There were, in fact, six states in the United States at the time of the publication of Leuchter’s report that permitted executions by gas chambers: Arizona, California, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Missouri used to permit executions by gas, but recently switched to lethal injection. Representatives of each of these states provided crucial information on Leuchter’s connections with them. Despite Leuchter’s claim to the contrary, according to these officials, he had not advised them on executions. A spokesman for Mississippi, Ken Jones, stated that while Leuchter had visited Mississippi’s execution facility and commented on it, the visit had been initiated at Leuchter’s request. Moreover, the state had not entered into “any financial agreement” with him. According to Shelly Z. Shapiro, the head of a Holocaust education center in Albany, New York, who coordinated an investigation into Leuchter’s background, he has not worked for either Arizona or Maryland. Maryland used Eaton Ironworks to check its chamber prior to an execution. State officials reported that Leuchter had “never worked or consulted” with the Maryland Penitentiary.{74} An official of the Arizona Corrections Office also stated that they had “never used” Fred Leuchter’s services.{75} In fact, the official observed, Arizona does not even maintain its gas chamber in working order, and any maintenance done in the past was performed by the state’s service personnel.
Leuchter may have misrepresented his technical expertise in areas other than gas chambers. At the Zundel trial he claimed to have consulted with Warden Daniel B. Vasquez of California’s San Quentin prison about a heart-monitoring system that would replace the oldertype mechanical stethoscope then being used. Subsequently Vasquez denied that San Quentin had ever contracted with Leuchter for either the “installation of a heart monitoring system or for any other work.”{76}
The credibility of Leuchter’s report was founded on his expertise in building gas chambers. Missouri was the only state Leuchter actually advised on gas execution chambers. The closest his company had apparently come to building one was a proposed blueprint it prepared for refurbishing the state penitentiary. He submitted a plan that was never used because the state switched to lethal injection for executions.{77}
But it was not only his educational record, historical knowledge, business integrity, and professional experience that were subjects of controversy. According to an affidavit by Dr. Edward A. Brunner, chair of the Department of Anesthesia at Northwestern University Medical School, Leuchter’s lethal injection system caused excruciating pain but rendered victims incapable of screaming to communicate their distress.{78} Based on Brunner’s findings, some death penalty opponents argue that Leuchter’s lethal-injection system constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Others, particularly those who support capital punishment, dismiss this point as moot because pain and suffering are part of capital punishment. Ironically, Leuchter is not one of the latter. He believes that no execution system should be a cause of pain and says he slept well at night because his work resulted in fewer people being “tortured.”{79}
In 1989 Leuchter formed an engineering firm and incorporated in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The firm’s purpose was to “engage in the practice of engineering” and consult in all areas of engineering.{80} The company provided electrocution hardware, charging $35,000 for an electrocution system, $30,000 for a lethal injection system, and $85,000 for a gallows. (The gallows is disproportionately expensive because it is infrequently requested.) Gas chambers were listed at $200,000. For states without an existing execution facility, Leuchter designed a self-contained “execution trailer” that cost $100,000 and came complete with a lethal-injection machine, a steel holding cell for the inmate, and areas for the witnesses, medical personnel, and prison officials.{81}
In April 1990 Shelly Shapiro, director of a Holocaust education center—Holocaust Survivors and Friends in Pursuit of Justice—and Beate Klarsfeld filed a letter of complaint with the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Engineers in Boston about Leuchter’s erroneous claim to be an engineer and his use of this designation to “mislead the public” about gas chambers.{82} The commonwealth investigated and found sufficient grounds to charge him with “illegally” practicing or “offer[ing]” to practice engineering.{83} In June 1991, two weeks before he was to go on trial for practicing without a licence, Leuchter signed a consent agreement with the commonwealth admitting that he was “not and never had been” a professional engineer and had fraudulently presented himself to Massachusetts, New Jersey, Alabama, and other states as an engineer with the ability to consult on matters concerning “execution technology.” In addition he acknowledged that although he was not an engineer and had never taken an engineering licensing test, he had produced reports, including the “‘Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek,’ containing my engineering opinions.” He agreed to “cease and desist” presenting himself as an engineer and issuing any reports, including the one on Auschwitz, in which he provided engineering opinions.{84}
While this constituted a major blow to Leuchter’s credibility, an even greater one was delivered from a completely different source. A Frenchman who at one time had been intrigued by Faurisson’s contentions regarding gas chambers rendered a devastating assault on the deniers’ claims. Born in 1944 in France, Jean-Claude Pressac, a trained pharmacist, first visited Poland and the remains of the death camps in 1966. Sometime thereafter he decided to write a novel depicting life as it would have been had the Germans won. His research for this proposed book included another visit to Auschwitz in October 1979. This marked the beginning of an incredible personal and scientific journey that would have dire consequences for the claim that the homicidal gas chambers were a hoax. It was a journey that entailed years of study, more than fifteen trips to Auschwitz, and groundbreaking research in archives in the former Soviet Union.
During his research trip to Auschwitz in 1979 he examined photographs, documents, and work orders pertaining to the design and construction of the gas chambers. Perplexed by what appeared as contradictions in the plans, Pressac questioned museum officials and archivists about the construction of the gas chambers. Officials allayed some of his doubts by showing him an array of plans and documents relating to the camps and the execution chambers.[5] Though Pressac acknowledged the power of their arguments, he remained troubled by the fact that he could not find on the drawings the specific designation “gas chamber.” Pressac’s confusion was, in fact, justified because, as he learned, a number of the gas chambers were not originally built as homicidal units but were transformed to serve that purpose.{85} When he subsequently examined the documentation on this transformation, he found an abundance of evidence attesting to the specific purposes of the gas chamber. But before he reached that point he engaged in a potentially dangerous but illuminating detour; he almost became a denier.
5
They showed him documentation regarding the design and fabrication of sophisticated ventilation systems that had been installed in the gas chambers. What purpose, they asked, would such a system have served in a morgue or crematorium?