Who Trolled Amber? - Into the Dirt - Episode 6: The whole truth

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

In the final episode, Ceri travels to meet Rob in a peaceful garden in rural Wiltshire. What unfolds is a heated exchange about what Rob's story really is and what adds up to the whole truth. Listen to the full series today. For the premium Tortoise listening experience, curated by our journalists, download the free Tortoise audio app. For early and ad-free access to all our investigative series and daily and weekly shows, subscribe to Tortoise+ on Apple Podcasts.If you’d like to further support slow journalism and help us build a different kind of newsroom, do consider donating to Tortoise at tortoisemedia.com/support-us. Your contributions allow us to investigate, campaign and explore, and to build a newsroom that is responsible and sustainable. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show of glamour and scandal and political intrigue and a battle for the soul of a nation. Hollywood Exiles, from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com It's easy to get drawn deep into Rob Moore's world.

He's a great storyteller, and it's an amazing story, so you can find yourself tumbling right into it, to the point where I've sometimes tried to catch myself, worried I'm losing sight of the bigger picture. Rob puts a lot of thought into how to tell his story as well. Even after we talk for all those hours and days over three years, in studios and meeting rooms and cafes he's still convinced we haven't talked properly there hasn't been a meeting of minds

so he hatches a plan so we are in deepest Wiltshire somewhere so we're in the middle of a a kind of a country. Not too grand. But with a beautiful cherry there in blossom, I think. And Rob, I think, has done a bit of pruning on this garden before, which is why we're here. It's gorgeous. It's kind of very perfect old English, middle of nowhere kind of setting. The plan is to find a gentler place to talk and home turf for Rob in a way.

So last month, May 2023, we head 90 miles west out of London. So what's your history with this garden? Oh, very recent. This is my first day in it. Oh, I see. So yeah, but this is the kind of job that I do. So this is kind of like restorative pruning, I guess.

So lots of overgrown shrubs and you're just pruning for definition. This is a Garia elliptica, Indian tasselbush, very beautiful tree. And yeah, and now I'm moving on to this to see if I've got the courage to cloud prune it. I never imagined talking about gardening would be interesting. But actually it is with Rob. He really knows his stuff, and he's an enthusiast, even when there's something else on his mind. If you don't have an open mind,

if you can't perceive what's in front of you, you can sit there for life and you'll never understand it. So I don't feel we've had a deep conversation. This is why I really wanted to come out of the studio. Can we just go and hang out? And that's why I wanted it to be a romantic weekend. And just go, can you just get to know who I am? And stop this...

Because actually what it is with journalists, it's the role of inquisitor. Rob's idea is that we'll have time, two full days, and we'll find a better connection outdoors. And, I don't know, maybe nature will soften me. But even as we're getting going, he's sowing seeds that will grow like weeds around us over the next 36 hours.

And I love those bits where, you know, about sort of, you know, about journalism and the truth. I don't know. I personally, my big suspicion is that you're using my story to tell your story. Either way, what's the pressing, what is it? After, you know, bear in mind, this is seven years since the nonsense started.

Seven years of the court case. I couldn't speak for those two years when it was on, OK? I wasn't allowed to. So that's two years of silence. That's the biggest weed on the plot, this growing certainty that the way I'm going to frame Rob's story isn't what he wants. It's the reason he gives in the end, a few weeks after these days in the garden, for wanting to pull out of this podcast completely. And then there's a

question of who's to blame for all his problems since the anti-asbestos campaigners found out the whole truth about him in 2016. I'm in the mix now, I can feel that. But the lawyers, Lee Day, are still the main culprits. Lee Day's, I don't know if you know it, but Lee Day's first opening line is you'll never speak about the litigation or asbestos again. Think about what's the motivation behind that call. To get to that stage where I was able to stay on, not only did I have to lose all my money, all my assets,

every single thing that I own in the world, you know, my children's home, all of those things I had to lose that. I also had to stay silent and listen to disgrace, disgrace, disgrace, and I couldn't respond. And then, of course, when it's over, who do you go and talk to? The first few times I met Rob, that was his main concern, how to get back his voice.

