This 25 March 2015 BuzzFeed email chain shows UK investigations editor Heidi Blake reviewing the developing CEN article and then telling colleagues she “hadn’t quite realised CEN was Mike Leidig agency”, adding that Leidig was an old colleague of her former Insight partner Jonathan Calvert and that she knew him “a little bit” and could discreetly supply his mobile number if needed. The document is significant because Blake was not merely an outside observer: the same chain shows Robert Colvile asking for Heidi to take a look at the draft, Craig Silverman discussing further work on quotes and source material, and Colvile identifying major unresolved issues, including whether BuzzFeed could verify that CEN supplied copy as well as images, whether the story needed more direct attempts to find the people involved, and whether CEN’s size, revenue and Journalism Without Borders status could be checked. It should be read alongside later post-publication emails in which Luke Lewis stresses that the article “wasn’t Heidi investigation” while also saying Blake advised on it and helped make it “awesome and bulletproof”, because together the documents help show the gap between public attribution, internal investigative oversight, and the fact that a senior BuzzFeed investigations editor knew the person and agency being investigated before publication.