I am starting to run out of steam on this issue, but really, I am only posting stuff that increases my shock at just how much these guys were doing to hide their data and techniques. If you have 15 minutes and the interest, I strongly recommend this now-famous blog post by the amateur guy who probably made the first Freedom of Information request to CRU. He shows that Jones et al. were planning their strategy (to avoid divulging) before they got a single FOI request. He then goes through the emails chronologically, outlining the progression of their various attempts to do damage control.

What's really neat is that the guy intersperses the internal CRU emails with the official rejection letters he was getting regarding his requests for their station data. So you can see that they were truly just inventing BS excuses to refuse his request. At one point, one of the rejection letters contradicts the claim of the first rejection letter. They actually say at one point that they don't have a list of all the temperature stations they currently use to construct their official temperature series. (!!)