Via Recorded Delivery

Mark Thompson Esq

Director-General, BBC
BBC Media Centre
201 Wood Lane
London W12 7TQ
10 November 2005
“CASH FOR QUESTIONS”: AN IMPORTANT NEW DEVELOPMENT

Dear Mr. Thompson,

From your recent e-mail to staff dated 6 October 2005, to which I will refer later, it is clear that you have
not heard about the independent investigation conducted by myself and another freelance journalist
named Malcolm Keith-Hill into the “cash for questions” affair. Thanks to the media’s news blackout on
our work over the last eight years, led by the BBC, few have.
In essence, our research vindicates the claims of innocence of the former MP for Tatton Neil Hamilton
and shows that The Guardian enacted a sophisticated cover-up, in cahoots with Mohamed Fayed and his
closest staff and both parties’ lawyers, in order to make their false allegations against him stick. This
cover-up perverted the course of the official parliamentary inquiry into the affair published in July 1997
by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Sir Gordon Downey.
In the face of enormous national hostility towards Neil Hamilton, our report of October 1997 was such
that it persuaded the Standards Committee to reject Sir Gordon’s verdict on the central issue of “cash for
questions”. However, though the BBC’s reporter in attendance, Jon Sopel, would most certainly have
witnessed Neil Hamilton refer extensively to our report during his televised address to the committee (as
would hundreds of BBC staff), Mr. Sopel did not mention our investigation in his news bulletins that
day nor has the BBC ever broadcast news about our work in its national news programmes since.
Our findings have been endorsed by parliamentarians and journalists of the highest intellect and
standing, including the BBC’s own, in writing. No one has found any flaw in our reasoning.
Since the airing of our interim findings in October 1997, and the release of my book Trial by Conspiracy
in the Palace of Westminster in October 1998, I have executed several more news events to enable the
BBC and other broadcasters to report our investigation, alas to no avail. This included, for example, my
novel white-suited candidature in Tatton in the 2001 General Election, on a “Neil Hamilton is innocent”
platform (I attach my election leaflet for your interest).
I liken the resistance I have faced in getting this vitally important story out to that which a journalist in
1930s Nazi Germany might have met in trying to bring to public attention a story of wanton anti-
Semitism. The difference is, of course, that any 1930s German news editor who aired such a story
would have run the risk of being carted off in the middle of the night, whereas in Britain today we have a
free democracy served by a supposedly truthful, unbiased, pluralistic, fact-seeking news media which
claims to treat political controversies impartially.
In March last year the BBC’s then acting director-general Mark Byford parried my offer to demonstrate
to his staff the evidence showing how The Guardian perverted Sir Gordon’s Inquiry ⎯ despite my
providing him with written endorsements of our work by people of standing, including BBC journalists.
This censorship of our work helps maintain an ingrained public misunderstanding of the “cash for
questions” affair which undoubtedly helped skewer Neil Hamilton’s 1999 libel action and underpins the
British media’s tendency to still refer to John Major’s administration as “sleazy.”
With regard to myself, people with whom I come into contact cannot bring themselves to accept that the
BBC would censor our work if it had merit. Accordingly, rather than being celebrated for having delved
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beneath the tsunami of media condemnation of ‘Tory sleaze’ and unearthed the world’s worst story of
press corruption, I am instead dismissed as a conspiracy theorist and heretic.
In my efforts to get this story aired I have continued research, during which I came across a bulletin
issued by the BBC last month encapsulating an e-mail that you sent to BBC staff. In this you address
allegations that the BBC had censored news that was unhelpful to the Labour government. You state:
‘There has not been a single example of me, Mark Byford, any of the other senior editors of the BBC, the
BBC Chairman or anyone else inside the BBC trying to censor or soften anything. On the contrary, we all
emphasise the need for the BBC's journalism to be robust, courageous and right.’

I have no reason to doubt that you penned these words in good faith. However, as by now you are well
aware, you were quite wrong: for the last eight years the BBC has ruthlessly censored all national news
about our work exposing the falseness of the story that contributed so much to Labour’s general election
landslide of May 1997; and Mark Byford actually compounded this dereliction of duty by doing
absolutely nothing to remedy the situation when I brought it to his attention last year.
I now bring to your attention a new development. Recently I have unearthed brand new evidence
which undermines completely The Guardian’s and Fayed’s “cash for questions” accusations.
Mindful of your views on censorship and also the BBC’s desire for “scoops” (as expressed by the BBC’s
head of news Helen Boaden), I am pleased to offer the BBC exclusive access to this new evidence. As a
first step I would welcome your appointment of two or more journalists to assess its merits and also the
merits of the existing evidence prior to announcing to the world this important new development.
My experience to date has led me to suppose that your staff will be universally and fervently opposed to
such an idea. Accordingly, to enable you to defeat all the various reasons that I expect they will offer up
to resist such direction, I enclose with this letter a copy of my book plus my most recent bound
document: The “Cash for Questions” affair⎯the unreported side of a major controversy. Among other
things, this document contains: a) extracts from the many endorsements of our work; b) extracts from
documents containing the stated views of many top BBC personnel on the importance of impartial and
inclusive reporting; c) previous news releases; d) my correspondence with BBC personnel.
The CD attached to the inside of its rear cover contains high resolution images of the actual documents
from which the extracts were harvested. This CD also contains a folder named “Part 17” containing
aural recordings plus transcripts of my confrontation with Mark Byford last year in which I can be heard
urging him to accept my offer of a demonstration of our research.
I have copied this letter to others including the BBC’s chairman Michael Grade; the BBC’s head of legal
affairs Dominic Lundon; and one of the few BBC staff to have examined our work, BBC NW’s political
editor Jim Hancock. I have written separate letters announcing the discovery of the new evidence to
Helen Boaden; the BBC’s head of political programmes, analysis and research, Sue Inglish; and the
BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson.
I look forward to your reply and to the BBC taking a positive interest in this story.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Boyd Hunt