Jimmy Savile: BBC investigates 20 employees over sexual misconduct A BBC spokesman said: "All new allegations are passed to the BBC Investigations Unit or to the police as appropriate. Numbers will fluctuate both up and down as new allegations are made and investigated. Once they have been investigated - either resulting in further action or the matter being cleared and resolved - the cases will be closed. Meanwhile, Mark Thompson, the former BBC director-general, has admitted he may have suffered a "lack of imagination" when he failed to ask detailed questions about why Newsnight's investigation into Jimmy Savile was cancelled. Mr Thompson today faced fresh questions from The New York Times, where he is due to take over as chief executive next week, about whether he should have known more about the axed report and Savile's decades of sexual abuse while working for the BBC. A BBC foreign correspondent told Mr Thompson at a Christmas drinks party last December of Newsnight journalists" concerns about the scrapping of the Savile expose. The former director-general said he did not ask about the specifics of the investigation but raised the issue with BBC News management the next day. Mr Thompson said he was assured that Peter Rippon, Newsnight's editor, halted the Savile probe for journalistic reasons. "I wasn't told any specific lines of inquiry and certainly not anything related to the BBC," he told The New York Times. It didn't occur to me that there was a contemporary corporate interest to defend. You can say it's a lack of imagination. The New York Times, which has already published several critical articles about Mr Thompson's handling of the Savile affair, suggested today that the former BBC head and his top executives "repeatedly" missed chances to uncover the full story about Newsnight's investigation into the late TV star. The paper stated in a news report: "Whether through a series of near misses or a more deliberate avoidance, the executives failed to confront questions about Mr. Savile and the possibility that, in decades past, the BBC was somehow complicit in his behavior." The BBC has been accused of pulling the report into Savile's abuse because it was planning to broadcast Christmas tribute shows about the presenter and DJ. Cuttings of newspaper articles about the decision to pull the Newsnight report would have been sent to senior BBC managers and possibly discussed at a daily 9.15am conference call with Mr Thompson, former executives at the Corporation told The New York Times. Mr Thompson said he did not remember seeing any stories about Savile in the clippings. The former director-general insists that he played no part in the controversial decision to pull the Newsnight report into the Jim'll Fix It star's abuse, and has said he believes he did nothing wrong. A spokesman for Mr Thompson declined to comment further.