Research: A How-To (Part 1)

An Introduction to Researching for Yourself and the Art of Digging

A lot of people don't know where to start with actually digging. This is a common problem. You don't know where to start, what questions to ask, or even what direction to start moving in. Congratulations! This is the correct place to start. You are right where you should be.

If you are going into a dig with a preconceived notion or direction, your digs aren't going to be very good. You have to be willing to go where the thread leads you... wherever it leads you. Put your feelings and biases aside. Just be willing to tell the truth — right, wrong, or indifferent. Be prepared to come up with a hundred different theories only to have to be wrong and change them.

Think of this as a murder mystery. You start out with an idea, a hunch, or a little bit of evidence. It is your job to find the story behind it and tell it.

Your Topic

Ideas from these can come from literally anywhere and everywhere. You can get the idea from a news article, a comment someone said on social media, your innate curiosity, a need to know, or even by looking through someone else's research.

HINT: Do not be afraid to expand on someone else's good research. Just don't forget to verify it and give them credit for their hard work. Also don't be afraid to research on an old topic. A lot of times current events and new discoveries will offer greater insight to what we all previously knew.

If you have a specialty, hobby, profession, or passion, this can and should play into what topics you choose. You have knowledge and gifts in a certain area or field which would greatly broaden everyone else's understanding. Use your own experience in deciding your direction.

So, you need an idea for a topic. Keep it broad.

Let's use for example the State Department. That's a broad subject. I have literally no idea which direction I will go with it. But I am sure it is rife with information.

Build a History or Profile for Your Topic

This is where websites like Britannica, company websites and their 'About Us' pages, and websites like Wikipedia come in really handy. Build a timeline. Search for keywords, names, places, and general connections when doing this.

I will walk through on how to do this a little bit more later. The end goal of this step is to have a working general knowledge of your topic and who the major players, events, dates, and so on are.

Looking at recent news regarding your topic and current events can give a big insight into what is going on and where there might be something of interest.

Hint: A dig can solely consist of general information or a profile regarding a specific subject. There are so many things we don't know about in the way of how they work or how they are connected to other entities in our world. Even if this is all you do, you are providing a tremendous help to our general knowledge. Just knowing the details surrounding an entity, person, or event can help in ways you may not understand at the time.

Ask Questions

Building  a history or profile for your topic and asking questions should go hand in hand with each other. Start asking questions. Sometimes you don't know where to focus. If you already have some questions in mind, go ahead and build with that goal as your focus. Always be prepared to change direction later though.

Start answering your own questions and start asking new ones. Let your curiosity and what you don't know be your guide. At this point, the person who doesn't know all the answers... or even any of the answers... wins.

Go with what you can absolutely prove. Leave all preconceived notions aside. If you want to state something as fact, you need to have a source for it.

Controversy and Scandals

Controversy sells. Scandals sell. They are also a great place to get information about dirty deeds, what narratives are being spread around, and what is and isn't being said.

Take my example of the State Department. This is what I found by doing a search for "State Department controversy."

Already there are 4 topics I could start digging into with the IRS agent whistleblower being the most recent in my top searches. I will admit though, usually the interesting things aren't at the top of the list. See what I mean?

Don't just stop with using one word. Use its synonyms. Here is what I found regarding "State Department scandal."

Oh. I bet those would make some amazing digs. (Hint. Hint.)

Ask For Help

Ask a question on social media. Ask for some help for your friends. Get advice. There is nothing wrong with working in a team setting or taking advice from others. Start of thread. Tease out what you are researching and read the comments. Digging isn't necessarily a solo activity. A team can help you verify information and your connections. They can also be a very good sounding board for when you get stuck.

Verifying Sources

When verifying individual points of data, you want to find 3 or more sources that say the same thing (or point to the same facts).

What do I mean by sources? Individual sites that aren't repeats or reprints of each other.

What is a reprint? A reprint is where the same article is copied word for word without any other further independent research, additions, or sources to back it up.

