Foreword

A Note on Methodology, Evidence Standards & How to Read This Book

This is a reference work. It compiles primary source documents — court records, congressional testimony, declassified government files, academic studies, and verified financial disclosures — into a single chronological narrative.

Veritas Worldwide · March 2026

Before proceeding, it is necessary to address a phrase that will occur to many readers upon encountering this book's subject matter. The term "conspiracy theory" has become, in modern usage, a mechanism for dismissing inquiry rather than engaging with it. Its history is instructive. A 1967 CIA dispatch (Document 1035-960), declassified in 1976 under a Freedom of Information Act request by The New York Times, recommended that the Agency's media contacts use the term "conspiracy theorists" to discredit critics of the Warren Commission's findings on the assassination of President Kennedy. The document is available in full from the National Archives.

This is not to suggest that all claims labeled "conspiracy theories" are true. Many are not. It is to observe that the phrase functions, in practice, as a thought-terminating cliché — a label that substitutes for analysis. When a claim is false, it can be refuted with evidence. When a claim is true but inconvenient, it is often easier to label it a "conspiracy theory" than to address the evidence it presents.