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"I'm involved in a dangerous game,

Every other day I change my name,

The face is different but the body's the same,

Boo, boo baby, I'm a spy!"

...

"Now as a lad I'm not so bad,

In fact, I'm a damn good lover,

But look my sweet, let's be discreet,

And do this under cover.

Boo, boo baby, I'm a spy!"

...

"I'm so cocky I could swagger,

The things I know would make you stagger,

I'm ten percent cloak and ninety percent dagger,

Boo, boo, baby, I'm a spy!"

 

 

 

 

Soviet Union

 

The GRU ("Chief Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff") sends agents to collect strategic intelligence abroad, especially industrial, scientific and technical information. "Special Directorate 8" deals with matters of the occult. Yan Berzin is head of the GRU, and is known as a dedicated Communist, energetic leader, skilled spymaster, and a ruthless opponent. He has been known to leave the Soviet Union to personally execute members of the GRU suspected of treachery or incompetence. GRU staff look down on OGPU members as "police spies".

 

The OGPU ("Unified State Political Administration") is still known informally as the Cheka, and is responsible for counter-intelligence and the detection of counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs. The "Foreign Department" (INO) of the OGPU arranges for the discrediting and removal of threats to the revolution who happen to be living abroad (most famously by organizing "The Trust", which appeared to be a monarchist, anti-Bolshevik group). The gulag system, whose head is Genrikh Yagoda, is also administered by the OGPU; around two million persons are imprisoned or exiled within these terrible prisons and labor camps. Head of the OGPU is V. R. Menzhinsky; their headquarters is at 11 Dzerzhinsky Street, Moscow. Ivan the Terrible's secret archive below the Moscow Kremlin is controlled by the OGPU, under Stalin's close supervision.

 

 

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Japan

 

The Black Dragon Society ('Kokuryukai'): a secret patriotic society formed in 1901, grew out of the earlier Black Ocean Society. The existence and size of this group has only recently come to light, despite cabinet ministers, diplomats and high-ranking military officers being members. Much or most of the foreign intelligence received by the Japanese government comes from this group, or from military officers working with this group. The society has developed ties to Sun Yat Sen and to the Nazis -- Communists and the Soviet Russians are apparently considered their main opponent.

The Western press has mentioned the Black Dragon Society as being either a force behind the throne, or a criminal organization resembling a tong; the leader has been called the "Darkside Emperor" in the press. A major training academy for the Black Dragon Society is located in Shanghai. The Black Dragon Society operates many bordellos in Asia, and often uses sex as a tool -- a tool for seduction and subornation, blackmail, pillow talk, and opportunities for assassination. As many as one in ten coolies in some areas may be reporting information to the Black Dragon; and many police officers in Nationalist-controlled areas of China are agents of the Black Hand. The Black Hand has established many high-quality brothels in Tijuana, Mexico with the goal of gaining intelligence about American naval and aviation activities in Southern California. They apparently also have a strong presence in the Panama Canal Zone, the territory of Alaska, and in the Pacific Northwest. The Japanese embassies in Berlin, Madrid and Lisbon are the centers of major spy rings in Europe.

 

The Kempai Tai and the Thought Section of the Criminal Affairs Bureau are in charge of domestic counter-intelligence within Japan.

 

 

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Great Britain

 

The Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6: responsible for gathering foreign intelligence, under control of the Foreign Office. Underfunded, not very efficient, and often ignored. They recruit many young men from the University of Cambridge -- some of whom were already recruited by the OGPU! The Director-General of MI5 is Rear Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair.

 

The Security Service, or MI5: responsible for counter-intelligence work in Britain and throughout the Empire, under the control of the War Office. MI5 feels the main threat to Britain is Communism, which is odd considering the number of secretly-Communist young men it recruits from the University of Cambridge. The Director-General of MI5, Major-General Sir Vernon Kell, is never identified in the press.

