The Request
A Freedom of Information request rarely turns into a story. Usually it turns into a table, a paragraph of caveats, and a line saying nothing further is held. Reference CAS-289300 is one of those, answered by The National Archives in the United Kingdom and published on nationalarchives.gov.uk on November 11, 2025. The requester wanted to know whether the Cabinet Office or the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (recorded in the transfer figures under the name it used at the time, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, or FCO) had exchanged any correspondence with the Archives about taking down or reclosing intelligence-related records in the second half of 2013, and how many such records had been transferred to the Archives before and after that point.
The Numbers
The Archives answered the count part directly. Between January 1 and May 30, 2013, 499 records, described in the Archives’ own terms as “pieces” (a piece is a single catalog entry, not the total of every part or folder inside it), were transferred to the Archives from the Cabinet Office and/or the FCO. Between June 1 and December 31, 2013, that number was 55. Edward Snowden’s disclosures began on June 5, 2013, when The Guardian published the first of a series of reports drawn from leaked material; he was named publicly as the source three days later, on June 9. The second, smaller period in the FOI request sits entirely after that date.
How “Intelligence-Related” Was Counted
That comparison, 499 against 55, rests on one method. A record was classed as intelligence-related if the word “intelligence” appeared in its title, or in the title of the sub-series (a grouping of related files within a department’s holdings) that contained it. Nobody opened the files to check what was actually inside them. The Archives says this itself: the response states plainly that a taxonomy search of this kind “is not definitive,” and that other intelligence-related files may exist under titles that never use the word. The two figures are real results of a real search. They are not a claim that every intelligence file from 2013 was found, or that every file counted was, in substance, about intelligence.
What the Archives Says It Holds
On the question of correspondence, the answer is short and comes twice. For June 1 to October 30, 2013, the Archives states it holds no exchanges, minutes, or correspondence with the Cabinet Office or the FCO concerning Snowden’s disclosures or their effect on the release, retention, or reclosure of intelligence-related records. For June 1 to December 31, 2013, it states it holds no information on any request from either department to take down or reclose records, and so no copies of such requests exist for it to send. On record opening dates specifically, it declines to go further and cites Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, an exemption that applies when the information is already reasonably accessible by another route, directing the requester instead to Discovery, its own searchable catalog, using department codes such as CAB and FCO.
What Kind of Gap This Is
The Archives is not withholding a document under an exemption that shields its content. It is saying that no such document is held at all. Nothing in the response ties the fall in transfers to the Snowden disclosures. Nothing in it rules that connection out either. The FOI response answers the four questions it was asked, mostly in the negative, and then it stops.
What Remains Unresolved
Several things stay open after this exchange. Whether takedown or reclosure was ever discussed through channels the request did not reach, in internal Cabinet Office or FCO papers that were never sent to the Archives, is not addressed here, since those departments’ own files fell outside the scope of CAS-289300. Whether the drop from 499 pieces to 55 reflects any operational decision at all, as against ordinary scheduling or staffing changes on the departments’ side, is not established by anything in the response. And whether Snowden’s disclosures had any bearing on what was opened, withheld, or reclosed in that period is neither confirmed nor denied anywhere in the record. These sit as open questions, not as things the Archives failed to admit.
Where the Record Stops
No later inquiry is attached to this exchange. No parliamentary question, academic paper, or journalist follow-up has taken the 499-to-55 figure any further, at least not in anything that has surfaced alongside it. The source material is one request and one response, published once. The Archives has, separately, published annual figures on how many records it reclosed under its own reclosure policy for 2021 through 2023, so it does disclose that kind of number when asked the right way. On this specific question, about this specific year, its answer is that it has nothing further to show.