Fred A. Leuchter

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Frederick A. (Fred) Leuchter, Jr. (born 1943) is an American execution technician who rose to controversy for his testimony in defense of Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel. He claims to have improved the electric chair to make it more humane, to have designed a lethal injection machine, and to have acted as a consultant about gallows and gas chambers, although a number of U.S. states he claims to have acted as a consultant for have denied such a relationship ever existed. His machines have been used by several U.S. states. His study for Zündel's trial is referred to as the Leuchter Report and is often regarded as a scientific touchstone of Holocaust denial. A documentary, entitled Mr. Death: the Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., was released by Errol Morris in 1999.

1 Fred Leuchter Associates
2 The investigation at Auschwitz
3 Aftermath
- 3.1 Repetition of Leuchter's examination
4 Mr. Death
5 Miscellany
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Fred Leuchter Associates

Leuchter spent much of his life offering services to several states to help them maintain, improve, document, and ascertain their equipment for administration of capital punishment, via his firm, Fred Leuchter Associates. His initial work was with electric chairs, starting in Tennessee. Leuchter's broader claims are that his work in this area is "humanitarian," providing greater respect for both guards and those to be executed. He later stated that he supported "capital punishment, not capital torture." He also claims that he offered his services at considerable economy: off-the-shelf parts, labor, and a 20% profit. By his own account, consultation between state government agencies spread his reputation from Tennessee to other states, and further assignments followed. According to the same account, these agencies had no qualms about tasking Leuchter with working on execution systems with which he had no previous experience, and it was in this manner that Leuchter's proposal for a lethal injection system was first accepted by New Jersey.

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) (In the film Mr. Death, Leuchter, stating that electrocution would be his choice if he were compelled to select the means of his own execution, gives Florida, Alabama, and Virginia as the names of three states where he would not want to be electrocuted.)

[edit] The investigation at Auschwitz

On the recommendation of Bill Armantrout, warden for Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, Missouri, Leuchter was hired by Ernst Zündel, who was being tried in Canada for publishing works of Holocaust denial, to investigate and testify as an expert witness at his trial, at a salary of $35,000. In his capacity as warden, Armontrout was personally responsible for carrying out executions by the use of cyanide gas. 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. Zündel's Samisdat Publications published his findings as The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek Poland (published in England by Irving's publisher, Focal Point Publications, as Auschwitz: The End of the Line: The Leuchter Report - The First Forensic Examination of Auschwitz) which the court accepted only as evidentiary display and not as direct evidence; Leuchter was therefore required to explicate it and testify to the veracity of his findings under oath in the trial. His report was widely republished and translated by various denial organizations, and he has since lectured on it and his subsequent experiences. Protests were organized in response. Leuchter's defenders say these protests destroyed his career and his life.

In 1988, Leuchter traveled to several sites of structures identified as gas chambers, where he surreptitiously collected samples from walls, ceilings and floors since he did not have permission to take samples, using a chisel and hammer to chip and scrape off pieces of the masonry. He took copious notes about the floor plans and layout, and all of his actions were videotaped by a cameraman. (Leuchter, who had been married for about one month before the trip, told his wife that the trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau was their honeymoon.) 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 found trace amounts in the alleged crematoria, which Leuchter dismissed in his report:

"It is notable that almost all the samples were negative and that the few that were positive were very close to the detection level (1mg/kg); 6.7 mg/kg at Krema III; 7.9 mg/kg at Krema I. The absence of any consequential readings at any of the tested locations as compared to the control sample reading 1050 mg/kg supports the evidence that these facilities were not execution gas chambers. The small quantities detected would indicate that at some point these buildings were deloused with Zyklon B - as were all the buildings at all these facilities".

Leuchter does not address the discrepancy between the trace amounts of cyanide which he dismisses vs. the complete lack of any cyanide residue found in his sample 12, a sample taken from a gasket in an unrelated building intended for use as a negative control [1]; instead he only compares the low amounts in the alleged Krema to the higher readings in his positive control sample.

Lab manager James Roth swore under oath to the results at the trial. It was only after he got off the stand that Roth learned what the trial was about. In an interview for Morris's film, Roth states that cyanide would have formed an extremely fine layer on the walls, to the depth of one-tenth of a human hair. Leuchter had taken samples of indeterminate thickness (he is seen in Morris's film hammering at the bricks with a rock hammer). Not informed of this, Roth had pulverized the entire samples, thus severely diluting the cyanide-containing layer of each sample with an indeterminate amount of brick, varying for each sample. Roth offers the analogy that the tests were like looking at timbers when one needed to be looking at the paint.

