Area 51. The Warren Commission. Watergate. Bush v. Gore. Ben Affleck's Academy Award. All lead to only one conclusion: The lawsuits against S&P are a vast government conspiracy designed to take down the occasionally inaccurate—but not in a legally-actionable way, it assures—ratings agency by covering up something that does not need to be covered up.

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said the Justice Department failed to tell a federal judge the "true" reason the U.S. government is supporting 17 state attorneys general in their lawsuits against the rating firm.

In an eight-page filing Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Connecticut, the McGraw-Hill Cos. unit complained that Justice Department officials failed to tell the same judge in a filing last week that they have "actively collaborated with" the 17 states and are doing so "to this day…."

"The Department of Justice, as it should have advised this court, is no stranger to these proceedings, weighing in on some abstract issue of law," S&P said in the filing. "It is a publicly declared ally of and collaborator with the State of Connecticut in every respect with regard to this case and it owed it to the court to say so."

S&P Fires New Salvo in Battle With States [WSJ]