Scott Neylon said the misspelling of his name in Newcastle Herald letters to the editor "may have been due to the use of SMS communications".
The explanation was revealed in an investigation report into allegations about City of Newcastle CEO Jeremy Bath's connections with Mr Neylon, made public on April 17.
The Pinnacle Integrity investigation probed two allegations - whether Mr Bath passed on confidential information to Mr Neylon which Mr Neylon included in letters to the Herald, or that Mr Bath wrote one of the letters, which related to Newcastle Maritime Museum.
The council's referral to Pinnacle related to whether Mr Bath provided confidential information to Mr Neylon. It did not ask the investigator to examine if Mr Bath wrote any of the 18 letters submitted under Mr Neylon's name, five of which were published.
Mr Bath denied writing the letters or passing on confidential information, and the investigation found no evidence that he did either.
The one letter that was included in the allegations related to a complaint by Newcastle Maritime Museum president Bob Cook.
The inquiry came after a Herald investigation revealed Mr Neylon, a good friend of Mr Bath's for more than 20 years, had been living in Japan for decades, yet wrote a campaign of letters to the Herald which supported Mr Bath's career, and criticised his critics.
The independent investigation established that Mr Neylon was motivated to write to the Herald about council matters to advocate on issues he held an interest in, and through his "support and defence of Mr Bath".
The report said "whilst it is considered that Mr Bath has had discussions with Mr Neylon, a close personal friend", there was no evidence their discussions included confidential council information.
Mr Neylon said in his written response that he had a "right to write to a newspaper" and his interest in penning the letters did "in part, relate to Mr Bath, but it was also motivated by his love for surfing". He said the information cited in his letters came from Herald articles. Mr Neylon has never been a Herald subscriber.
He "believed that the Newcastle Herald intended to defame his, and Mr Bath's, reputation and had not, on any occasion, made attempts to verify his identity".
The report said Mr Neylon submitted that he originally used his Japan IP address to submit letters but "that, because the Herald stopped publishing his letters, he believed the IP address was being blocked".
He then reverted to using a virtual private network (VPN) to disguise his IP address as Australian. Mr Neylon said the VPN belonged to a Japanese friend using an 'ExpressVPN' account, but the friend moved away in 2022.
In regards to the misspelling of his own last name, he said "that it may have been due to the use of SMS communications but, if so, it was unintentional".
Mr Neylon said he may have forgotten the content of some of his letters to the editor, but no letter took him longer than about five minutes, and after sending them, "he felt better about himself".
In relation to why he wrote about Mr Cook and the maritime museum, Mr Neylon said: "Jeremy had told me he was torn between trying to save the maritime collection and walking away from it all. I just wanted people to know how crazy the situation was and hopefully bring some common sense to the matter."
Mr Neylon was also questioned about a "Newcastle Baths article".
One of Mr Neylon's letters briefly mentions the ocean baths, saying people who live in the East End "enjoy a multitude of rate payer funded facilities such as ... Newcastle Ocean Baths. But heaven forbid the council do anything that encourages non East Enders into the area. First they opposed Supercars. Then it was fixing up Newcastle Ocean Baths".
Mr Neylon submitted that he had visited the baths several times.
"There was a lot of noise a few years ago from a group of people who were running a campaign against Jeremy and the council because they didn't want a roof on the changerooms," he said. "At one point they even photoshopped a fake letter from Jeremy. As usual the Newcastle Herald gave endless oxygen to these people, and it was all very personal, targeted at Jeremy."
Mr Bath said in his response that Mr Neylon had always supported his work and career progression.
"Indeed, when I commenced in the role as CEO of City of Newcastle, he contacted my entire friend list on Facebook to share the news of my appointment and to encourage them to share an article in the Newcastle Herald reporting it," Mr Bath said.
"While his occasional support for issues I have fought for has never materially benefited me, I have always considered myself fortunate to have a friend who has been so willing to publicly support me."
The investigator reviewed Mr Bath's work emails with Mr Neylon and found they did not contain any confidential information.
Newcastle lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes said in her interview that the CEO had "obviously" confided information to Mr Neylon, but did not know if that included any confidential information.
"She said that it is hard to limit the scope of conversation between friends," the report said. "She said that she was not sure of where the nexus of any potential breach of the code of conduct occurred."
Topics: Council's 'proactive' release of the Scott Neylon letters investigation
Assessing evidence
The Herald reported on April 17 that Mr Cook was concerned by language in the report, such as "reasonable" and "plausible".
"Those are not the words of an investigator that's proving anything," he said.
The report also accused the Herald of making inferences on "inuendo" (sic).
"The inferences drawn by Mr Cook and/or the Newcastle Herald articles regarding Mr Bath's involvement are founded on inuendo (sic) and the fact that Mr Neylon may or may not have used a domestic IP address," it states.
When discussing Mr Neylon's evidence about using a VPN, the report said "alternatively, a domestic user may have forwarded correspondence on behalf of Mr Neylon".
Mr Neylon's evidence listed in the report does not mention this possibility. He said he used varied platforms to correspond with the Herald, including his personal email address, the web feedback form, and SMS.
The investigation also found if Mr Bath wrote the letters, it was "unlikely and implausible" he would have used a friend's name on them, "but rather choose a name without any legitimate connection to himself".
"That is, he could have adopted a 'John Doe' without any risk of connection to himself or any impact on his professional reputation," the report said.
"There is no indication that, if Mr Bath used a 'John Doe', it would have prevented the Newcastle Herald from publishing the content."
The investigator did not contact the Herald to ascertain how it verifies letters to the editor.
The report said the evidence was "compelling that Mr Neylon authored the letters from his home in Japan, with clear transparency as to his identity, and that he authored the letters without undue influence of motivation of Mr Bath".
However the report does not include evidence or explanation of why Mr Neylon claimed to live in multiple different Newcastle suburbs in his letters, despite residing in Japan.
Pinnacle Integrity said its role was "to assess available evidence, rather than rely on inference, assumptions, or inuendo" (sic) through "a scrupulously objective, independent, and fair process".
"Whilst the procedural framework that underpins reviews might not satisfy those seeking a desired outcome, conduct reviewers remain bound by those procedures.
"If there is a strongly held or political view that this process needs to change, then that is a matter for the government of the day."
