If I ran a super secret spy agency

Cafe Society
1

In the spirit of the Evil Overlord checklists and inspired by the likes of James Bond, Jason Bourne, 24, Alias and Le Femme Nikita, I have put together a little guide book for running a super secret spy agency (good or evil).

  1. Hire at least one really dedicated almost psychotic super-agent. Give him whatever tools he asks for. Listen to his every suggestion no matter how ridiculous or how much it violates protocol. At most, his punishment should never be greater than a few days suspension with pay.

  2. Agents should strive to blend in, not stand out. I should never hear “attention all units, suspects are a six foot Victorias Secret model and an albino with a functioning gatling gun for an arm armed with Belgian machineguns and dressed in black Armani driving an Aston Martin south on Washington at 110mph” on the police scanner.

  3. Develop a retirement plan better than having obsolete agents permenantly “retired” or giving them amnesia.

  4. Nepotism and intra-company dating will not be tolerated. It just causes problems and distracts from the whole national security/world domination thing.

  5. The time to investigate and gather evidence is the six months BEFORE the most intense 24 hours ever.

  6. As a rule, recruitment will consist of looking at people with backgrounds in foreign cultures and languages, law enforcement, military, computers and data analysis. An example of an ideal candidate would be an MIT student who speak five languages, served 3 years in the Marines and is a kickboxing champion, not a psychotic drug addict criminal whos death we faked.

  7. Background check, background check, background check. “Oh yeah…everyone knows David “Agent X1” Yin’s family was betrayed and murdered in Vietnam '68 by a US Special Forces officer who is now Section Chief” is not an acceptible answer once it’s discovered Agent X1 only became an agent so he could steal a nuclear bomb because he still harbors a little resentment.

  8. There should never be some master registry of every agents secret identity that can be stolen and sold on the black market.

  9. Gadgets and weapons should never be so unique that they can only have come from one place.

  10. No tatoos signifying affiliation with the organization. Equipment will not be labeled with the agency crest or otherwised marked in such a way that someone can just be like “oh yeah…this SIA marking on all the shell casings (made with the distinctive metal mined from their hidden mountain hideout) means “Secret Intelligence Agency”…I’d start looking there first”.

2
  1. Cones of Silence will be placed in every office - nevermind their inability to function properly.
  2. Shoe phones will vibrate, not ring.
  3. A draft of up-and-coming free agent agents sounds like a very good idea, and will be formalized.
  4. We don’t need more than 4 doors between the entrance and the super secret telephone booth with concealed slide into the base.
3

No one, I repeat, NO ONE would ever know about it.

I would soon go out of business, but no one would know that, either.

4

I would give multiple different agents the exact same code name, with no way to tell them apart on paper work. Only I would know which is which, and their would be no way to track them through correspondence. Sure, so the knowledge would die when and if I am assassinated, and logistic would go to hell, but who cares? I’m dead, it wouldn’t bother me. What’s that you, say? It’s been done? Damn.

I will give top secret assignment to charismatic agents with distinguishing motifs, such as a smart car, claims to have been killed, etc., but they are simply decoys to distract from my real agents, and guinea-pigs for feild testing new weapons and technologies.

5

Corollary: Agents, when on covert assignments, should not tell people their real names. It’s amazing how often that obvious survival principle gets overlooked in spy school. “My name is Bond . . . James Bond.” Why don’t you just get a bullseye tattooed on your forehead, dumbass?

6

Ooooh, can I be the menacing, hard Frau Farbissina/Rosa Klebb character who doesn’t really have a job except to stand there and look menacing and hard and occasionally say something mean in an Eastern European accent?

7

In my organization, you could only do so after convincing me that there is not least possibility of your falling in love with enemy agents, or if you are a lesbian. That will… Oh damn, that wouldn’t stop them either.

8

Only if you wear a skintight black patent leather bodysuit and glasses!

Going along with what Scott_plaid said, I would never send an agent deep undercover into our greatest enemy’s organization if I was the only one who knew his true identity. With my luck, I’d get “made,” shot, and end up in a coma, leaving our agent “out in the cold” with nobody to turn to on either side. Checks and balances, people!