We talked early on, I remember, about what this podcast would be about, and Rob's idea was the question would be, what does a person have to do to be allowed to tell the truth? But as time goes on, he seems to do to be allowed to tell the truth? But as time goes on, he seems to want to move himself away from centre stage in his story. Maybe we were both worried about losing sight of the bigger picture for different reasons. Funnily enough, it's exactly what we end up doing

in the garden that day and the next, caught up in arguments that get more and more angry about Rob's story, whether I've understood it, whether I've been straight with him, driven by a concern that the podcast is coming out soon and it's not shaping up as he hoped. I have respect for you. I don't think you've really treated me with respect. You're using my story and if you're not taking it to the medicine, that you are looking at the poison, I do not know how you can do this. And you've taken me for fucking granted like a fucking fool that I am. I'm Kerry Thomas and from Tortoise, this is Into the Dirt, episode six. So good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to...

At precisely the time Rob and I sit down to talk in the garden, the 2023 Rotterdam Convention is happening in Geneva, with all the legendary United Nations pizzazz. That's unfair. It's not showbiz. It's the UN conference that happens every two years to update a treaty that deals with dangerous chemicals and materials. It can ban them completely, if enough countries agree. It could ban white asbestos, chrysotile.

It could have done it a long time ago. Rob did want to turn the Rotterdam Convention into a kind of showbiz once upon a time. It's the place where he planned that stunt with the filmmaker Dan Reed when he was going to jump on stage in 2017 and reveal the whole truth about his time working on Project Spring and all the corruption he thought he'd uncovered. But what bothers me is that,

sitting in the garden talking to Rob, I don't even know the Rotterdam Convention is going on. I don't realise until a few days later. And if Rob knows it's happening, he doesn't mention it. It feels short-sighted, almost self-indulgent, because despite the low-key language at that meeting in Geneva, there really is a kind of grumbling war going on. The anti-asbestos campaigners aren't winning, and I've taken my eye off it.

There's a playbook. If you look at tobacco, if you look at asbestos, if you look at pesticides, they all go to the same playbook. Rory O'Neill is the academic and journalist who campaigns against dangerous chemicals in general, and asbestos in particular. They know that they can't prove the product is safe because it's not, but what they have to do is cast doubt on the evidence.

All you have to do is ask a question, keep the debate going, and then bans and restrictions will be put off. It's been a tactic that's worked for 40 years for the asbestos industry. You know, it's still only now banned in a third of countries worldwide. Are they ruthless as an industry? It's extraordinarily ruthless, and they're well resourced. The asbestos industry tracks our movements around the world. I turn up at conference, and there will be people from the asbestos industry there. And they'll be there in numbers. There'll be one voice against several.

So they won't be advertising themselves as what they are? No, they're quite open about it. They maintain their product is entirely safe and is a benefit to humankind. They had a workshop at the Rotterdam Convention, a UN convention meeting this year, saying how it preserves life. You know, they're brazen about it. And still, the asbestos lobby manages to find willing recruits. Not just paid lobbyists, PR people,

and who knows, perhaps even some undercover spies. But scientists who publish papers timed to coincide with moments like UN meetings, telling the world white asbestos is safe after all. The problem is when the overwhelming evidence says that something is killing people and hundreds of thousands of people and either scientific vanity or scientific naivety means that you keep that question open when really you should say,

let's give life the benefit of the doubt, let's take a precautionary approach. We're way beyond that now with asbestos. We're way beyond it. The pile of bodies is far too high. The cemeteries are far too full. We know it's killing people in droves. We know it's killed members of my family. I've watched them die. I've been scared by the sight of them grasping and groaning. Now that's the reality for a lot of people. I don't think the anti-asbestos campaigners are naive enough to go to the conference in Geneva thinking this will be the one to finally put white asbestos on the banned list. They're too bruised by what's happened before to be that optimistic.

But there's always a chance, so they turn up in force and make their presence felt as best they can. But it does have a rather futile feel. I was thinking yesterday in this garden, as best they can. But it does have a rather futile feel. The garden where Rob's arranged for us to meet is enormous, like a few separate gardens joined together. There's an old swimming pool in part of it, a lot of fruit trees, a kind of meadow, even a little cemetery for the family dogs.

