To be specific, we're in the land of confirmable and obvious. Consider: * Most conspiracy theories are false. * Many conspiracies do exist. I've seen people

To be specific, we're in the land of confirmable and obvious. Consider: * Most conspiracy theories are false. * Many conspiracies do exist. I've seen people involved in a few. In conspiracies, people keep secrets. Ergo, there's a poor mapping between actual conspiracies and conspiracy theories. People are speculating with no evidence. On the other hand, the conspiracies I've seen, you haven't heard of, and you probably won't. The CIA is quite literally the US government covert agency set up to meddle in foreign affairs. It's raison d'être is to: 1. Collect covert intelligence for the US 2. Undermine enemies of the US / support friends of the US A vague statement like "The CIA is involved in conspiracies" or even slightly less vague "The CIA lies and sometimes vilifies people" are almost vacuously true. That's literally what a covert government agency is designed to do. A conspiracy theory is much more specific. "The CIA assassinated [leader] on [date] by [some action that looked like an accident] in order to [favorable outcome]." Most of those, with blanks filled in, are paranoid nonsense. If the CIA is doing it's job, I'll never find out about whom it assassinated or why. On the other hand, a blanket statement like "The CIA sometimes engages in assassinations" is obviously true. We have plenty of records from times the CIA slipped up. As far as associating people with crazy by associating conspiracy theories with them, we're not even at the level of CIA. We're at the level of municipal politics, divorce cases, executive battles, and corporate PR smear campaigns. If the CIA isn't involved in conspiracies, where are my tax dollars going?