Com­ment: the new chief of MI6 (British over­seas intel­li­gence) has links to Holo­caust denier David Irv­ing. For joy!

“MI6 Chief Blows His Cover as Wife’s Face­book Account Reveals Fam­ily Hol­i­days, Show­biz Friends and Links to David Irv­ing” by Jason Lewis; Daily Mail [UK]; 7/5/2009.

” . . . Among those fea­tured in fam­ily pho­tographs on the web­site is Lady Saw­ers’ half-brother Hugo Haig-Thomas, a for­mer diplomat.

Lady Saw­ers met her hus­band after vis­it­ing her brother when he was posted to Yemen in the late Sev­en­ties. She liked the coun­try and decided to stay, land­ing a sec­re­tar­ial job at the Embassy, where Sir John later suc­ceeded Mr Haig-Thomas.

Mr Haig-Thomas is an asso­ciate and researcher for revi­sion­ist his­to­rian David Irv­ing, who was jailed for three years in Aus­tria in 2006 for ‘glo­ri­fy­ing the Nazi Party’ because he ques­tioned whether the Holo­caust took place.

The his­to­rian describes Haig-Thomas as ‘a researcher who has done fine work for me’. His work includes exam­in­ing the papers relat­ing to the cap­ture of Hein­rich Himm­ler, the man behind Hitler’s plan to exter­mi­nate the European Jews.

A recent post by Mr Haig-Thomas on Irving’s web­site includes a trans­la­tion of the tes­ti­mony of a Ger­man offi­cer who claimed to have built fake gas cham­bers at Sach­sen­hausen con­cen­tra­tion camp on Soviet orders. [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.]

But Mr Haig-Thomas said he had never con­sid­ered his views con­tro­ver­sial, nor did he regret his con­nec­tion with Irving. . . .”