There's plenty of space to pick your spot. So we find some shade and settle down. But some areas should be left as a bit of a mess, like all our lives, right? So it doesn't have to be all completely manicured and perfect. Can you look at a garden like this? We're still assuming these two days we've set aside aren't the last time we'll talk. But still, they may be the best chance we'll have to really get into things. I've talked to everyone I feel I need to talk to, read everything I think I need to read and listen to a mountain of recordings. And I know before we get going

that these two days are when Rob will want to know what I think about the rights and wrongs of what he did? If I start from the beginning, from 2012, then I think I wouldn't have taken the asbestos job on. OK, well, we'll come to talk about that. But, OK, so you would have absolved yourself of all future complicated scenarios? I would have said to myself, I think, you know, again, hindsight, Rob, completely imperfect. A journalist sees it a lot, so it's fine. But bear with me. I think I would have said, whatever the story I've been told by K2, I'm clearly acting for the wrong side here.

acting for the wrong side here. I'm acting against the interests of campaigners who are trying to, even if they were funded by ambulance-chasing American lawyers, you might argue from your perspective that they were turning poison into medicine. They were trying to make medicine. And there's no way of framing what you did

apart from the fact that the job was to hurt them. We've had similar conversations before over the years. We haven't dodged these difficult questions, but already this one is starting to develop more of an edge. Right, OK. Well, the job was not to hurt them. That was not the brief,

and I had no intention of reading between the lines of the brief. Let me just... I will show you. Why not? Because... I would like to show you. This is hilarious. The job couldn't have been to help them, could it? No, it wasn't about that. It was a specific request. But don't drift off there. The job couldn't have been to help them, could it?

So the fact I thought it was dodgy, and I did think it was dodgy, and I think you would have seen that in my open witness statement or draft witness statement, I knew it was a dodgy case. I didn't know what the answer was. You can choose to make that your limited window and that your kind of aha you did that but I suppose it takes us a little bit back

to the framework that we each see the world through do you know my framework? well I'm about to ask you about it. So if the framework that you've told me... Don't be exasperated with me, Kerry. I understand. I didn't mean to sound rude. It's because I'm emotional.

Of course. One of the frameworks you've talked about, particularly in the context of Buddhism, is turning poison into medicine. But I suppose my own moral position would be you didn't have to take the poison. It was not me. It was not my poison.

It is the poison in the world. I risked my security. You were acting for the wrong people. You must have known from the start that you were acting for people you didn't fundamentally agree with. I didn't, to be honest, Kerry. These US investors, and you can see it in my reports,

that I genuinely had accepted that and I was trying to get answers out of that. So these are just white-collar guys, as far as I'm concerned, in my head. OK, no, how naive or whatever, right? I'm just a bloke who's just got this thing, OK? I'm paid because I'm someone who's quite prepared to walk into odd situations and go, go on then.

And also, the world is pretty murky, OK? Everyone's got good and bad in them, actually. So I definitely don't try and say, I'm on the side of right and they're on the side of wrong. I don't look at it like that. I go, oh, this is an interesting situation to be in. This doesn't sound too good. What have I chosen to do in taking the job?

I have chosen to get paid to research about it. It only leads to harm for the campaigners. Not if I use it in my way. But then you're the only one who's deciding that. Well, I'm terribly sorry, because that's the problem, isn't it, Kerry? Who else, frankly? Who else? You know, how I said to them, I'm not taking that,

do you think they would have gone, sorry, guys, we can't give this job to the Buddhist gardeners not doing it, so we'll have to go, you know, that's it then? No, they would have gone uh sorry guys we can't give this job to the buddhist gardeners not doing it so we'll have to go you know that's it then no they would have got someone else i found it fortunate that i was in there that's a terrible excuse someone else would have done it is like the worst excuse in history i'm so sorry that that's actually what would have happened but no this is you i this is fascinating kerry because it just shows me that the thing that's been in the back of, I think, all of this, it's been the subtext, which is actually where so many of the questions have come from and why it's been so difficult to really have the conversations about what the experience is really like.

It's because you think you have to... Now you're deciding what I should have done and shouldn't have done. Because you asked me to. Well, you asked me to say that's reasonable, OK? But don't suddenly say, you know... We're all trying to work out what is the best thing to do in life. I'm a bit more adventurous, OK? I'm a bit more up for mischief, OK?

But the mischief is for a good purpose. In life, you either get in amongst... As a Buddhist, actually as a human being, I'm not sitting on high thinking I've got some sort of moral superiority about anybody else. I don't even know most of the things that are happening. It's so convenient to focus in and to question and to say, oh, that's the weakest excuse, someone else would have done it.

It isn't. Sorry, that's just the truth of it. Rob and I have got into an argument as old as the hills. If someone asks you to do something dubious, do you step forward or back? He's not a soldier or a proper spy. He's not under orders and he's got no obligation to go into the dirt, as his Buddhist mentor, Eddie Canfor Dumas, called it all that time ago. Instead, the way Rob pitches it, going in there is a positive choice. Actually an opportunity, the chance to do some good. But the balance of that decision has never quite added up to me. The hope of doing some good against the certainty of getting involved in something grubby.

