WASHINGTON — The New York Times was given a cache of E.P.A. emails and other documents detailing the communications of top political aides to Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency chief, after the Sierra Club, an environmental group, sued to obtain the correspondence.

More than 10,000 pages from two aides who handled Mr. Pruitt’s daily schedule offer a detailed window into the extraordinary efforts by his team to keep the public and news media at a distance. Here are some examples.

‘We cannot do open q&a from the crowd’

When Mr. Pruitt was scheduled in December to appear with an Iowa cattle rancher , aides at the E.P.A. intervened to make sure that the administrator would not face unfriendly or unexpected questions from the crowd or uninvited reporters. “It’s invite only press I thought?” one aide to Mr. Pruitt wrote. “My sincere apologies for causing any difficulty but we cannot do open q&a from the crowd,” a second aide wrote.

‘Cat’s out of the bag’

Planning for a trip to Missouri hit a bump last April when word leaked about Mr. Pruitt meeting with electric utility executives even though organizers had tried to keep the talks secret. “Cat’s out of the bag,” one of the organizers wrote.