23 September 2026
Reading the file before the argument
Most debate about contact happens without the primary documents in the room. Starting with the paperwork changes which questions look interesting.
The usual argument about contact is conducted entirely in the present tense. Someone offers a recent case, someone else offers a recent explanation, and both sides leave with the position they arrived with.
The archive behaves differently. Read in date order, a run of official correspondence shows something the debate rarely does: the internal reasoning. You can watch a case get reclassified, a witness get quietly downgraded, and a conclusion get drafted before the analysis that supposedly produced it.
What the paperwork is good for
Documents are not proof of anything exotic. They are proof of how a question was handled, which is a different and more tractable subject. A file tells you who was asked, what they were allowed to consider, and where the process stopped.
That is the material this project cares about most, because it is the part that can be established beyond argument. Whether something is out there remains open. How Earth has behaved while the question stayed open is already on the record.
The working method
Start with the document. Establish its provenance. Read what it actually says rather than what it is usually quoted as saying. Then, and only then, decide what it supports.
It is slower than having an opinion, and it is the only approach that survives contact with someone who disagrees.