And just coming, I mean, I don't want to be jumbled here. I want to be really focused, Gary, but it's quite an emotional thing for me, actually. And it's very emotional for my family, who aren't in control of it. Not that I am, but, you know... There are some conversations that run away with you just go in directions you never imagined and this is turning into one of those everything is tumbling out

before long we're back to an old theme one that rob asked me and alexi about two years earlier i'm fucking telling the truth kerry and to have got to this stage when you're about to go to broadcast and you are confused or suspicious of something as... I mean, you know, even to think... I mean, what narrative? I mean, look, let's come to that, because I would love to know what you think's happened. Do I believe Rob when he says his intentions were good? I think, since you want to know what I think,

I think the truth is that you're meant to do good. The hapless idiot. But the whole truth, I think, is that it's a little bit more complicated than that. You've mentioned some of these things that I think... Again, Rob, I hate sitting in judgment on people, genuinely. I really do. It's a job.

No, no, it's not. It is. It's not. Of course it is. I hate it. But since you want to know, I think there are other things that seem to me that are important to you that you've talked about quite a lot,

which are mischief and adventure and fun. And I think those things play into your decision making as well okay so it just so happened that in fact i mean i do try to i've always enjoyed mischief but this is quite a particular form of mischief that's on a slightly different league to other things right so you know it's it's more than ringing doorbells and running away this is full in commitment kerry okay it wasn't like oh this is exciting because it was alarming it was dreadful it was loads of work if you think that i did this for a laugh or for the lols i'm afraid you are you are so way out of you just it's just not it's not the case but anyway that's up to you like i said i think you i think you meant i think you intended to do good but none of us is that simple are we well it's nice of you to accept that it's not simple yeah but i mean of course it's not

none of us are that we're all complex okay but was i acting in self-interest yeah because i was getting some adrenaline rush out of it. No. You can't even get into a subject like asbestos until you get obsessed by it. You have to be passionate about it. There are other things I could have done, Kerry. Jesus. The stress of doing what I did

caused me to have these incredible series of cluster headaches. And I still didn't give up. I felt the stress. I felt I hated writing the reports even when I was feeling them was shit. Okay? I meant to do good. I sort of feel that I don't know if you really totally think that

but anyway. I wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it. I am someone who's up for doing things that maybe other people don't. Maybe I'm a bit of a disruptor. Maybe I'm someone who gets a bit too obsessed by something. Maybe I don't have the same respect for authority that others do. But the world's full of those people too. And it doesn't mean that we've got some sort of character flaw.

It actually just means that why aren't other people doing that? I mean, why aren't you guys investigating the powerful people here? But if it's not that, if I'm wrong about that, and in fact that it is about my story, and I have to say, I don't think your behaviour, well, not yours, but daughters', we've got to get this out now, unless you're just bored of it. But, which is possible, because I am.

If, you know, if you can't accept that someone might have a different moral perspective and want to take action based on that perspective, and it is, in fact, the centre of their whole purpose, what they try to do in life, OK? I can't help you with that. I know that that's me and all my friends know that's me. And you haven't spoken to that many people, so I get it. Eventually, a bit like that golden day in Cornwall all those years ago when the guy on the beach bumped into Rob and changed his life,

the shadows in the garden get longer and we have to call time on the day. I'm left to think about an accusation I'm hearing louder and louder. I mean, jeez, you have deceived me. Maybe I don't have any legs to stand on, but you have, Kerry. The story we're telling, Rob, is your story. Well, I brought you the story, but you aren't telling my story because you're not telling... You don't really... We're not taking it where you would like us to take it.

I appreciate that. You're not taking it to the core of my motivation and the proof that what I did was... You're not taking it to the core of my motivation and the proof that what I did was... You're not taking it to the medicine. You are looking at the poison, Kerry. The heart of Rob's complaint is that, from the start, from way back in 2019, I'd promised that his story, the story we'd tell,

would mostly be about the corruption he said he'd uncovered in the asbestos trade, and the way the legal action against him had misrepresented him. I know for a fact he's got that wrong. That was never the promise. But when someone accuses you of lying, passionately enough and often enough, you're bound to dwell on it. In nearly every way that matters, we've been as straight as we can. We've slipped up on a couple of things,

and we said we'd have a continuous dialogue, and actually it's been a bit more sporadic than that, so I can see that he's got legitimate cause for concern about that. He's got legitimate cause for concern about that. But on the central thing, are we committed to telling his story? Is he more than just an illustration? And yeah, he is. He is. And his story is fascinating. It's just not necessarily the story that he thinks it is. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts.