Using my example of the State Department, I can go to Wikipedia and see who is the current Secretary of State. I can verify this by going to the State Department's website and also through current news sources.

Not everything you find will have 3 points of verification. You are going to have to weigh the validity, honesty, and trustworthiness of each new piece of data you find.

Hint: Fact checkers are almost always wrong about something. Don't trust pieces of information that are fact checked unless you fact checked it yourself.

News Sources

I know a lot of people won't use this news source or that news source because it is left leaning or has a slanted view. Let me make one thing perfectly clear. Every news source is left leaning. Every news source has bias. Every news source has a slanted view.

The more diverse your news sources are, the better your arguments and digs will be. The less likely people can poke holes into them. The farther your reach will be. The more red pills you will put out.

Determine what the facts are from your sources and leave the opinions behind. Or better yet, create a counter argument for those opinions.

And always, always, always cite your sources. You don't need to be fancy about this. Just put the name of the site, the name of the article, and include a link. (Sometimes all you need to do is include the link depending on the media you are using.)

Hint: The most interesting parts of a news article is rarely at the top. You will find it towards the bottom or buried in a paragraph.

Web Browsers and Search Engines

Which browser should I use? The answer? All of them. Or as many as you feel comfortable with. But don't limit yourself for one. Remember, you are a private investigator. You are solving the mystery. You are looking for clues. Sometimes those clues pop up in one browser but not the other and we wouldn't recognize the clue for what it is without looking at both.

You should take full advantage of setting the regional settings for your web browser to search for news in different parts of the world. What we see here in the US isn't necessarily what gets reported in places like the UK, Australia, and Russia. Even the regional differences in using Wikipedia can be eye opening. Don't be afraid to use a translator and do some searching.

Here is a list of web browsers, search engines, and other resources you can use:

• Archive.li (Time capsule for webpages.)

• Bing

• Chronicling America (Historic newspapers from 1777 - 1963)

• CiteSeerX (Search scientific articles.)

• Citizen Portal (Video clips of elected officials.)

• Deep State Mapping Project (Maps connections between deep state entities. Great place to start any dive.)

• DuckDuckGo

• Etymonline - Online Etymology Dictionary (How words evolved over time.)

• Freespoke

• Google

• Internet Archive

• iSeek (Search universities, government, and noncommercial publications)

• Newspapers.com (Archive of newspapers from 1700s - 2000s.)

• Open.ink (A repository of information from open records, research, and archival writings.)

• PDFeyes.com (Search millions of PDFs.)

• Substack (Lots of research articles already published. Read, expand, and learn.)

• Tineye (Reverse image search.)

• Wayback Machine

• Yahoo

• Yandex

The Internet Archive and Wayback Machine are powerful tools. However, they can be a little daunting at first. I am going to show you how to use these websites later. For now if you are unfamiliar, play around with them. Watch a YouTube video or two about how they can be used. I cannot understate how important they are as part of my own arsenal.

Court and Public Records

This is a little bit of a tricky subject. Some states and counties offer free court records. Some don't. Some state websites include all of their county records. Some don't. Some you will just see basic information on. Others you will get every court document that was involved with a case. Do not expect the same results across the board.

You could pay for a service. But I am reluctant to do that unless you are already in a profession where you already have an account.

Here are some of the websites that I know of where you can search for court and public records. This is by no means an exhaustive list as I keep adding to it. As far as I know, these still remain free.

• Alaska Court View

• America First Legal (Lawsuits being filed by Trump Team.)

• Arizona Judicial Branch

• California Secretary of State (Court documents cost money. But other information is free.)

• Connecticut Courts

• Delaware Courts

• Indiana - Mycase

• Maryland Courts

• Michigan Courts

• Missouri Courts

• New York Unified Court System

• Public Record Retrieval Network (Aggregates many court records and public records.)

• United States Tax Court

• Virginia Courts

• Wisconsin Courts

FOIA Searches and Reading Rooms

Tee-hee! That's all I got to say here. Freedom Of Information Act Searches are a lot of fun in my humble opinion.

