Fred A. Leuchter
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Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (born 1943) is an American execution technician who became controversial after testifying in defense of Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel. He claims to have improved the electric chair to make it more humane, designed a lethal injection machine, and he claims to have acted as a consultant about gallows and gas chambers though a number of states he claims to have acted as a consultant for deny such a relationship ever existed. His machines have been used by several U.S. states. However, an October 13, 1990, New York Times article, which described him as "The nation’s leading adviser on capital punishment", quoted an expert anesthesiologist on Leuchter's lethal injection machine saying "His injection system would render an inmate incapable of screaming about the 'extreme pain in the form of a severe burning sensation' caused by... potassium chloride."
Newsweek 's October 22 1990 issue published a claim by Alabama Assistant Attorney General Ed Carnes calling Leuchter's views on the gas chamber "unorthodox" and alleging that "Leuchter was running a death row shakedown scheme: if a state didn't purchase Leuchter's services, he would testify at the last minute for the condemned man that the state's death chamber might malfunction."
The Associated Press quoted Carnes claiming that Leuchter made 'money on both sides of the fence.' (Associated Press, October 24, 1990). In his memorandum to death penalty states, Carnes observed that in Florida and Virginia the federal courts had rejected Leuchter's testimony as unreliable. The court in Florida had found that Leuchter had 'misquoted the statements' contained in an important affidavit and had 'inaccurately surmised' a crucial premise of his conclusion . In Virginia, Leuchter provided a death-row inmate's attorney with an affidavit claiming the electric chair would fail. The Virginia court decided the credibility of Leuchter's affidavit was limited because Leuchter was "the refused contractor who bid to replace the electrodes in the Virginia chair. (Newsweek, October 22, 1990, pg. 22)
Because of his background, he was asked by Ernst Zündel, who was being tried for publishing works of Holocaust denial, to investigate and testify as an expert witness at his trial. Leuchter traveled to Auschwitz and Birkenau to examine the structures identified as gas chambers, and concluded that they could not have been used for mass murder. He published his findings as The Leuchter Report, and swore to them under oath in the trial. His report was widely republished and he spoke about his experiences at Holocaust denial conferences. Protests were organized in response. Leuchter's defenders say these protests destroyed his career and his life.
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The investigation
Leuchter traveled to several sites of structures identified as gas chambers, where he collected samples from walls, ceilings and floors. He took copious notes about the floor plans and layout, and all of his actions were videotaped by a cameraman.
Leuchter then brought the samples back to Boston, where he presented them to Alpha Analytical Laboratories, a top laboratory, for testing. Leuchter told Alpha only that the samples were to be used as evidence in a court case about an industrial accident. The lab tested them for exposure to cyanide and concluded that no traces of it could be found. When asked, lab manager James Roth swore under oath to the results at the trial.
Only after he got off the stand did Roth learn what the trial was about. He later said that cyanide could only penetrate the stone masonry of the gas chambers to the depth of one-tenth of a human hair. However, Roth had pulverized the samples, thus severely diluting them.
Leuchter did not examine the walls of the gas chambers until fifty years after they had been used; his critics note that it would have been virtually impossible to discover any cyanide at all using his method. In fact, tests conducted on ventilation grates immediately after the end of the war showed substantial amounts of cyanide. Leuchter was unaware that part of the camp and chambers were reconstructed, so he had no way of knowing if the bricks he was scraping were actually part of the original gas chamber.
Leuchter also attempted to come up with a design that would allow the buildings in question to be used as gas chambers, but failed. He said it was simply impossible to use the buildings without killing the operators and those nearby in the process.
His critics respond:
- Nonsense; it is all a question of concentration. Once the gas is released into the atmosphere, its concentration drops and it is no longer dangerous. Also, HCN dissipates quickly. The execution gas chambers in US prisons are also ventilated directly into the atmosphere. Furthermore, if this argument would hold for the extermination chambers, it would hold for the delousing chambers as well, and one would have to conclude that no delousing chambers existed either.[1] (http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/l/leuchter.fred/leuchter.faq2)
Leuchter also asserted that the necessary ventilation systems and other pieces simply would not fit. Documents from the period show that the gas chambers in fact had powerful ventilators capable of clearing the gas chambers in minutes. When challenged in court, Leuchter said he was unaware of those documents. The chambers were demolished by the Nazis when they abandoned Auschwitz and the facilities Leuchter examined were, in fact, reconstructions. Leuchter has no training or expertise in the designing of gas chambers.
Many of Leuchter's conclusions are based on the assumption that it takes 20 to 30 hours to air a room disinfected with Zyklon-B; since far lower concentrations are required when gassing people it actually takes 20 to 30 minutes to air out the room and the forced ventilation systems used are more than adequate to allow the gas chambers to be operated safely.
When questioned in court, Leuchter admitted he had not seen a document by the Waffen SS Commandant for construction issued when the gas chambers were constructed which estimated they had a 24 hour capacity of 4756 people, more than 30 times Leuchter's estimate of 156.