Here's a show that we recommend. Hi, I'm Una Chaplin, and I'm the host of a new podcast called Hollywood Exiles. Here's a show that we recommend. A story of glamour and scandal and political intrigue and a battle for the soul of a nation. Hollywood Exiles from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. ACAST.com Day two in the garden picks up where day one left off. Why have you made this programme, if it is any of about me? I suspect it's about investigations wider,

and I'm the great colour for the story, which again, you're just using me then for that story. The first day had its moments, but we managed to keep things on an even keel. The second day is tougher. If it was about the money, why would I have gone on to expose everything? I could have been happily playing two games. I could have been the great insider

for K2. No, but answer that. You never exposed anything. Bullshit. What do you mean I never exposed anything? What did you expose? Actually, what did you... You told people, but what did you actually expose? I basically told the campaigner their number one enemy was and here are the things that you have to go and do to find out. Well, then why hasn't that changed anything?

Because, Kerry, the person... Oh, OK, we're back to this. Why, if... OK, so this whole thing about it hasn't... It didn't change anything, because what happened? OK, Lee Day came in and said, he's a spy! Yes, they did. But, seriously, Roy, if... And of course you are.

If it had been the sort of silver bullet for the campaigners that you think that was... OK, listen to Barnaby Pace, OK, Global Witness. Of course a lot of people now want to discredit its importance and write off the get-go in Lide's papers. It's shipping receipts. Fuck that. Of course it's not shipping receipts. Why are they misleading that?

So, hang on. To blame me for the fact that the documentaries didn't happen, and there are two documentaries in the offing. One, all about the supply chain and what I'd found out, without mentioning me, I was a silent source. That would have been a first, because you know what? No one had done any asbestos documentaries for ages. No one really cared about it. It was just old stuff.

You know, OK, that's the truth. Secondly, Dan Reid come along and shows how he did it from the inside. Okay? The man who, or whatever. Okay? Those two things would have made a massive impact. But of course, everything got waylaid because Lee Day said it was all a cover. So the fact I got discredited, and therefore

my report, everything stopped with it. Do you know what we were going to do with that? Everyone's distracted by the glitter that Lee Day threw up. Oh, it's this spy. That's what put it in the news. No one's looking at this, because you know why? I went to the Times. This is during the case.

No, I went to them and they said... The campaigners, Rob, if what you'd come up with really was essential new information, even if it came from a place that they thought was tainted because of what happened... OK, so do you think then, when Harminder's listening to it, no, no, they know nothing about these people. Seven years later, wouldn't they have done something with that?

Oh, I don't know, mate. You know, why haven't you done anything for several years about it? Why don't other journalists do anything about it? Because they've got other things. The campaigners, naturally, are focused on the public health campaign. They're not set up to do that. It's not their expertise. They're not, and that's why no one

did it until i came along i i can't answer for why other people don't yeah there's loads of things that could have been done about it but people didn't it was once i was exposed i couldn't talk it's becoming jarring talking like this in these surroundings. It's meant to be a soothing place, not romantic, as Rob said, but somewhere our differences can get smaller. But there's too much on the line for that, and after three years of talking to each other, too much history. There's one obsession in Rob's mind that we can't get beyond, the idea that I'm not telling his story, because he insists his his story as he wants it told has to include following up the leads he thinks he uncovered about corruption and who's behind

the trade in asbestos and I haven't done that that's the main reason he's going to give for withdrawing his consent from this whole project in the end and the thought of doing that seems to be coming together in the garden do you know what we can recall but let's just get to the chase because actually what i need to take home now is to understand what shit you're putting me in okay when they do come after me and i'll leave it to you guys to just you know justify in your head how you've told my story it's a certain amount of bias in your wish to see that you have done a decent job with me as opposed to honesty about the fact that you did lie to me and you have deceived me even face to face and i had the

chance to walk away and you said please don't walk away and please don't do this. We're telling your story. Now, you can rationalise the fact that surely what I found out and the stuff that I was stopped... Because look at all this stuff about, was it important? Did you really achieve medicine? The question marks that you've left hanging over me until this weekend, when we we've met such as the importance

