The Snowden archive has published nothing since 2019, an investigation finds

The last document from the Snowden archive was published on 29 May 2019 by The Intercept. Since then no news outlet, journalist or institution anywhere has published a single document from the archive, according to an investigation published by Libroot.org on 20 September 2026.

Where the publishing stopped

The Guardian published its last document in February 2014, Der Spiegel in January 2015, and The New York Times and ProPublica in August 2015. The Guardian held around 58,000 documents and published about 30 of them over nine months — roughly 0.05%. Its London computers were destroyed on 20 July 2013 under the supervision of two GCHQ technicians, a fact the paper disclosed a month later. The Washington Post, working from the 50,000-plus files Barton Gellman received directly from Snowden, published around 30 documents and stopped in July 2014. Der Spiegel's count was roughly 140 documents across some eighteen stories before it stopped in January 2015.

The closure at The Intercept

First Look Media, founded by Pierre Omidyar in October 2013, launched The Intercept in February 2014 specifically to report the archive. On 4 March 2019 its editor-in-chief Betsy Reed asked Laura Poitras for a confidential meeting about restructuring; two days later Poitras was told four positions were being cut, among them the staff who maintained the archive. She objected in writing, noting the department cost 1.5% of the budget, and on 10 March the chief financial officer agreed to hold off. On 12 March she was told on a call with Glenn Greenwald and the CFO that he and Reed had decided to shut the archive. Four different explanations were given within eleven days — budget cuts, the archive losing its value, other editorial priorities, and Greenwald's intent to find new partners — and two years later Greenwald said nobody had wanted it closed. Laid-off staff were required to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Where the archive is now

By most estimates about 1% of the archive has been published. Greenwald and Poitras say they hold complete copies; Gellman says his material is in cold storage and that the operational security needed to share it is too hard to handle. None of the three has published a document from it since May 2019. Poitras wrote in 2022 that the archive still exists and that there is still more to report; Greenwald said in 2023 that it runs to hundreds of thousands of documents.

The authors say they contacted more than twenty people and organisations between August and September 2026. Two replied, and no question of substance was answered. The Guardian's press office said it had nothing new to share and did not routinely comment on editorial decision making.