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. The chambers were demolished by the Nazis when they abandoned Auschwitz, and the facilities Leuchter examined were, in fact, partially reconstructed. 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 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.

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 without endangering the executioners. 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]

Leuchter's opposition to the possibility of gas chambers rests on the relatively low concentration of cyanide residue measured in his sample of the remains of the supposed gas chambers in Auschwitz, compared to his sample of the "delousing chambers" in which clothes were deloused using the same gas, hydrogen cyanide. However, his report contains the assumption that lower concentrations are required for delousing than to kill humans and other warm blooded creatures; in fact, with their simpler structures and slower metabolisms, insects are more resistant to such gross metabolic poisons than mammals. Both toxicological study and practical experience demonstrate that it takes a much higher concentration of cyanide (16,000 parts per million) to kill insects than to kill humans (300 PPM), as well as an exposure time of many hours rather than only minutes. Leuchter also fails to explain his belief that Zyklon-B was used for delousing, in view of his belief that the product would present technical difficulties in ventilating and decontaminating such as to make it impractical for use in a gas chamber.

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 competent 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 contractor wanted him to say and, according to trial testimony, Zündel paid Leuchter $35,000 for his report.

[edit] 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 Ernst Zündel 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. Also following his involvement in the Zündel trial, Leuchter began giving lectures to Holocaust denial groups such as the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) about his research and continued belief in the conclusions to which he testified in the trial. A speech to the Eleventh IHR Conference in October, 1992, included the following remark:

In this case, it is myself that I post mortem--and the cadaver isn't dead! Much to the dismay of my executioners, the execution was so badly botched that I am able to stand here before you to speak the truth, and to tell the world that it is not myself, but the Holocaust story that is dead. I repeat for the record: I was condemned for maintaining that there were no execution gas chambers as Auschwitz, Birkenau, Majdanek, Dachau, Mauthausen, or Hartheim Castle. There's no proof for the charge, only innuendo, lies, and half-truths. Robert Faurisson, Ernst Zundel and others said this first. They, too, live as victims of botched executions, but nevertheless free to speak the truth in a strong and growing voice that repeats: No gas chambers, no gas chambers, no damn gas chambers!

...

Because I was somewhat naive at the time, I was not aware that by so testifying I was offending the organized world Jewish community. By providing final, definitive proof that there were no execution gas chambers utilized for genocidal purposes by the Germans at these wartime camps, I established the simple fact that the Holocaust story is not true. What I did not know was that anyone expressing such beliefs is guilty of a capital crime: that of thinking and telling the unspeakable truth about the greatest lie of the age.

I would have to pay for this crime. While I innocently told the truth in Toronto, plans were made, and subsequently implemented, for a major effort to destroy me. If I could be destroyed and discredited--so the reasoning went--no one would accept my professional findings, no matter how truthful.

In October 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. Critics have argued that Leuchter not only lacks an engineering license but hasn't an engineering degree or other professional certification or recognised credential — his only education consists of a BA in history, which he completed in 1964. 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 experience with them.

When he tried to sell parts of a lethal injection machine and other inventory from Fred Leuchter Associates, much of it items pending work for various states who refused to pay him for previously contracted or agreed work, he was again charged (Leuchter claims that the Massachusetts Attorney General had to explain that the sale of the offered equipment was not, in fact, illegal); his wife divorced him in this same period. The issues surrounding the equipment sale were covered in Boston area newspapers. Leuchter further claimed that states (he has named Delaware and its Deputy Attorney General, Fred Silverman) refused to do business with him and reneged on existing agreements not because of his lack of qualification but because of his involvement in the Zündel trial.

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. David Irving, speaking several years before losing his libel lawsuit against Deborah Lipstadt and the ruin of his own reputation before a British court, expressed surprise that Leuchter did not commit suicide as a result of his destitution. Irving has called Leuchter a "simpleton" even as he has said that Leuchter's report convinced him that the received history Holocaust is a lie (Lipstadt's counsel in the libel trial cited Irving's contemporaneous statements to this effect in his opening statement).

