This 12 April 2015 email chain shows Heidi Blake redrafting BuzzFeed’s proposed “no surprises” / right-to-reply letter to Mike Leidig before publication of the CEN article. Blake says BuzzFeed needed to give Leidig “much more detail” about why it had “deduced” that each article or quotation was fake, so that he had a chance to “point out any holes” in the team’s workings. The document is significant because it shows BuzzFeed internally recognising that its allegations still depended on deductions, not simply settled facts, and that CEN needed enough detail to respond properly. The wider chain reinforces that concern: Alan White asks whether BuzzFeed has “anything at all even TINY bit wrong”, warning that one small error would be bad and more than one would be a “disaster”, while also asking whether there was anything more they could do to verify the source of copy where they did not have that verification. Craig Silverman separately warns that, for the Lucita Sandoval story, BuzzFeed did “not have conclusive proof that CEN sold words and pics” and asks whether CEN clients could check their archives. White then says it feels like a “microscopic gamble” to mention some items at present, and suggests that if quotes are the same across sites and publishers have not linked elsewhere, they “must’ve been bought”. The document is therefore important because it captures BuzzFeed at a late pre-publication stage, still trying to strengthen proof, preserve screenshots, identify publisher changes, verify CEN copy, and build a detailed front-up letter while acknowledging the risk that gaps or errors could undermine the piece. It also shows the imbalance between the article’s destructive potential — White describes it internally as telling Leidig they were “about to destroy” his business and professional credibility — and the unresolved evidential questions still being worked through days before publication.