thing right of course it's we did that a year ago yeah did you but it's not to the thing where you go actually listen you can't just rewrite history we did it forgive me for not remembering everything and forgive me for being paranoid and upset kerry okay but you're still looking at me questioning the whole thing about importance did you really choose that and of course you keep saying to me now now this weekend still but you didn't do anything and actually nothing's come of it but it's come not come of it because people like you haven't done done what i asked to come of it you that for me that's we're on different you hold your moral compass and all of that high,

if you want. But at least I did my actions to try and do something for actual proper death. The other part of what Rob says is his story, that he wants us to tell and we're not, is about how all his plans were scuppered by lawyers acting unfairly. In Rob's view of the world, Krishnendu Mukherjee is one of them. Remember he calls him Tublu because that's what his family and friends call him and he and Rob were really close. I want to let Rob know that in spite of everything, in spite of being a lawyer which makes him a kind of outcast to Rob, Krishnendu, Tublu, is more of a friend than Rob realises. than Rob realises.

If you take something like the shipping report, the two blue, who, obviously one of the claimants against you in the case, but in some ways, Rob is still, I've talked to him, and he's... He's generous towards you. Very big of him. He won't meet me. No, no, he doesn't want to meet you.

No, but do you know, in his witness statement, he says, and I would like to talk to him, none of them want to meet me because none of them want me to ask the questions that I'm asking you. They don't want to... They don't. He believes... He'll say to this day that the friendship that you had was genuine and that he doesn't believe that you were motivated only by,

you know, the things that you've been accused of being motivated by. But he doesn't think... He doesn't think... And I'm saying this because this is the reason I have to put it to you, is because he doesn't think that the shipping report was that important. He doesn't think that it... Well, he didn't say that at the time, and nor did other people. And of course he didn't, because who does he work for? Lee Day. For fuck's sake.

He's a fucking lawyer. He knows how the court system doesn't serve the justice, because the lawyers who were helping me were telling me it doesn't, and Lee Day knows. He's a fucking lawyer for Lee Day. Of course he's going to say that. A red mist has come down over the garden. We end up in a strange argument I never expected to be having about whether Krishnendu works for

the law firm that Rob sees as the great villain of the piece, Lee Day. Why? Because he works for the his integrity as a representative of that company. Oh no, you're seeing things. He works around the chambers. No, look it up. He has dual whatever it's called. He does work for Lee Day. No, I'll look it up. I have to stop. I have to walk away now. This is

bullshit that I'm having to point out fucking things like this. You're not looking in the right places, Kerry. You're not doing... You know, I... After three years, he works for Lee Day. He's got a dual practice. He's at Dowdy Chambers and he does some work...

He's employed by then. It's an employed status. He doesn't just work for them. He's a fucking employee. I've got to step away. We're going to come back and we'll go through the thing line by line, but Jesus, I really hoped we didn't have to do this. And by the way, I actually have to go and talk to people whose fucking lives are going to change. It's just, it's pathetic.

I'm sorry, but I... This refusal to fucking engage. And you've taken me for fucking granted like a fucking fool that I am. OK. I'm all right. The problem for Rob is that everything he says about Tublu, Krishnendu, is wrong. He's not employed by Lee Krishnendu, is wrong.

He's not employed by Lee Day and the dual practice idea is a red herring. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter. Rob's story isn't about where one lawyer or another works. But it is about control. What's the story I'm telling? And it is about where Rob directs his anger and who he thinks is responsible for all that happened to him. He wants me to investigate what I came to think was not much more than a conspiracy theory. A gang of lawyers doing him in.

I don't think it's an important part of his story at all. I did see Rob after that, later that day for about half an hour. But that's the last time we talked. It's been my idea to keep coming back to that notion of the whole truth. But it really came from Rob in the first place. The great unfairness in everything that's happened to him, he thinks, is that only a slice of the truth has come out. He hates lawyers because he

blames them for cobbling together an untrue version of his story the rest of the world has signed up to, the one the campaigners bought into first and then journalists, the one he's been fighting to overturn ever since. It's not the whole truth, he thinks, it's just an angle put together to try to win a court case by demonising him. The complete version would involve looking into his heart and understanding that he meant to do good. For what it's worth, I do think Rob meant to do good when he was out there among the campaigners, a lot of the time anyway. But he said it himself, good intentions only get you so far.

Some actual good has to happen for things to stack up properly. So you have to ask yourself how it all balanced out. If everything had gone to plan, what's the strongest medicine Rob could have made? And how bad was the poison? I've been putting together a sort of checklist. If it had all gone his way, Rob might have made a documentary or two exposing the people behind the trade in asbestos. He was a long way from doing that, but maybe he'd have got there in the end. He might have been able to come up with some really hard evidence that the asbestos trade is corrupt. I'm not sure anyone would have been very surprised, or what they'd have been able to do with that news once they found out. But he could have made a headline or two.

