My point is that this is the kind of evidence you would need to support the original claim. If the top-level comment I was pursuing had, instead of making the

My point is that this is the kind of evidence you would need to support the original claim. If the top-level comment I was pursuing had, instead of making the claim that the majority of the spies posing as diplomats were known as spies to the host nation, had rather claimed that many of them were known, I wouldn't have pursued it. Edit: fixed language