A series of redacted e-mails and other documents obtained by the Associated Press shows that US intelligence officials had knowledge beforehand of British intelligence officials’ efforts to destroy data in the possession of the UK newspaper The Guardian. The e-mails show that former National Security Agency director General Keith Alexander was briefed on the plan days before GCHQ analysts oversaw the destruction of a laptop at The Guardian’s offices in London.

On July 19, 2013, as British officials were stepping up pressure on The Guardian to turn over the data—using threats of a police raid and prosecution under the UK’s Official Secrets Act—Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger consented to the destruction of the data and the laptop it was stored on rather than turning the data itself over to GCHQ. The documents obtained by the Associated Press from the NSA under the Freedom of Information Act show that Richard Ledgett, then director of NSA’s Threat Operations Center and a member of NSA’s “Media Leaks Task Force,” sent an e-mail to Alexander within hours of Rusbridger’s assent to the destruction; it was headed “Guardian data being destroyed.”

“Good news, at least on this front,” Ledgett wrote, forwarding an e-mail from a redacted source. Alexander forwarded the news to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper: “Jim- Here is the report I got.”

On July 20, a few hours after the destruction of The Guardian laptop was complete, Clapper was verbally briefed by Alexander on the destruction. He sent a thank-you e-mail to Alexander for the “conversation” as a reply to the original e-mail thread.

On August 20, 2013, during a White House press briefing, press secretary Josh Earnest responded to questions about whether the US government had been "given a heads up" about the destruction by saying, “I’ve seen the published reports of those accusations, but I don’t have any information for you on that… The only thing I know about this are the public reports about this.”