A conspiracy theory usually attributes the ultimate cause of an event or chain of events (usually political, social, pop cultural or historical events), or the concealment of such causes from public knowledge, to a secret, and often deceptive plot by a covert alliance of powerful or influential people or organizations. Many conspiracy theories imply that major events in history have been dominated by conspirators who manipulate political happenings from behind the scenes. From these six descriptions we can deduce the following: All of the six descriptions include either the word "secret" or "covert" in relation to either "an organisation", "powerful people", "influential people", "powerful conspirators" or simply "a group". "Secret" and "covert" can be found as substitutes for each other in a quick thesaurus search because their meanings are almost identical, so that's one area in which the six dictionary definitions match each other. The exact definition of who can be the subject of a "conspiracy theory" is open to interpretation.