I would also set up the organizational framework so we had more than one insanely competent field agent, a bunch of nameless “redshirts” who can’t hit the broad side of a barn door, and snippy, self-interested support staff with complex interpersonal dramas back at headquarters.

9

I would do intensive security checks on the backgrounds of EVERYONE allowed on the premises.

I would not give top security clearances to people I have not known for a long time, and who have not proven their loyalty to me/the agency. (None of this “I’m just a temp for the day, will you let me into all your computer systems?” crap).

My building will have a single button that will allow me to COMPLETELY lock-down the premises in a matter of seconds, so that if I ever do find a mole in the agency, they will not be able to get away.

10

So, I can not just keep the location of secret agents to myself, huh? This, despite how discs, rings, and makes giving locations and code names of secret agents are know to me and me alone. Ok then, but my second in command or anyone else will be smart. Smart enough that if he thinks of trying to betray me, and start commanding the agents to do the bidding of his real master, my arch-foe, he will see the sub clause in the organizational chart that states upon my death, if under even slightly suspicious circumstances, control will revert to the government funding department, not someone from within the organization, until it has be determined I died of natural causes. Not wanting that, he will not kill me.

Part two. If two of my agents (not best agents, they are all good, having gone through the exact same training) should genuinely fall in love, I will remind them not to neck in the broom closet, and not hassle them until they defect.

Also, if at all possible, since our enemies are so foolish as too put their plans on the internet, we will take full advantage of them. What I am about to post may be readable to civilians, but in a strategy, and not secret, thus, I do not mind posting it.

http://nift.firedrake.org/EEmpress.htm
In light of the above, I will not send in just one man to take down a enemy fortress. It often works, but it only needs to fail once for the world to be under the influence of (CENSORED) Thus, I will send teams in to investigate every nook and cranny. If that is not possible, I will send in my psychotic super spy (PSS, and a team of agents. PSS will infiltrate the base, while the team waits. PSS then infiltrates the base, discusses himself, then when it is safe, (i.e. he has killed 80% of the guards, as he is wont to do.) let’s the team into the building. They fan out, while he goes after the main objective.

11

  1. Agents will be informed not to conduct business out of the same Czech nightclub every night.

  2. All locks and passwords will be changed every 30 days or whenever an agent is killed or leaves the agency.

  3. The Agency will no longer cover expenses for Armani and Hugo Boss or gambling losses in Monte Carlo. When and if agents require a vehicle for black tie functions they may use the car service.

  4. Agents ARE financially responsible for the gadgets they break.

  5. If I am required to torture my own agents, I will have someone from a different division do it. Otherwise it might be uncomfortible later on.

12

Hidden message below.
If an agent is asked to shoot a fellow agent to prove that he really has turned to the other side, when infact he haven’t, they are to remember, the gun is never loaded. If it was, the enemy would be wiping out a valuable source of information.
Just between us spy handlers, if the gun is loaded, then the agent who killed the other agent is a write off anway.

Agents are to be informed of this fact, are required to know alternate means of contacting the agency in the event that they have wrongly been presumed dead. Otherwise, they might really become dead, due to the security systems, should they attempt to just waltz into the office Monday morning, after they have been recovering from near fatal wounds at a Tibetan monastery for the last year, with out telling anyone…

[QUOTE=The Top 100 Things I’d Do
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord]
When I’ve captured my adversary and he says, “Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?” I’ll say, “No.” and shoot him. No, on second thought I’ll shoot him then say “No.”

[/QUOTE]

Do not ask for the secret plan. Instead, try to figure it out from the design of the device you are strapped to, and stall for time. We never send agents out alone.

They want to subjugate or destroy the world. Don’t fight like a gentleman, and don’t expect them to. If they are so foolish as to allow you to regain your footing, should you be knocked of your feet, do not exclaims, “Bonus!”, or call them a fool until after they are dead.

13

I would make sure my agency understood that we’re spies, not soldiers or cops – meaning that we gather intelligence, but actually trying to shut down a supervillain’s operation is way outside our mission statement. And so are covert ops, assassinating foreign leaders, subverting foreign governments, meddling in foreign elections, collaborating with criminal organizations, training/equipping/funding rebel guerilla armies to fight governments we oppose, and helping secret police agencies capture and interrogate rebels against governments we support. (Hear me, Mr. Goss? Hear me, Mr. Negroponte?)

