When a group of us visited Michael Baigent at his Winchester home in February 1993 he showed us all literally hundreds and hundreds of photocopied pages of Bérenger Saunière's papers in about five filing cabinets that demonstrated how much money the said priest generated from trafficking in masses, that Baigent claimed he got from someone who wished to keep their identity private; yet Baigent never mentioned anything about the photocopies he had in his possession in his 2005 book, The Jesus Papers: Exposing The Greatest Cover-Up In History – instead, what Baigent wrote in a footnote to his book was the following:

Instead of referring to the photocopied papers that he showed us of Saunière's mass-trafficking activities in his possession, Baigent gave this fantasy story about the French DGSE (Directorate-General for External Security). It's also wrong that Simony was a crime in the Roman Catholic church (Saunière was not reprimanded by the Carcassonne Bishopric for merely selling masses, but for accepting more money than he was able to say masses for – fraud).

Just to point out another example of his shortcomings, Baigent in 2005 claimed on page 9 in his book The Jesus Papers that he visited Douglas Bartlett after the publication of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail – yet in 1982 in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail on page 16 it was claimed that the meeting with Douglas Bartlett occurred shortly after receiving his letter in 1972 (“at the earliest opportunity we drove to see him and attempted to interview him”)

Michael Baigent was clearly a dishonest person.

Michael Baigent died in 2013