During the trial, Leuchter also made claims that it would be dangerous to house the furnaces for cremating the victims in the same building in which the gas chambers were located, because the "gas might explode" The gas only explodes at a minimal concentration of 56,000 PPM, about 200 times more than the lethal concentration. Leuchter also testified that it was impossible to kill six million people at Auschwitz (six million is the estimate commonly given for all Jews killed during the Holocaust, not the estimated number of those gassed at Auschwitz.) Further in regards to Leuchter's estimates on the numbers who could be killed by gas chambers at Auschwitz:
- Leuchter arrives at his figures assuming that the people could occupy the gas chambers at a density of maximum 1 person per 9 square feet (a density of 1.2/m²) and that it would take a week to ventilate the gas chambers before they could be used for another mass execution. These assumptions are absurd.[2] (http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/l/leuchter.fred/leuchter.faq1)
He also asserts that the traces of cyanide compounds in the remains of the gas chambers in Auschwitz is less than in the "delousing chambers" in which clothes were deloused (using the same gas, hydrogen cyanide). However, according to toxicologists it takes a much higher concentration of the gas to kill lice and bugs (16,000 parts per million) than to kill humans and other warm blooded creatures (300 PPM). Further, killing lice requires an exposure time of many hours while only minutes are needed for people.
Leuchter denies any desire to disprove the Holocaust, and does not deny the Holocaust happened, but claims he is convinced that the structures he saw were not gas chambers. He claims he conducted the investigation and testified about it because he believed in freedom of speech and freedom of thought and felt that people should be allowed to publish their views, however misguided and that he believes every man deserves a fair trial (Zündel was facing 25 years in prison if he lost), and he was the only expert available to provide the key testimony. However, critics argue that Leuchter had a profitable career as an "expert witness" for hire who would say whatever his contracter wanted him to say and, according to trial testimony, Zündel paid Leuchter $35,000 for his report.
Aftermath
Protests were organized outside the court house in Canada, and near Leuchter's home in Malden, Massachusetts. However, despite the bad publicity Leuchter remained active until 1990 when his lack of qualifications to practice were exposed. In the late 1980s, following the Zundel trial, he was featured in both the Atlantic Monthly and Prime Time Live in items on capital punishment, neither of which mentioned his association with Zundel.
In 1990, the state of Massachusetts brought criminal charges against Leuchter for representing himself as an engineer without a license. Leuchter says he was a victim of selective prosecution, since only 10% of engineers are actually licensed. However, Leuchter does not only not have an engineering licence, he has no engineering degree nor any engineering credentials whatsoever. His only education consists of a BA in history. He admits to having no formal training in toxicology, biology or chemistry. Additionally, while Leuchter had some experience with electric chairs and lethal injection systems it was discovered that his claims of expertise in the area of gas chambers was a fabrication and he had no actual experience with them.
When he tried to sell a lethal injection machine that he repaired for a state that refused to pay Leuchter after the controversy, he was again charged; his wife also divorced him.
Now without a job or wife, he received an offer to come out to California, but the company he went to work for ran out of money leaving Leuchter stranded.
Mr. Death
Leuchter is the subject of a 1999 documentary by Errol Morris, entitled Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. The film received wide acclaim. When Morris originally screened an early version of the film for a Harvard film class, he found that the students reacted by either believing Leuchter's side of the story or by condemning the film as a piece of Holocaust denial. Morris had no such intention, however, as Morris had considered it obvious that Leuchter was wrong, and that the central idea of the film was intended to be the exploration of Leuchter as a being almost completely lacking self-knowledge:
- "The Holocaust has been used in movies as a way of heightening drama in a sense that the triumph of the human spirit never looked so triumphant against the horrors. This movie attempts to do something very different. It's to try to enter the mindset of denial. You are asked to reflect on the whole idea of denial in general, not as some postwar phenomenon but as something that was inherent in the enterprise itself. You would think it would be the easiest thing in the world to identify this behavior as wrong, horrific, depraved. Those people did these things. To me, the question is how. With Mr. Death, it’s about finding out why Fred Leuchter holds these views."[3] (http://www.tipjar.com/dan/errolmorris.htm) (also see [4] (http://errolmorris.com/content/interview/moma1999.html))
Thus, the "fall" of Leuchter's life is portrayed not as a result of any particular ill feelings toward the Jewish people or passionate support for revisionist history, but rather as an absurd man bumbling his way into saying—and, to be fair, believing—absurd things. Errol Morris re-edited the film to include additional interviews with people who condemn Leuchter with varying intensity. Morris felt this last step should have been unnecessary, since, to him, Leuchter was so obviously misguided in much of what he says in the film.[5] (http://errolmorris.com/content/interview/moma1999.html)
References
- The Execution Protocol: Inside America's Capital Punishment Industry by Stephen Trombley (ISBN 0517591138) - Includes extensive information on Leuchter.
External links
- Who is Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.? (http://www.revisionists.com/leuchter/), a collection of articles and essays by and about Leuchter at Revisionists.com.
- Summary of Leuchter's testimony as a witness for the defense (http://www.ihr.org/books/kulaszka/33leuchter.html), in the Canadian 'False News' trial of Ernst Zündel, 1988 (edited by Barbara Kulaszka).
- Full text of The Leuchter Report (http://www.ihr.org/books/leuchter/leuchter.toc.html) from the Institute for Historical Review.
- The Chemistry of Auschwitz (http://veritas3.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/chemistry/), an essay by Richard J. Green debunking Leuchter's claims.
- The Leuchter Report, Holocaust Denial and the Big Lie (http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/leuchter/) at the Nizkor Project
- Mr. Death synopsis (http://errolmorris.com/film/mrdeath.html) at, the film's director, Errol Morris' page.de:Fred A. Leuchter