 

 

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France

 

 

The Deuxieme Bureau -- controlled by the Army General Staff, the "2eme Bureau" supplies decryption, reconnaissance, radio interception, and other "technical" forms of intelligence to the French military. Thousands of DB agents perform spying and counterintelligence work in France and overseas; their oath requires them to keep DB secrets forever. The head of the Army DB is Lt. Colonel Maurice Gauche (a career intelligence officer, and an expert on Germany; age 44 in 1936); most of the DB's officers are conservative and Catholic. The French Navy and Air Force have their own Deuxieme Bureaux, but much smaller and less effective than the Army's.

 

The actual spies and overseas agents of the DB are mostly organized within the Service de Renseignements (SR); this agency's offices are at 2 bis avenue de Tourville in Paris. There are some changes to the organizationl structure of French military intelligence after 1936.

 

The Surveillance du Territoire performs counterintelligence functions for the Surete Generale, and in competition with the DB.

 

The Service de Controle et d'Assistance des Indigenes en France des Colonies, or CAI, monitors Communists and other subversives in France's colonial territories.

 

 

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Italy

 

The Organizzazione di Vigilanza Repressione dell'Antifascismo, or OVRA, forms the "secret police" of Fascist Italy, and thus performs most counter-intelligence functions. Not nearly as efficient or nasty as the Germans or Russians, still quite capable of torture and assassination.

 

The Servizio Informazioni Militari, or SIM, concentrates on "traditional" spying outside of Italy -- hanging out in nightclubs, blackmailing diplomats, bribery, forging documents (and reports to their superiors), anonymous denunciations to the local police, etc. They have neither interest nor ability in technical intelligence areas, but are reasonably good at safe-cracking, burglary, and skulking.

 

 

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United States

 

The Bureau of Investigation monitors anarchists, radicals, and Communists within the United States. In March of 1933, the German ambassador to the United States asked the State Department to investigate threats to the life of Adolf Hitler; the Bureau took this as an opportunity to begin investigating the Bund and other pro-German groups in the United States.

 

Army Intelligence (G-2) and the Office of Naval Intelligence collect information from diplomatic attaches and the press. Both organizations have some incipient talent at technical intelligence, such as decryption and radio intercepts. Naval attaches, however, have been told that "reputation and career do not profit" by engaging in intelligence work. The Army's G-2 staff number a total of about 70 persons in 1933, and is still declining.

 

 

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Germany

 

The Abwehr provides military and naval intelligence for the War Ministry. It operates agent networks, and also gathers technical intelligence (through aerial reconnaissance, for example). Chief of the Abwehr is Rear Admiral Conrad Patzig; their headquarters is at 76/78 Tirpitzufer, in Berlin.

 

The Foreign Office has a very capable decryption office; they have had excellent success in breaking military, diplomatic and commercial codes -- except those used by Poland and the Soviet Union. Note that the German military (and railways, postal service, etc.) have been using various models of the Enigma machines since 1925. They, and most of the world's cryptographers, consider the Enigma system to be unbreakable if properly used. However, the Polish military has been successfully decoding all of the Enigma messages it can obtain since at least 1931.

 

The Sicherheitsdienst ("SD"), a branch of the SS, and the infamous Gestapo look for spies and subversives within Germany; in addition, they are gathering secret files on the Nazi leadership. Head of the SD is Reinhard Heydrich, a clever, ruthless, and ambitious Nazi; SD (and SS) headquarters are consolidated at Prinz Albrecht Palais on the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin (from early 1934 onwards). The Gestapo (founded in April of 1932) is led by Rudolf Diels, from 8 Prinz Albrecht Strasse in Berlin.

 

The Ahnenerbe (Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte‚ Deutsches Ahnenerbe´ e.V. (Study Society for Primordial Intellectual Science, German Ancestral Heritage)), another branch of the SS, was formally established in Berlin in 1932 to promote the science of ancient intellectual history. Its areas of research seem to extend far beyond genealogy.

 

Evidence abounds that its foundation dates back to a meeting in Munich in 1928. In June of that year, the core leadership of the Vril Society met with Hermann Wirth (a Dutch historian obsessed with Atlantean mythology), Richard Walter Darré (now head of the Race and Settlement Head Office, RuSHA); Herman von Klempt (from Heidelberg University); and Heinrich Himmler. Immediately following that meeting, a large portion of the membership of the Vril Society stopped participating in its activities and became members of the National Socialist Party.