On the third day after "Akatsuki" entered Konoha's files, related intelligence suddenly began pouring in.
A merchant from the Land of Rain said he had seen a Red Cloud Cloak five years earlier.
A wandering ninja from the Land of Grass said Akatsuki was merely a group of Black Market merchants reselling weapons.
A Genin who had escaped Amegakure insisted that Hanzo of the Salamander had wiped out Akatsuki long ago.
Someone else claimed that, for enough money, Akatsuki would wage war on behalf of any country.
Seventeen oral accounts, and no two were exactly alike.
An Anbu Recorder spent two straight days sorting them out, only to write a short verdict in the file.
Unverifiable.
Danzo believed they should discard the contradictory accounts.
"Only consistent testimony has any value."
Itachi argued the opposite.
"Contradictions may have value too."
If everyone was making things up, the accounts would be a jumble.
If someone was deliberately spreading different stories, the accounts would be just as much of a jumble.
The difference lay not in which rumor sounded more plausible, but in whether they connected to verifiable physical evidence and records of activity.
The medicine chest at Gray Bell Relay Station really existed.
The Red Clouds clothing had only Iwahashi's testimony to support it.
The carved word "Akatsuki" could be verified, but it could not prove who had carved it.
Only a handful of exiles, including Nagasawa, remembered the history of the old organization in the Land of Rain.
These pieces of evidence could no longer be lumped together on the same level.
Shikaku quickly established four tiers of records.
Physical evidence, traces left at the scene, and records of activity that could be repeatedly verified were classified as tier one.
Matching details independently provided by two or more witnesses who had