Leuchter was arrested in and shortly thereafter deported from the United Kingdom in November 1991. He had been banned from entering the country by the Home Office and his entry and presence in the country was therefore considered illegal. Leuchter claimed that United States consulate personnel effectively refused him aid. He had been interrupted while giving an invited speech at Irving's instigation; his talk followed immediately one by Faurisson. The account of this incident was given in the same speech from which the previous quoted block was taken. Leuchter has also referenced all the adversities to that date following his appearance in the Zündel trial, attributing them to a larger Jewish conspiracy against him, directed by Beate Klarsfeld and her Paris-based foundation.

[edit] Repetition of Leuchter's examination

In February of 1990, Professor Jan Markiewicz, Director of the Forensic Institute of Cracow, redid the analysis.[3] Markiewicz decided that the Prussian blue test was unreliable because it depended on the acidity of the environment, which was low in the gas chambers. Markiewicz and his team used microdiffusion techniques to test for cyanide in samples from the gas chambers, from delousing chambers, and from living areas elsewhere within Auschwitz. The living quarter samples (negative controls) tested negative, while cyanide residue was found in both the delousing chambers and the gas chambers. The amount of cyanide found had a great variability (possibly due to 50 years of exposure to the elements to varying degrees[4]), but even so, the categorical results were that cyanide was found where expected in both the gas chambers and the delousing facilities, and not found in the living quarters, supporting the hypothesis that the gas chambers were exposed to high levels of cyanide like the delousing facilities, and not low levels for routine fumigation, like the living quarters.

[edit] 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 in 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."[5] (also see [6])

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 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.[7]

In the course of the film Leuchter goes so far as to state frankly that he could not believe in the gas chambers because he could not himself conceive of their mechanics, although he makes it plainly evident that he knows very little of the history in which these arose. He suggests a series of options (hanging, shooting, and explosives), most of which the Nazis had in fact attempted (shootings and explosives) before determining that direct, ongoing, and extensive SS involvement would not be sufficient to the genocidal objectives they set for themselves after earlier forays into mass murder, such as Einsatzgruppen and Babi Yar. Leuchter similarly appears unaware of the T-4 Euthanasia Program and the history or science behind small-scale gassings directed by Hitler's Reich Chancellery and then the SS. In a rather direct sense, the film offers that the Holocaust is fundamentally inconceivable, if not impossible, in Leuchter's mind.

Morris draws out but pursues neither Leuchter's opposition, if not aversion, to gas as a means of execution (Leuchter states his belief that it is an overly hazardous means of execution in terms of other participants) nor his imputed lack of practical experience with it. His general concern with the safety of gassing methods appear to be a stumbling block for his belief in the viability of the gas chambers, the venting process for which he believed would pose a serious threat to their operators. His critics reply:

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.[8]

Films by Errol Morris
Gates of Heaven • Vernon, Florida • The Thin Blue Line • A Brief History of Time • Fast, Cheap and Out of Control • Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. • The Fog of War

[edit] Miscellany

Robert Jan van Pelt, who appears in Mr. Death to specify some of Leuchter's scholarly failures (e.g not consulting the large documentation archive available at Auschwitz), served as the primary expert witness against David Irving in his libel trial, relating to the court the strength of the physical and documentary evidence supporting the use of that camp for gassing. That testimony was printed as The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial (ISBN 0-253-34016-0).

[edit] References

Fred A. Leuchter, The Leuchter Report: The First Forensic Examination of Auschwitz, With a Foreward by David Irving, London, Focal Point Publications, 1989 (ISBN 1-872197-00-0).
Fred Leuchter & Robert Faurisson, The Second Leuchter Report, The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 10, No.3 Fall, 1990.
Fred Leuchter, The Third Leuchter Report: A Technical Report on the Execution Gas Chamber at Mississippi State Penitentiary Parchman, Mississippi, Toronto, Samisdat Publishers.
Fred A. Leuchter Jr., The Fourth Leuchter Report: An Engineering Evaluation of Jean-Claude Pressac's Book Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas ChambersHamilton, Ontario, History Buff Books and Video.
Fred A. Leuchter, Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolf,The Leuchter Reports: Critical Edition, Chicago, Theses & Dissertations Press, 2005 (ISBN 1-59148-015-9).
Stephen Trombley, The Execution Protocol: Inside America's Capital Punishment Industry (ISBN 0-517-59113-8) - Includes extensive information on Leuchter.