Michael Grade Esq

Chairman of the Governors of the BBC

Broadcasting House
Portland Place
London W1A 1AA
23 January 2006

“CASH FOR QUESTIONS”: THE UNREPORTED SIDE OF A MAJOR

POLITICAL CONTROVERY

Dear Mr. Grade,

You may or may not have heard about the independent investigation conducted by myself
and another freelance journalist named Malcolm Keith-Hill into the long-running “cash for
questions” affair of 1994-2001.
I give an outline of our investigation, its significance, and the BBC’s failure to report it, in
my letter of today to the BBC’s director-general Mark Thompson, which I attach together
with all its enclosures.
In essence, we find that The Guardian newspaper framed the former Conservative MP and
minister Neil Hamilton by enacting an audacious cover-up ⎯ a cover-up that succeeded in
perverting both the official inquiry into the affair conducted in 1997 by the then
Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Sir Gordon Downey and also Mr. Hamilton’s
1999 libel action.
As I state in my letter to Mark Thompson:
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.

I am encouraged by reports in The Guardian and The Sunday Telegraph following your
appointment as the BBC’s chairman, in which you make clear how much you oppose
censorship of all kinds. Mark Thompson also makes clear his abhorrence of censorship too.
I call on you to offer Mr. Thompson your support for the commission of an assessment of
our work prior to giving our investigation a proper airing commensurate with its importance.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Boyd Hunt