Theories evaluated against the available evidence rather than promoted or dismissed. Each file traces a conspiracy claim through its actual lineage — where it came from, what supports it, what contradicts it, and which of four categories it ends up in. We don't endorse claims that the evidence doesn't support. We also don't dismiss claims that history later confirmed.
Conspiracy stories occupy a difficult middle ground in the historical record. Some of what gets called "conspiracy theory" turns out to be documented fact — MK-Ultra was a conspiracy theory until 1975, Operation Northwoods until 1997, the 1953 Iran coup until 2013. Other claims that present themselves with the same confidence (the moon landing was faked, the earth is flat, the 2020 election was stolen) survive only by progressively expanding what counts as evidence and what counts as a witness.
The job of a case file in this pillar isn't to make readers feel comfortable. It's to lay out what the claim actually is, where it came from, what supports it (if anything documented does), what contradicts it, and to place it honestly in one of four categories. Readers can disagree with the placement. The placement isn't hidden.
Every conspiracy case file ends with a placement in one of these:
Claims that were treated as conspiracy theories at the time but were later confirmed by declassified documents, court records, or official admissions. MK-Ultra, Operation Northwoods, the Tuskegee study, COINTELPRO, the 1953 Iran coup, the Pentagon Papers, the Gulf of Tonkin second incident. These cases live double lives: in the declassified pillar as historical record, in this pillar as case studies of how denial-to-disclosure works.
Claims where the evidence is incomplete in both directions. The documentary record doesn't confirm the conspiracy framing, but it doesn't rule it out either. Some assassination theories sit here. Some 9/11 foreknowledge arguments sit here. Some claims about ongoing intelligence programs sit here. Reasonable, well-informed people disagree about these.
Claims that cannot in principle be disproven by any evidence. "The conspirators have covered up all the evidence" is the diagnostic move: when every piece of contradicting evidence becomes proof of further conspiracy, the claim has left the domain of evidence-based inquiry. Reptilian elites, hollow earth, the Mandela Effect as conspiracy. The file treats these as cultural phenomena worth understanding, not as factual claims being adjudicated.
Claims that contradicted physical evidence or basic facts at the time, and where the contradicting evidence remains uncontroverted. The moon landing was faked. The 1969 Apollo retroreflectors are bouncing laser pulses back today. The earth is flat. The earth's curvature is directly observable from any commercial aircraft window. Cottingley fairies. The photographers later confessed.
Files planned for this pillar, with their working category. All categories are subject to revision if the evidence changes.
This pillar isn't an editorial endorsement, and it isn't an editorial debunking. It's a working file. We won't promote unfalsifiable claims as if they were findings; we won't dismiss claims that the documentary record might still vindicate; and we won't pretend the disinformation industry doesn't exist, because some of these claims were manufactured deliberately by actors with interests that show up in the citations.
Where conspiracy claims overlap with documented programs (and they often do — the same agencies that ran MK-Ultra also ran disinformation campaigns about it), we cross-link to the relevant declassified-files cases so readers can see the documentary base alongside the theory.