C.L.U.E. Public Information Service
UNCLASSIFIED • PUBLIC ACCESS • NOT FOR OPERATIONAL RELIANCE
Service status: Normal, subject to the internal definition of normal.
Public website v3.2 • paperwork may be newer
C.L.U.E. crest
Continental Liaison Unit for Enquiries
Continental Operations Directorate
Quaestio Ubique — enquiry, wherever somebody has misplaced the answer
Operational status: normal*
Public information / About the Unit

About C.L.U.E.

An organisation created to answer the question “whose problem is this?” without requiring the answer to be “ours”.

Purpose

The Continental Liaison Unit for Enquiries exists to coordinate evidence, witnesses, information and responsibility when a matter spans more than one jurisdiction, department, vehicle, hotel room or interpretation of events.

Our remit begins where another body's remit ends and, in several cases, where that body insists its remit never began.

Institutional position: C.L.U.E. is operationally independent, administratively attached, procedurally aligned and constitutionally best left alone.

The motto

QUAESTIO UBIQUE

Traditionally rendered as “enquiry everywhere”. The Directorate's preferred practical translation is: somebody should probably ask.

The Latin has been reviewed by Legal, who confirmed that nobody has yet complained in Latin.

A brief institutional history

YearDevelopment
1957An informal liaison committee forms after three administrations open the same case under different titles and each requests the other two's paperwork.
1962The committee becomes permanent after an international meeting spends two days establishing that nobody present owns the briefcase in the middle of the table.
1974First confirmed cross-border memorandum arrives at the office for which it was intended.
1993Email introduced. Security policy requires each email to be printed immediately and placed in a folder.
2004Digitisation programme reduces seventeen paper forms by replacing them with twenty-six printable PDFs.
2016A strategic review recommends “greater clarity”. The phrase is adopted without further definition.
2021Remote working pilot unexpectedly increases productivity. An internal inquiry is commissioned.
2026C.L.U.E. remains operational. No satisfactory explanation has been found.
Records & institutional memory

We keep almost everything.

C.L.U.E. retains operational records according to schedules approved by Records Management, Legal, Information Governance and the person who knows which cupboard contains the older schedules.

Material may be destroyed when it is no longer required, provided the destruction request, retention review and destruction-confirmation record are themselves retained indefinitely.

Archive principle: Nothing is ever truly lost. It is assigned a reference number and becomes harder to find.
Illustrated C.L.U.E. records archive
Central Records Holding. Photographing the actual archive was rejected because somebody would then ask what was in it.
Principle 1

Evidence before certainty

Confidence is welcome, but must queue behind evidence and carry identification.

Principle 2

Record the inconvenient detail

The detail everyone dismisses is often the detail a review panel will ask about six months later.

Principle 3

Do not improve a story

Reality is usually strange enough. Where it is not, wait. Someone will eventually make it worse.