[verbatim trial transcripts | previous Radical's Diary]
March
2, 2000 (Thursday) A rather odd day. Worked until 3:30 a.m. as usual, preparing rebuttal items for the cross-examination today, primarily all diary entries relating to E. and F., etc, on which I expect Richard Rampton QC to feast the court's eyes. My staff have worked for weeks preparing the extracts. At 9:30 a.m. a woman from the OSS (Office for the Supervision of Solicitors) phones about my April 1998 complaint about Mishcon's breach of an undertaking to bring the Halle video to court. I say they have left it rather late, but confirm that we have not settled that issue. To High Court at 10:30 a.m. I begin by stating five points to Judge Gray.
On No. 1 the judge orders that a disc be provided to me tomorrow at the latest. On No 2., he shows little interest: he says he is not at all interested in the arrest; I point out that it was important to establish that I was telling the truth, and not Prof. Funke, yesterday. On No. 3, the judge says it was between me and the solicitors, but they will no doubt take the right steps. On No.4 the judge says he agrees that I should be released from the undertaking, but that it is difficult to do so as Rampton still objects, having given his word to the Israelis. I point out that the Eichmann MS is said to be available in full on the Spiegel website and elsewhere; Rampton says, rather mysteriously, that the Israelis have indicated to him that they have supplied to us a version more complete than the one released to the public. I say, "I do not wish to be held in contempt for breaking the undertaking." The judge takes the point. On No. 5 the judge expresses concern, asks what was afoot: I say two things, the admissibility of the video (in which I do not think I shall prevail) and the conduct of the defence case, with fraudulent withholding of the videos in April last year. The latter, as the parties are well aware, goes to the issue of costs, which may be relevant. Later in the day, Judge Gray orders that we shall argue the latter point, No. 5, on Monday. The final cross-examination of me by Richard Rampton then resumes around 10:45 a.m., and concludes at 3 p.m. He commences by showing video of part of my speech at Hamilton, Ontario, including my mocking of the eye-witness allegation of a portable "one man gas chamber", and the reference to the A-S-S-H-O-L-E organisation. I don't think he makes much headway with them. The fact that he has now tried twice to bring them to the judge's attention suggests that he feels he did not succeed the first time round. He brings in the Kinna document now; I agree to all his submissions on the document, which do not really damage the position I have adopted, but point out that Kinna was a very lowly SS rank (a corporal, I guess: but a check at home reveals that Untersturmführer is in fact second lieutenant), and that his command of the German language was perhaps not such as that one can attach great significance to the precise words he used. Going on to the contacts with the "rogues gallery" he tries to establish beyond doubt that I spoke often to "National Alliance" functions and to the British National Party, in 1983 -- seventeen years ago. The latter document turns out to be a reference to the British National Movement, whatever that is; and there is only one function addressed by me described as partly a BNP audience, the rest of that audience however being explicitly Monday Club and other bodies. I don't think the judge will make much out of that. The NA link is less tenuous, but hardly more intense: Erich Gliebe, the Cleveland organiser, wrote me one letter in 1990 on NA headed notepaper, with what turns out to be the NA logo top left (like an inverted CND symbol: I have never seen it before). All other letters have no such embellishment however, and apart from a diary entry where I state that a Tampa, Florida, function "turns out to have been" organised by the local NA officials, even that is a dry vein, as the actual poster announcing the meeting has no reference whatever to the NA. The NA leaflets handed out elsewhere in the meeting room, which a Rebecca Guttman (local spy for the ADL) obtained for the court, contained White power language: Rampton points to the use of capital W's and B's for White and Black. I point out that the Daily Telegraph uses the same style. Some time is spent in the afternoon on little dossiers they have compiled on:
Then suddenly the cross-examination is over. The nocturnal efforts by myself, and the last weeks, by my staff, have been for nothing, it seems. We arrange the timetable for the closing phases, and I take T's taxi home, emptying all my files and books out of the courtroom as I do. Michael W. faxes to me from Hannover the two latest articles from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: both are horrendously distorted accounts of the trial by their journalist Eva Menasse. She gets (and earns) this email from me: Your two last articles [March 1, 2, 2000] were particular infamous, indeed full of lies. The transcripts will show that, and let's hope your editor gets a stack of letters from my friends about that. The judge clearly accepted, that the defence has failed to establish any links whatever between me and Kühnen, Küssel, and similar radicals. Why did you repeat the same old lies? That was particularly evil of you. An
hour's work tonight only.
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