to throw off the Communist doctrine and domination. Can it really be unpublishable in the United States? Can you or your "company," recommend from experience any publisher with a more robust approach to historical truth?

I much enjoyed our talk in 1977 and look forward to meeting you again should your busy life permit. I am always commuting with Washington D.C. (one of my favorite cities) and frequently stay in fact with the family of one of your predecessor's personal secretaries at Vienna, Va.

 

Yours sincerely,
David Irving


[Peter Israel, editor in chief of New York publisher Putnam Inc., had declined to publish David Irving's Uprising, for which they had paid a large sum. Casey responded to the above letter, and there was a meeting at CIA headquarters on May 1, 1986 at which he showed Mr Irving the manuscript of his own forthcoming memoirs. Uprising was never published in the USA].