Usually the crazy part of conspiracy theories is that they invent a group that's doing something (Reptillians, the Illuminati, whatever), or describe something

Usually the crazy part of conspiracy theories is that they invent a group that's doing something (Reptillians, the Illuminati, whatever), or describe something a real group couldn't possibly pull off (e.g. the CIA runs North Korea, the Bilderberg Group chooses who wins elections). Which makes it very weird to see people level that accusation against claims that an obviously-real group did an obviously-plausible thing, like "this agency that exists to gather information gathered a lot of information". Or in this case "this PR firm ran several articles to affect PR". Sure, it's a conspiracy in that they aren't admitting to doing it, but why is that surprising?