14

When I have to ship the Most Valuable Object in the Free World, I will not send it
on a single truck along isolated perfect for ambush back roads. I will have sufficient escort. such as the entire 82nd Airborne so no one even thinks of stealing the MVO.

15

Er, one little nitpick…“Psychotic” means “mentally ill, to the point of losing contact with reality and being unable to function” while “psychotpathic” would mean “a person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.” So, unless we want a 00 Agent who keeps desperately trying to claw “the spiders” out of his skin, we should probably go with the one who can calmly sip a martini while reaming out someone’s eyes with a corkscrew to find out where the warheads are.

Anyway…

-The gadgets serve the agents; the agents don’t serve the gadgets.

-If my agency is in a comic-book universe, we will construct and maintain a metahuman prison, if ordered to. But, tragically, 24 hours after it goes online, there will be an “attempted mass escape” during which the guards will be forced to use lethal force in self-defense, claiming the lives of all the prisoners who didn’t have useful information, or potential value for a prisoner swap.

-Official policy will be to not allow agents to go on personal revenge mission. Since they’re going to do it anyway, this policy will be mostly to allow “plausible deniability.”

-I will have a “master roster of deep cover agents” file, under tight security. It will be a decoy, containing the names of suspected enemy informers, double-agents, and other subversives.

16
  1. It is very important to give your spies lessons in lying well.

“Who are you and why are you walking around our terrorist nuclear warhead?”

a) “Buuuuh. The devil told me to do it?”
b) “Woah, shit! It’s not dangerous is it? …like radiation poisoning or whatever?”
c) “I thought it was a snow cone maker.”

The correct answer is B. Let him come up with his own theory for why you are there, unless he specifically asks, and then it is just “Dunno. Just a bad sense of direction really.” frowning

  1. Wear gloves and a hair net (or something that can work similarly) when stealing stuff from someones office.
17

Yeah, The movie Casino Royale did it. All the Agents became “James Bond 007” to confuse the enemy.

18

Well, yes, but when I said this, I was actually thinking about a theory I heard that the entire James Bond series is not about a single man who goes by that name, but a series of men.

When sneaking around a foreign country, do not pretend to be an investment banker. Instead, pretend to have an ordinary day job which would not require continually dressing in a suit. Examples of past agents:
Moe Berg: Baseball player. (cited by Mullinator)
Julia Child: file clerk, later, chief. (cited by Annie-Xmas)
Christopher Lee pilot, later, actor (cited by Bippy the Beardless)

When asked if you are a god, say yes.

No matter how tempmting it maybe for an agent to waid into the middle of battle upon the event of opening a door to find a room full of henchmen, it is always better to toss a grenade into the room instead.

If you absolutely have to sneak into an office, copy the files onto a thumb drive. The secret plans *never * fit into a floppy disc.

He may have been only using his left hand to fight you. That does not mean he is left handed.

19

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!!! What do you think you’re doing? Are you trying to get smart?

:wink:

20

I will arrange for the official, publicly-known Intelligence Agencies of the country to call attention to themselves from the segment of the population that seriously believe that “Intelligence Agencies” are supposed to be a simple information-gathering outfits, rather that Black-Ops organizations who just happen to be given a palatable description and innocuous name to asuage the tender sensibilities of the guys in the Budget Committee. Meanwhile, my SUPER-Secret espionage/counter-terror/covert-ops agency, whose mission statement will be “To use any means fair or foul to ensure our country’s hegemony, do what we can for the security of trusted allies if we have the time, and eliminate potential threats that cannot be controlled in conventional ways”, will have whatever part of the budget cannot be made completely “Black”(*) be tucked away somewhere in the depths of the Fisheries & Wildlife Service budget under “miscellaneous purchases, Culebra Island Bird Sanctuary pollution-control program”.

(*First mission for my team of Super-Agents will be making sure there’s there’s videotape and websurfing logs that give the chairmen and ranking members of the appropriate budget committees, and the editors of major newspapers and networks, the proper motivation to not ask too many questions. Hell yeah I’m putting a portrait of that old drag queen J. Edgar in my office…)