In the 1990s, if people told you about three men on television spinning ever more complicated conspiracy theories about the federal government, you’d assume they were talking about an “X-Files” spinoff. If you heard the same thing today, you’d be on solid ground assuming they were talking about high-ranking members of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

Mainstream birtherism is, for the most part, dead (top Mitt Romney surrogate Donald Trump keeps hope alive, but President Obama’s birth place is no longer an actual part of the congressional agenda). Fears that the president of the United States is a secret Kenyan may have faded, but newer, bolder, conspiracies about the secret schemes at work in Washington are taking hold.