He might have set up a charity to help victims of asbestos. Of all the things he tried to do, that's probably the one he got closest to. And if he had, it would surely have done some good in the world. So there'd have been some medicine. But then, on the other side of the scales, how toxic was the poison? The problem is, Rob couldn't know. He couldn't know the risks he was taking with other people's personal information, even with their safety. He couldn't know the bigger picture. Almost certainly, he was a little piece of a big effort to stop asbestos being banned. He had no way of figuring out where

the things he was doing fitted in, what he was contributing to. Most of all, because he didn't know any of that, he couldn't know what harm he did. He was a crusader, a single spy. In the end, he wasn't well enough plugged into the campaigners and all they cared about to understand either the poison or the medicine. In all the conversations I've had with Rob over the years, I've said to him from time to time something that seems difficult to get around. There may not be any evidence that what he did hurt the anti-asbestos campaign, but it definitely hurt some of the campaigners. And mostly Rob can see the truth in that.

But he usually goes on to say, almost in the same breath, that the campaigners shouldn't be as hurt as they are. They only feel that way because they haven't understood what he was trying to do. They've swallowed the story, the lawyers cooked up. It always seems like a real blind spot for Rob. The person who was most hurt was Laurie Kazan-Allen, Rob's original target when he took on Project Spring, who he promised to get close to in a genuine and heartfelt way, and really did. I mentioned way back at the beginning

that Laurie's taken a vow of silence about Rob for her own peace of mind. A few days ago, she surprised me and broke it. She didn't want to talk, but she wrote down some thoughts. And here's what she said. Yes, I was hurt by the deception perpetrated by Rob Moore. I believed he was a friend with the best interests of the Ban Asbestos campaign at heart. My greatest upset at learning of his real intent was the anxiety about what harm he might have done to frontline campaigners in countries like Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and India, where protections for civil society activists were not strong. I had many sleepless nights worrying about this. No meeting or phone call with Rob Moore was ever short.

They always lasted for an hour or more. Rob Moore was ever short. They always lasted for an hour or more. Countless hours of my life were stolen by Moore, during catch-up meetings, protracted phone calls, lengthy emails and discussions with and introductions to campaigners in the UK and abroad. These were hours when I could have been working with other people or catching up on my backlog of work. I willingly gave him my time and knowledge because I believed he was genuinely interested in generating media projects which would publicise the gross injustices and personal tragedies caused by the asbestos industry. I was wrong. After his deceit was revealed, it took some while to accept that someone who I'd grown to like and trust was a corporate spy.

The scale of his betrayal distressed me. It was hard to accept. It was kind of like the death of a friend, but a friend who never existed in the first place. Understandably, I've become much more cautious about working with... What is the whole truth? Not about Rob, but what does that idea mean? I've ended up thinking it's not very complicated. No lies, of course, but the truth can only be whole if you find as many points of view as you possibly can. And if you're tough with yourself about including them in your story, even if they're inconvenient or not a comfortable fit, I'm not sure you can ever get to the whole truth from a single point of view. From Rob's, for example.

Then, where do someone's motives and intention fit into the idea of the whole truth? Is it enough, as one of Rob's Buddhist friends said, to be on the side of the angels? Not quite, I'd say. What you mean to do is part of the truth. What you do is part of it as well. And no good came of Project Spring. Consequences are part of the whole truth as well. And when they offered that settlement to end the legal action against them, Matteo, Begazzi and Rob, K2 paid damages to the claimants in the case.

Significant damages, the lawyers lead A said, to Laurie Casnell and to Rory O'Neill, to Harminda Baines and the others. But K2 didn't acknowledge they'd done anything wrong on Project Spring. The case brought a certain amount of publicity to the corporate investigations industry, not nearly as much as Harvey Weinstein, but more than they'd ever want. And it left me wondering. I know the consequences for the campaigners were serious. OK, some of them got damages, but they all talk about the trust that was destroyed and the time that was wasted.

And the consequences for Rob were devastating in all kinds of ways. But what about K2? And what about the corporate investigations agencies? Were there any consequences for them? My colleague Alexei has been burrowing around in that world for quite a few months now. So we caught up.

