The five statuses
Every record carries one status. The point of the status is to be boring and defensible: it describes the evidence, not the drama.
- Documented — confirmed by declassified records, court findings, official inquiries or multiple independent primary sources. The event happened; the dispute, if any, is about interpretation.
- Corroborated — supported by credible testimony, documentary fragments or consistent reporting, but without the full record. Most historical intelligence work sits here.
- Disputed — real evidence exists on both sides, or the official account and the alternative account each explain part of the record. Disagreement here is genuine.
- Unverified — a claim that circulates without adequate evidence either way. It is recorded so it can be traced, not because it is believed.
- Debunked — tested against the evidence and failed. Kept in the index so that the same claim is not re-litigated from scratch every few years.
The evidence meter
The meter is a single number from 0 to 100. It is a rough composite of four things: whether primary documents exist, how independent the sources are of each other, whether a court or inquiry has ruled, and whether the claim has survived serious attempts at refutation.
It is a summary, not a calculation, and it is not a probability that the claim is true. A well-documented operation can still be morally ambiguous; a thin claim can still be worth recording.
Link types
Records are joined to each other with an explicit relationship, rather than an undifferentiated “related” list, so the graph stays meaningful:
- Predecessor of / successor to — one programme became, or was replaced by, another.
- Component of — a sub-project within a larger programme.
- Shares personnel — the same officers, contractors or scientists ran both.
- Shares method — the same technique was used, whether or not the same people were involved.
- Competing explanation — two accounts of the same event that cannot both be true.
- Context for — background that makes the record legible, without claiming a causal link.
People and places are the other kind of link. When the same name or the same facility appears in two records, that is a fact about the world and it is shown on both pages.
Sources
Where a record has a written account, it lists its sources: declassified files, inquiry reports, court documents, contemporaneous journalism and secondary histories. Links to external material open in a new tab and are marked as such. Where the only accessible source is a reference work rather than a primary document, that is stated.
Accounts and viewpoints
Contested records carry the competing accounts side by side — the official position, the alternative claim, and the sceptical reading — each attributed. The atlas does not blend them into a single “balanced” voice that implies all three are equally supported.
Corrections
Records are revised when a document is released, a court rules, or a factual error is found. Every record shows when it was last revised. Corrections that change a status are noted on the record itself, and contributors' edits are logged.
What this is not
It is not a channel for accusation. It is not a place where a person is described as guilty of something no court or inquiry has found. Where a record names a living person in connection with wrongdoing, the status and the sourcing have to carry that weight — and if they cannot, the claim is written as a claim.
If you think a record is wrong, say so with the document. That is the only kind of correction that moves a status.