Pollard: Because she sent us a letter to tell us that.
Journalist: Sorry, when did she send you that letter?
Pollard: Just before the report was published.
Journalist: You mean in December or this month?
Pollard: Back in December. And I think the truth is that I sort of overlooked that. I didn’t see there was a particular significance in it. Partly because Mark Thompson had said ‘No she didn’t tell me about it. It was an open question. She might have done or she didn’t.’
Clearly whatever Helen Boaden’s recollection was he was going to say “That’s not my recollection and she didn’t tell me about it.”
But I think it is clear and Helen Boaden’s position is, if she was asked, she would say I did tell him about it.
So that’s the position, between you and I. It’s a slightly awkward position for me because it’s something that actually if I’d thought about it immediately before publication and I’d picked up on the significance of it I think I’d have probably put it in the report.
But quite clearly Mark Thompson would have said ‘Well whatever she says I think in this case she’s wrong and her recollection is wrong.’
So it’s quite a tricky position this, I think, and again this is strictly at the moment solely between you and I for no purposes other than me discussing it with you.
Helen Boaden is pretty relaxed about all this. I’ve talked to her about that. I’ve said to her I know you’ve sent us that letter.
It was one of these right to reply letters that most of the witnesses had if we had any criticism to make of them.
There was no criticism being made of Helen Boaden that she didn’t tell Mark Thompson, so it was a sort of peripheral issue, but she happened to mention in this letter ‘I did tell him’.
And I think that is what she has told anybody at the BBC who has asked, that whatever Mark Thompson says, she did tell him. Not that she gave him chapter and verse but she said…
Journalist: …She said the words ‘sex abuse’
Pollard: Yeah, I think she said Newsnight were doing an investigation of Jimmy Savile and it was about abuse of kids or whatever.
Whether or not there was any reference to BBC premises I don’t think she says.
Now the slight oddity of this position is that the letter, these right of reply letters, which I think are known as Salmon letters, they are not being published
I think probably that’s right that they are not being published because each one of them is from a lawyer on behalf of a client.
So the position is that it is Helen Boaden’s position that she did tell Mark Thompson about it but it’s not in the record anywhere.
So that’s how things stand. You’ve been very straight and very square with me and I just wanted to let you know what the position is.
Now, you could say it doesn’t particularly reflect well on me that I overlooked this in the report.
It’s not in the report that Helen Boaden says on the record “I did tell Mark Thompson about it.”
That’s just a fact of life. If somebody went to Helen Boaden and said ‘I just want to check, did you or didn’t you tell Mark Boaden [sic], I think she’d say ‘Actually, yes I did.’ But there’s not an obvious way of me making that public, shall we say.
Journalist: I was thinking there is one possibility. I don’t know if you read the Sunday Times on Sunday I wrote a piece in there which made clear that a member of the Commons media select committee has written to Helen Boaden. There has been no reply yet, but I wonder whether you feel it would be in your gift to independently contact that member of Parliament and say look, this is territory which was actually raised on a voluntary basis by Helen Boaden and she did actually confim that.
Pollard: I think the slight danger is that it’s a little unpredictable what might happen then. I’ll have a think about that. There’s not an obvious other route to this. It’s absolutely in Helen Boaden’s gift to say at any time either ‘I did tell Mark Thompson’ or ‘Not only did I tell Mark Thompson but I told the Pollard Review as well.’
Journalist: One assumes now the transcripts have been published she’s going to seize that opportunity.
Pollard: Well if she thinks it’s important, and she may not do, to be honest.
Journalist: Except that she’s got to respond to this MP so I’d guess she’d say to the MP ‘Thanks for your letter. By the way I have written to Pollard about this already.’ I assume that’s what she’ll do. That’s what I’d do. And I anyway I don’t think anyone for a second believed that Helen Boaden wouldn’t have been asked what the investigation was about and wouldn’t have told him what it was about anyway.
Pollard: No, I think that’s right and common sense suggests that. Certainly I’d say listening to the Ben Webster tape, most people would come to the conclusion that that was a guy [Thompson] trying his damndest not to say yes of course I knew about it.