• CIA Reading Room

• CIA Reading Room Historical Collections

• CIA World Factbook

• Department of Energy Reading Room

• Department of Justice

• Department of Justice Archives

• FBI Reading Room

• FBI Press Releases

• FOIA.gov

• GovernmentAttic

• National Archives And Records Administration Reading Room

• NSA Reading Room

• Smithsonian Institution Archives Reading Room

• State Department Reading Room

• System for Award Management (Who got what government contract award.)

Political Contributions

It really is all about the money.

• Federal Election Commission

• Follow The Money

• New York City Campaign Finance Board

• New York State Campaign Financial Disclosure

• Open Secrets

Financial Regulatory Searches

Some of these are awesome if you want to see what a company or person got in trouble and for what.So much of what we do has to be about following the money. This won't necessarily give you that money trail. But it will provide information if there was an issue somewhere along the way.

• Investment Advisor Search

• FINRA Broker Check

• FINRA Arbitration & Mediation

• North American Securities Administrators Association

• National Futures Association

• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

Company, 501C3 and LLC Searches

• Bizapedia

• California Registry of Charitable Trusts

• Charity Navigator

• Charities NYS (New York charitable organizations.)

• IRS Charities and Non-Profits Search

• OpenCorporates

• ProPublica (Tax returns for tax-exempt organizations.)

Political and Government Tools

• Ballotpedia (Get information on elected officials.)

• Barack Obama's Travel Schedule

• Bill Clinton's Travel Schedule

• Clinton's Foundations (LLCs, LTDs, etc.)

• Congressional Bills, Lists, and Legislation

• George W. Bush Travel Schedule

• Government Document Archive

• GovTrack (Track bills.)

• Hillary Clinton's Travel Schedule

• Just The Real News (Aggregate for government documents, releases, etc.)

• Open States (Track legislation and bills by state.)

• Open The Books (Track government spending.)

• Political TV Ad Archive

• Representative Search (Find your congressman.)

• Senator Search (Find your senator.)

Other Tools

• Analyze ID (Website owner reverse lookup.)

• CBDC Tracker (Interactive map for research, development, pilot programs, etc.)

• Corey's Digs For Diggers (More resources for researching.)

• International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (Data leaks from the Pandora, Panama, and Paradise Papers among others. Terabytes of data on money laundering operations.)

• LilSis (Who is who... or who knows who... from business to government.)

• MapChart (Make maps!)

• ReliefWeb (Track NGO's and humanitarian aide.)

• William "Bill" Cooper's Hour of the Time Broadcast (Complete collection)

Final Note

I have given you a few of my own tools here. Adapt it, add to it, and subtract from it to meet your own needs. There isn't a hard set way to do things with the exception of verifying and citing sources. Some last minute pointers and advice.

• Find your own topics and style. Stick with what you know and are passionate about or have an interest in. If things keep pointing you in that one direction, maybe you should follow that path.

• Work on multiple projects at once in case you get stuck on one. Always be researching something.

• Don't be afraid of dead ends. You never know where they can lead.

• As Brain Cates said to me, "Never be in a rush to put the information out first. Take accuracy over speed. It is better to be right than fast." This advice has served me well.

• As PunishDem1776 says, "Don't be afraid to tell the truth. People may hate you for it. But you will also earn respect."

• Be ethical. Be moral. Digging can be used to ruin good people's reputations and/or dox them. It can also be used to expose some very bad people. Make good decisions and have a good set or morals that you live by as you proceed down this path.

• Use a VPN!

I am hoping to do a series of these to help you find your way in doing digs, dives, and crawling down those rabbit holes. I just kind of threw this one together to help everyone get started. Hopefully you find this useful and can start asking questions about how to research things on your own. As more people become involved in this, we might be able to get a pretty good how-to guide put together for anyone interested in learning.

I am probably going to remember at least a dozen more tools that can be added to your arsenal later. Or maybe you have a few suggestions of your own. Except additions to the list as we continue down this journey.