Part III of David Irving's globe-trotting experience while dodging the vigilant censors:
MY DIARY reminds me that from late 1994 to June 1995 I am writing in Key West: no speaking engagements, just relaxing with Benté and little Jessica, just a year months old, as I complete the final version of the biography of the Nazi propaganda minister Dr Joseph Goebbels. [Goebbels book] In March 1995 I make a flying visit back to London to fetch more WW.II documents and photographs from my files. On March 28, 1995, as I return to Key West, Virgin Atlantic airways "loses" my bag -- a big unlockable green trunk, an ex US-army footlocker. Unusually, I am informed of this "loss" as soon as I step off the plane. Now that's odd. Seven days pass before the trunk is returned to me.
At the time I put this down to bad luck, but it now seems that something more purposeful is behind the loss.
Of course, things could have been worse. People might have planted stuff in the baggage, a not unknown practice in North America. What has in fact happened this time is that when the bag arrived on a later flight a Virgin representative has escorted it to Customs. A Customs Inspector Esposito has opened it, assisted by a Special Inspector Cavendish. "Examination revealed materials that there were pro-Nazi and Right wing propaganda," the official US files reveal (evidently not spotting that they are all dated prior to May 1, 1945, the day that propaganda minister Dr Goebbels committed suicide!). Bartie phones the local INS officials in Orlando; they tell him to contact the Immigration Command Center in Washington DC. Customs now holds the bag until it is decided whether these materials are admissible.
On March 30 the crestfallen officials are told that under the law the materials are admissible, and George Waldrop, of ADD, Miami, orders the trunk released to immigration under Title 8, section 235.1 of the CFR. The bag is now held however while Immigration determines my own "status."
Being a law-abiding person, I like to think that it is entirely coincidental that a few days later I find that a note has been fastened to the blind side of my P O Box in Key West, directing that all my mail is to be held for a week; and that the number of strangers walking up and down past our isolated cottage multiplies, of whom the least suspicious is a Hassidic gentleman in heavy black Lubavitcher rig who makes the trip three times in one day. Although they do say that a nun's uniform makes the best camouflage for surveillance -- nobody gives nuns a second glance -- I assume that this gentleman's is hardly a clever camouflage designed to melt him into the 90-degree scenery.
Publicity to be kept at a minimum
I read further into the INS dossier on David Irving. A fuller summary has been solemnly compiled, somewhere in the innards of the INS:
"On 28 March 1995 a rush bag arrived from England via Virgin Atlantic flight 015 & was opened by an airline representative. CI [Customs inspector] Bartie was present and upon examining the contents, determined the bag to contain Right Wing neo-Nazi material belonging to a David Irving. Newspaper articles found in the bag revealed that Mr Irving has been arrested in Germany, Canada, England, and Australia."
[These arrest-allegations are untrue; they bear a curious similarity to libellous statements by the Australian prime minister Mr John Howard that Mr Irving has been "convicted" in these same countries. Evidently the same organisation has briefed them all.]
"Subject has been either deported or excluded from entering above named countries as well. CI Bartie called the local immigration office and was directed to call the Immigration District Command Center in Miami. CI Bartie spoke to a Mr George Waldrop who conference-called other country officials concerning
this matter. A Mr Romi Gyergyak, an Australian official, was contacted and stated that the subject had been excluded from Australia, but was not 'wanted'. Additionally, the Simon Wiesenthal Center was contacted and awaiting response. It seems that most countries involved do not want the subject admitted into the country due to his right-wing, neo-Nazi extremist lectures and publications. Material in subject's baggage was dealing with doubting of the Holocaust and pro-Nazi propaganda. Continued contact with all above mentioned parties continues. Baggage was determined for determination of admissibility. RAC Orlando advised at onset and is in contact with all outside agencies, RAC Key West and all other participants. Publicity to be kept at a minimum."
The last sentence in this 1995 document is yellow-highlighted in the Tecs II computer file.
* It can not be stated for certain now what that footlocker did contain in 1995: what is certain is that it contained not a single sheet of "neo Nazi" material -- only Nazi documents. As said, I was writing the final chapters of the Goebbels biography, Mastermind of the Third Reich. The most innocent explanation is that to Mr Bartie, raised perhaps on a diet of Hollywood films and Madison-Avenue books, this may have seemed like "Nazi" materials. He does not list the documents, so we don't know. The trunk and its vital contents finally arrived at the little cottage in Key West, looking -- literally -- crushed, dishevelled, and confused after their week-long adventure. Virgin Atlantic, I am bound to say, compensated me handsomely, awarding me a thousand dollars' compensation for the inconvenience.
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(To be continued tomorrow)
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A little plug to help the David Irving Defense Fund:
The diary excerps reproduced (are) the property of David Irving. Passages have been edited as to tenses, grammar, styles, spelling, and names. The diary's depiction of courtroom exchanges are from memory, and are not intended to replace the official transcripts posted on Mr Irving's website at www.fpp.co.uk/docs/trial/transcripts.html.
The official transcripts are being corrected for later publication by FPP as a CD-Rom. Mr Irving,s Closing Speech is published in full by FPP, available for $10.00, from P O Box 1707, Key West, FL 33041, USA.
email: focalp@aol.com
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Thought for the Day - (quoted many times before but worthy of memorizing):
"We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand-fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers . . we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations."
(Alexandr Solzhenitsyn)