About & Methodology
Dialog Tracker is an independent research project. It maps the leaked membership directory of Dialog — the off-the-record network associated with Peter Thiel — and the publicly documented connections, funding, and affiliations of the people in it.
Where the data comes from
The member directory is drawn from the public Dialog leak. Connections are compiled from public records and named reporting — U.S. Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, openly-licensed reference sources, and reporting by established news outlets — with machine-assisted research used to surface leads.
Every connection on the board cites a source you can open. Verified political-contribution dollar figures are taken directly from the FEC's itemized records. Portraits and organization logos appear only where they are openly licensed (for example, public-domain or Creative Commons).
How to read the board
Each thread between two cards is labeled by its sourcing status. A pending link is a sourced lead — it is documented, but has not yet been independently confirmed by our team. A verified link is one where a person has opened the cited record and confirmed it. Card sizes and clusters reflect the number of connections, not importance, guilt, or influence.
The corroboration bar
Financial figures are taken straight from FEC itemized records and shown on their own. For non-financial associations (a meeting, a board seat, a named appearance in a document), our two-independent-source bar works in two tiers, and we tell you which tier you're looking at:
- Interactive board & profiles show every verified link — one a person on our team has confirmed against the cited record. A verified link that rests on a single source is shown but visibly labeled "single source — not independently corroborated," so you never mistake it for a corroborated finding. FEC-sourced financial records are authoritative on their own.
- Redistribution surfaces — the machine-readable export, the public API, and authored briefs — enforce the full bar: an association is included only when two independent sources corroborate it (or it is an FEC record). Nothing single-sourced is exported or syndicated.
In short: we don't hide a documented single-source lead from the board, but we never let it travel as a corroborated fact.
How we count money
We keep two kinds of political money strictly separate. Direct contributions are itemized gifts recorded in FEC filings — money given to a campaign or committee. Outside / super-PAC spending is money an independent group spent to support or oppose a candidate (independent expenditures); it is not money the candidate received, and we never add it into a person's own funding total. Where we show a network or profile total, "given directly" means FEC contributions only; outside spending is reported under its own, clearly-labeled figure.
How “membership” is defined
The member roster is drawn from the publicly leaked Dialog directory. Appearing on that roster does not establish active participation, attendance, or endorsement of the group — some names are listed or named in documents rather than confirmed participants. We keep the roster as published and label each person's tie by what the record actually says. Read "member" as "appears in the leaked Dialog directory," nothing more.
Dialog Tracker presents documented associations and public records for research and journalistic purposes. An association between two people or organizations is not an allegation of wrongdoing, illegality, or a personal relationship beyond what the cited source states. The data may contain errors, same-name mismatches, or out-of-date information. Nothing here is an adjudicated fact or a claim that any person has committed a crime. Verify against primary sources before relying on or republishing anything.
Corrections & removal
If you are featured and believe something is inaccurate, tell us — point us to the specific card or link and a source, and we will correct or remove it promptly.
- X: @dialogtracker
- Email: dialogtracker1@gmail.com
Data & API
Every profile's sourced records are available as machine-readable data — built for journalists and researchers who want to verify or build on them. The export enforces the full corroboration bar: only records that are FEC-sourced or backed by two independent sources are included, so a single-source lead visible on the interactive board is notpresent in the exported data.
- JSON:
/api/export/<slug>.json - CSV:
/api/export/<slug>.csv - Share card (PNG):
/api/card/<slug>.png
Working on a data collaboration? Reach out and we'll help you wire it up.