House investigators on Friday made public some of the more than 200,000 pages of internal General Motors correspondence and other documents detailing years of internal deliberations over a dangerous flaw in a small-car ignition switch that the company did not disclose to the public until this year.

The documents were requested as part of an investigation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee into why it took the automaker more than a decade to disclose the safety issue to the public and to order a recall of the vehicles with the defective switch. A Senate committee is conducting a separate inquiry, as are the Justice Department and regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The documents include at least one internal email exchange with Mary Barra, a 30-year veteran of the company who became chief executive in January.

Barra has repeatedly said that she first learned of an internal investigation of Chevrolet Cobalt ignition switches in December 2013, a few weeks before she became chief executive. A safety team had met at that time, and was in the final process of recommending the first recall of Cobalts and Pontiac G5 sedans because of faulty switches, which GM has now tied to 13 deaths.

But a document from Oct. 3, 2011, shows that Barra was, at the very least, aware of power-steering problems in the Cobalt and G5 that prompted a recall for power-steering problems in 2010.

The document was sent to Barra by Terry Woychowski, a senior GM engineer at the time. A top GM safety lawyer, William Kemp, was copied on the memo.

In the memo, Woychowski was apparently alerting Barra, who was senior vice president of global product development at the time, that the Saturn Ion might have the same power-steering problems that the Cobalt and G5 experiences.

“Mary,” the memo said, “During the initial Cobalt case, the Ion data did not justify being included. The situation has been evolving. We will meet and understand the latest data.”

There is no document reflecting a follow-up meeting.

During congressional hearings last week, Barra said she had no knowledge of the events leading up to the Cobalt recall in February, blaming a lack of communication among various departments.

In a statement, GM said that the steering issue had nothing to do with the ignition switch defect.