THE GRADING METHOD
Five stamps do all the work in this archive. This page explains what each one means, what evidence it takes to earn, and the reading rules this office applies , so you can disagree with a grade precisely rather than generally.
WHY THERE ARE GRADES AT ALL
Most writing about conspiracies sorts itself into two piles. One treats every claim as credible because the powerful do lie. The other treats every claim as absurd because conspiracy theories are for cranks. Both are ways of not doing the work.
This archive takes the position that the question is always empirical and always specific. Operation Northwoods happened. The Business Plot probably happened. Pizzagate did not, and a man brought a rifle to a restaurant because he believed it had. The only way to hold all three of those in view at once is to grade each claim on its own evidence and publish the reasoning, so a reader who disagrees can see exactly where they disagree.
The grades are editorial assessments, not findings of fact. They are the opinion of this office about what the public record currently supports. Every file carries a WHAT WOULD CHANGE THE GRADE section stating the evidence that would move it, because a grade that nothing could change is not an assessment : it is a belief.
CONFIRMED52 FILES
The thing alleged actually happened, and the evidence is of a kind that would satisfy a court, a congressional committee, or a competent historian. Almost every file here got its grade the same way: an archive opened, a verdict landed, or a participant testified under oath.
What it takes: A guilty plea, a declassified operational document, a sworn admission, or an official inquiry that found the conduct occurred.
Note what this category is not. It is not a judgement that the conspiracy was well-run, morally defensible, or consequential. Operation Snow White and Acoustic Kitty are both confirmed.
CONTESTED28 FILES
Serious, credentialed people disagree, and the disagreement is about evidence rather than about ideology. These are the files where this office has the least confidence and the most interest.
What it takes: Two or more competent bodies reaching different conclusions from the same record , or one body reaching a conclusion that another competent body has publicly declined to endorse.
The Vela Incident and Amerithrax are the models: in both, an official finding exists and an equally official scientific review declined to support it.
OPEN CASE36 FILES
Something happened, nobody knows what, and the question is answerable in principle. Open is not a synonym for mysterious : it means the evidence needed to close the file could still exist.
What it takes: An unexplained event with real physical or documentary residue, and no established explanation that accounts for it.
Files move out of this category more often than people expect. The Somerton Man and the Boy in the Box were both open for over sixty years and were both closed by a laboratory technique that did not exist when they went cold.
UNVERIFIED9 FILES
The claim rests on testimony, a single artefact, or an instrument reading that nobody has been able to check. Unverified is a statement about the evidence, not about the witness : it does not mean anyone is lying.
What it takes: Sincere accounts with no corroborating physical trace, or physical traces with no chain of custody.
The distinction from OPEN is that an open case has residue an investigator could work with. An unverified one has an account and nothing else.
DEBUNKED26 FILES
The specific claim has been tested and fails. Usually this means it contradicts settled physics, or the person who invented it has said so.
What it takes: A confession from the source, a decisive physical refutation, or a falsifiable prediction that was tested and failed.
This is the category most often misread. Grading the Roswell craft claim DEBUNKED does not mean nothing happened at Roswell , something did, the government lied about it twice, and that is in the file. A debunked theory frequently sits on top of a real grievance.
HOW THIS OFFICE READS EVIDENCE
- Real conspiracies leak. Watergate ran 26 months. Operation Snow White ran four years and collapsed when one operative was stopped at a library desk. When a theory requires thousands of people to stay silent for decades, weigh it against the files that did not.
- Check the founding citation. An extraordinary number of theories in this cabinet rest on one early source that nobody re-reads , a satirical student review, a cowboy's recollection written down seventy years later, a five-sentence letter to a journal. It is usually the weakest link and usually the one nobody checks.
- A novelist often got there first. Almost everything the public knows about the Mary Celeste came from a short story. The famous details of the Flannan Isles came from a poem. When every memorable detail points the same evocative direction, find out who wrote them.
- Absence of evidence is evidence, when evidence was collected. Thirty years of funded research at Skinwalker Ranch producing no published dataset is a finding. So is a house fire that leaves no bone.
- Distinguish the claim from the grievance. The 9/11 controlled-demolition claim fails on physics. The ignored August 2001 warning is in the record. Debunking the first does not dispose of the second, and conflating them is how real questions get buried.
- Institutions that lie once have spent something. Tuskegee is the reason a measurable number of people still decline medical advice. When this office grades a claim about government conduct, the prior is set by the confirmed files, not by the official denial.