Journalist: Because he’d already stupidly committed himself to a denial.
Pollard: Well that’s exactly it. He’s painted himself into the corner. So I don’t quite know about that. I don’t think it’s the most important thing to do with this entire process but…
Journalist: Well you say that but actually I’ve always thought the head of the organisation having heard about that would have been able to either take steps or…
The fact remains the BBC broadcast tribute programmes to Savile knowing they’d heard allegations that month that he was a paedophile.
Furthermore if Thompson knew that he’d have had the wit to say hang on I think this could potentially explode in our faces. What else did this investigation consist of?
And at that point Meirion Jones would have said ‘we also heard about Glitter and Starr’ and Thompson would have said ‘Well they’re still alive. We’re going to have to tell the police about this.’
And so this is why I’ve always pursued it. That’s apart from the moral element of it, Nick, which was always…if you or I heard of abuse taking place in our office I’d bet the farm on either of us saying we can’t leave this one hanging.
Pollard: I agree with that. I wouldn’t put myself in the position of defending Mark Thompson or in that sort of similar way, George Entwistle who was told about it and didn’t react..
I suppose what you don’t know is how you might react if someone said ‘Look we heard a pretty lurid allegation against a presenter who just died but this was 30 years ago but you might be relieved to hear we did an investigation and the editor of the programme tells me there was nothing in it.’
We know that is very very far from being the whole story because there was something in it and the editor’s decision was wrong but you know what I mean, if you were a busy exec further up the chain and you were told ‘The bad news is we got a pretty nasty allegation about someone. The good news is there that there wasn’t anything in it for you.’ OK, that’s not an explanation. It’s an element of how it came to be brushed under the carpet.
Journalist: I also think it’s a fascinating insight that the instinct of Thompson according to Helen Boaden’s version which you’ve just told me was to lie about this. Was to say I never heard anything about it. That tells you an awful lot about the man.
Pollard: Yes. Well…yeah…yeah
Journalist: I may be sounding rather black and white about this, but I was always told you don’t lie.
Pollard: I think that’s right. There’s no doubt he painted himself into a corner…and actually if he’d said ‘I wasn’t told about it and rightly or wrongly when I was told the whole thing had been dropped I came to the conclusion that meant there was nothing in it. As it turns out that was wrong and perhaps I should have double, treble checked’. It’s not a happy position but it’s a better position, isn’t it?
I think in a way this is your story. You’ve made the running on this. I think what this does is it puts you in a position where you know for sure that Helen Boaden did tell the Pollard Inquiry that she told Mark Thompson the nature of the allegations. I think it puts you in a position where you can’t say in print how you know this but you’re pretty watertight on the fact that that’s the case. Because it seems to me reading between the lines that you could have heard this either of two sources – Helen Boaden could have told you or I could have told you.
Journalist: Or her lawyer could have told me.
Pollard: Absolutely. I’m including that in the Boaden side of things. You’ll gather I’m in a slightly uneasy position about this. I think you would say it was a mistake of mine not to have picked up on this and included it in the report.
Journalist: Well of course I pick up on that but frankly that is irrelevant. What is relevant is the end result. She has gone on the record very happily, willingly, on a voluntary basis to tell you and others involved in your inquiry that she did tell Mark Thompson.
She obviously wanted to make that clear to you. She obviously wanted to do that for a reason.
Whether or not you had the time or opportunity to include that in your report is frankly irrelevant.
You are nothing more than the messenger. You can’t have included every single element of what you were told in your report. We see from the volume of transcripts it wouldn’t have been possible for you to do that. I understand you were under some time pressure. I’m not interested in pointing the finger at you. I am interested in establishing if Mark Thompson did know through his own second in command Helen Boaden this was a sex abuse allegation and what you’ve told me is this very important information that she did tell him. Do you know when she told him?
Pollard: No. From recollection I don’t think the letter says. I’ll have a look. Presumably after December 20. If there’s an indication I’ll ping you a date….
