For almost two years, Goldman Sachs has been spinning what many believed was a far-fetched tale.

Goldman has maintained that it had entirely hedged its exposure to the American International Group before A.I.G. collapsed in September 2008. Goldman’s chief financial officer, David Viniar, has repeated over and over again: “We had no direct exposure.”

Wall Street laughed. Congress laughed. The media laughed. Impossible!

Just last week, Elizabeth Warren, the chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, reiterated her skepticism during a Senate hearing. “We cannot evaluate the credibility of their claim that they had nothing at stake one way or the other in the A.I.G. bailout,” she said.

A popular narrative has been constructed that government officials, led by Henry M. Paulson Jr., then Treasury secretary and the former chief executive of Goldman, and Timothy F. Geithner, then the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, saved A.I.G. to save banks that were exposed to the insurance giant  and in particular Goldman.

So what was Goldman’s exposure? According to some newly released documents, perhaps far less than its detractors maintain.