Cases like this one don't hit the headlines all that often. So people kind of notice, I think, when they do. Would you say, as a result of the sort of coverage of the Rob Moore story, which was some, were there any kind of, not talking about K2, but for the industry as a whole, were there any kind of not talking about k2 but for the industry as a whole were there any kind of consequences from from what happened so i spoke to i spoke to a number of people who worked in the industry and when i asked them about the rob moore case they all said oh yeah it was really embarrassing for for k2 i mean i think some of them thought that it was embarrassing because of what happened and some of them thought that it was embarrassing because of what happened.

And some of them thought it was embarrassing because they got caught or a mixture of both. But if you look at actually what happened in terms of the consequences, no regulatory changes were put in place. K2 is still going from strength to strength i don't see much evidence that the industry more widely has changed so yeah i don't think there have been that many repercussions no and and thinking about the sort of the characters who featured in the podcast what happened to matteo bigazzi after after the rob moore episode matteo Begazzi left K2 pretty soon after the Rob Moore episode with his boss, the head of the whole London station, the guy called Charles Carr,

and they set up a new company called C&F Partners. I've got in my mind the sort of bookend of 2016 when Rob gets found out and Project Spring comes to an end and the whole thing heads into court. If you take that as the sort of first bookend and and now as the sort of second bookend because i know you've been doing a lot of work about this whole industry for another another story you're working on but what would you say are sort of the big changes that have taken place in corporate investigations across those seven years it's a big question i realize but but in broad terms what do you think

so i mean let's deal with the uncontroversial part first. So there's a lot in the corporate intelligence world that hasn't changed at all. So in 2016, they were doing vanilla work for companies. And in 2023, they're still going to be doing vanilla work for companies. But in terms of the controversial stuff, the stuff like Rob Moore was doing, I think there's evidence that it shifted away from human-centric operations, where you send in someone undercover, to much more kind of computer-based operations, basically hacking. So if I was naive enough to think that as a result of what happened to Rob Moore, So if I was naive enough to think that as a result of what happened to Rob Moore, there might be less of this kind of intrusive surveillance or intrusive entryism into corporate entities or NGOs or whatever.

If I thought there was less of it going on, I could be flat wrong, couldn't I? I think the evidence shows that if anything, there's more intrusion. You've had stories like the Pegasus spyware story, which shows how spyware was put on the phones, not only of business people and politicians, but also of environmentalists and charity campaigners and journalists. You have this whole hacking for hire industry that purely in terms of scale can target a hundred times more companies than individual undercover operatives like Rob Moore could ever do. So technology is enabling intrusion on the scale that 15 years ago, 10 years ago wasn't possible. Yeah. And in a way, I mean, Rob's story hit the radar, but it didn't hit the radar like Harvey Weinstein and Black Cubed it. That was the real big one, wasn't it? From conversations you've had,

does it feel like an industry that's kind of chastened by these moments or that in the end just kind of shrugs them off and moves on in different ways? I don't think that they've been chastened by it. The people that I speak to in the industry are willing to accept that the sort of behavior that you saw with Rob Moore happens and the sort of behavior that happened with Harvey Weinstein happens. But they say, oh, no, look, it's just a few outlier firms. It's just a couple of firms in Israel or a couple of firms that might have slipped up. We would never do something like that. But the fact remains that there's no regulation ensuring that that takes place.

If a firm chooses not to do something, it's just because internally they choose not to do it, which means we don't really know what's happening. which means we don't really know what's happening. In the days after Rob and I spoke in the garden, a couple of things happened that dragged me back to the real world. I noticed K2 were changing their name. They're K2 Integrity now, presumably on the way to becoming just Integrity in the end.

And then Harminda Bain sent me an email with a link to some tweets with breaking news. The first one said, And the second one had a sort of sad, world-weary feel. So the asbestos trade continues unabated. The deadly dust is considered carcinogenic by the WHO, and thousands more will die from exposure. Asbestos is a human rights issue. Thanks for listening to Into the Dirt. It's been a big team effort. It was reported and written by me,

Kerry Thomas. The producer is Gary Marshall and the sound design is by Carla Pitella. Alexi Mostras did important additional reporting. Alice Sandelson helped the podcast get noticed in the world. And the field recordings were by Hannah Varel, Gabriella Jones, Harvard Bousnes and Alan Ruiz-Terron. The executive producer is Basher Cummings. Thanks for listening. To hear about all of our investigative series, follow Tortoise Investigates wherever you get your podcasts. For the best Tortoise listening experience curated by our journalists

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