A producer at the BBC proposed running an investigation into child abuse carried out by Jimmy Savile hours after the presenter's death, it has been revealed.
An email, released among thousands of pages of evidence from a report into the corporation's handling of the Savile affair, said that producer Meirion Jones suggested the show soon after it was known the former DJ had died.
Mr Jones - who was involved in the axed Newsnight investigation that prompted the Pollard inquiry - proposed the idea in an email headed "Jimmy Savile - paedophile".
He told BBC news bosses that some of the girls who had been molested by Savile were ready to talk about their experiences.
The email is among hundreds of documents and transcripts of interviews with senior figures that have now been released by the BBC.
The review led by Nick Pollard, former Head of Sky News, came in the wake of the fallout of Newsnight's decision to shelve an investigation into whether Savile was a paedophile.
Sky News' Media Correspondent Niall Paterson says the material from the report is in a format that makes it very difficult to review quickly.
Paxman: Savile was 'absurd' figure He said it has been scanned and placed online by the BBC in a way that does not allow it to be electronically searched - meaning anyone wishing to locate particular passages must pore through the entire report.
Many of the pages feature sections that have been redacted to remove passages that lawyers feel could be libellous.
In another email, which had already been made public, BBC executive Nick Vaughan-Barratt said he felt uncomfortable about preparing a BBC obituary for Savile.
He wrote: "I'd feel v queasy about obit. I saw the real truth."
Among others whose comments have been published is Jeremy Paxman. Eight out the 76 pages of what he told Mr Pollard have been blacked out.
Mr Paxman told the inquiry it was common gossip at the BBC that Savile liked young girls.
He told the inquiry: "It was, I would say, common gossip that Jimmy Savile liked, you know, young - it was always assumed to be girls. I don't know whether it was girls or boys. But I had no evidence of it, and I never saw anything that made me take it more seriously than it being common gossip."
The Newsnight presenter questioned how Savile had been allowed to rise to prominence within the BBC, referring to him as "this absurd and malign figure".
He said: "Suddenly pirate radio comes along and all these people ... suddenly have to deal with an influx ... of people from a very, very different culture and they never got control of them and I'm not sure even now they have."
Mark Thompson, who was Director General at the time of Savile's death and when the investigation was shelved, told the inquiry he knew of it but did had only been made aware of it at a party by a colleague.
He said: "The phrase that stuck in my mind is, 'You must be worried about the Newsnight investigation into Jimmy Savile'."
He said the "casual remark" had not worried him because "at this point the name Jimmy Savile doesn't ring alarm bells".
'Flawed': Peter Rippon comes in for criticism in the report Mr Thompson said he did not regard Savile as "a kind of BBC person particularly" and said he would have been more worried if the investigation had been into a current member of staff.
Another of those interviewed, former Director General George Entwistle, told the inquiry the BBC had self-censored hundreds of comments placed by members of the public on a corporation tribute website to Savile.
The comments, which included one person who wrote "One of my best friends in 1972 was molested by this creep Savile. He was never the same again. Killed himself in 1985. How's About That Then?", were stopped from being published by a team of moderators.
The Pollard Review concluded that an investigation by Newsnight into allegations of sexual abuse by the former TV presenter was abandoned because of a "flawed" decision by the show's then editor, Peter Rippon.
Mr Rippon told Mr Pollard how he felt about making the decision.
He said: "It was a fine judgement ... particularly because you are conscious of the kind of obligation and duty of care to the women that they are doing, that it makes it quite a big judgement to make."
The latest evidence is likely to place further criticism on the corporation for an apparent reluctance to hold to account executives whose actions brought about the crisis.
BBC chairman Lord Patten said: "These documents paint a very unhappy picture, but the BBC needs to be open - more open than others would be - in confronting the facts that lie behind Nick Pollard's report.
"A limited amount of text has been blacked out for legal reasons, but no one could say that the effect has been to sanitise this material, which again puts a spotlight on some of our failings. We need to acknowledge these shortcomings and learn from them."
The review, which cost around £2m, paints a picture of a top-down organisation beset with rivalries and faction fighting.
Lord McAlpine, former Conservative Party treasurer, urged the BBC to publish all the witness statements, without redactions.
He told the Daily Telegraph: "There's no reason for holding back; what Jeremy Paxman said should be printed. It should be explained to people."
The peer was mistakenly linked by the Newsnight programme in an edition broadcast on November 2 last year to a paedophile ring which targeted children at a care home in Wrexham.
His name was then widely mentioned on the internet, including Twitter.
Meanwhile, Scarborough Borough Council has said it is likely that Savile will be formally stripped of his title - freedom of the borough of Scarborough.
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