Commissariat for Inter-Services Intelligence

  

Commissariat for Inter-Services Intelligence

ISI headquarters
Agency overview
Formed	February 1925
Preceding agency	Foreign Directorate of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs
Type	State commissariat of continental-republican jurisdiction
Jurisdiction	Central Committee of the Continentalist Party
Headquarters	76 Callahan Square, Cedar Lake, Indiana, American CR
Employees	Classified
Agency executives	Imel Buchanan, Commissar TBD, Deputy Commissar TBD, Party Chief Secretary
Child agency	See Organization

The Commissariat for Inter-Services Intelligence (abbreviated as ISI) is the foreign and military intelligence agency of the United Commonwealth. Created in 1925 as the Foreign Directorate of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, it was turned into a separate executive-level agency as the ISI by the order of Seamus Callahan. The organization is led by the People's Commissar for Inter-Services Intelligence, who answers directly to the Central Committee of the Continentalist Party and the paramount leader of the United Commonwealth, and is responsible for foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence, and to a lesser extent paramilitary black operations. Although foreign intelligence is the primary responsibility of the ISI, it has a limited domestic function through its Eleventh Main Directorate. The agency exists on the federal level, meaning that it is also the intelligence service of each of the Commonwealth's continental republics, and is headquartered in Cedar Lake, Indiana, located just outside of the Chicago metropolitan area. It is sometimes referred to as "Cedar Lake" after the locations of its headquarters.

By law, the ISI is managed as a military service, with its uniformed members using military-style ranks and discipline, similarly to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. It is divided into a number of directorate, committees, and departments with different specializations and functions. The two largest branches within the ISI in terms of personnel and resources are the Third Main Directorate (the Main Directorate of Military Intelligence, MDMI), followed by the First Main Directorate (the Foreign Intelligence Directorate). Among other subdivisions, the agency also has several militarized special forces units under its command, most notably the secretive "Zeta" and "Omicron" ISI commando units.

The agency gained global recognition during the Cold War. By 1930 the United Commonwealth had by some estimates the world's largest network of spies, and in 1975 Time magazine reported that the ISI is the world's most effective information-gathering organization. The large number of communist and Landonist sympathizers in virtually every country around the world provided the Continentalist Party with many sources of intelligence. During the Cold War the ISI was seen as the world's leading intelligence agency managing a massive network around the globe, running espionage and black operations in Sierra, other NATO Western countries, other Eastern Bloc countries, and various non-aligned or third countries. Since the Revolutions of 2000 and the end of the Cold War, and the start of the War on Terror, Sierra's Royal Intelligence Agency, a rival of the ISI, was greatly expanded in size and is now regarded as having surpassed the ISI as the world's premier intelligence agency. The ISI, along with the RIA, the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Chinese National Security Bureau (formerly the Ministry of State Security in the People's Republic of China) is regarded as one of the "big four" of the world's leading intelligence agencies.

History

Philippe Courbet, the first chief of the Foreign Directorate, the ISI's predecessor agency.

The ISI originated as the Foreign Directorate of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, which was established in December 1918 by Dorian Conesus, the first People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, to manage the network of spies that he had developed beyond the borders of the United Commonwealth. Philippe Courbet, a Tourneser revolutionary who was serving as one of the deputies of Conesus during the Continental Revolutionary War, was appointed as the first Chief of the Foreign Directorate. Initially the bulk of the organization's work revolved around gathering information from inside the Federalist military, but by mid-1919 their work expanded to include infiltrating the Allied intervention force that landed at several cities along the East Coast and maintaining contact with Landonist parties and movements in other countries – notably Tournesol, Superior, Canada, the Northeast Union, Acadiana, and Florida. Courbet, being from Tournesol, had been an associate of Émeric Vigouroux, the country's revolutionary leader, and expanded the network of Landonist spies in the French-speaking parts of North America (especially Canada) during the early 1920s. This network would be credited with laying the groundwork for the rapid success of the Landonist takeover of Quebec and the Maritimes during the Crimson Spring of the 1930s.

The Foreign Directorate had no role during the political scheming that characterized the early history of the United Commonwealth, unlike the rest of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, and by the mid-1920s Seamus Callahan decided to reduce the role of the commissariat, while also placing more importance on foreign intelligence gathering as the country began seeing itself as surrounded by hostile capitalist states. In February 1925, the Foreign Directorate was separated and became an executive-level agency itself as the People's Commissariat for Foreign Intelligence, with Philippe Courbet was the first Commissar.

Organization

The following structure is based on information on the agency's website and information from other sources:

• First Main Directorate – Foreign Intelligence
• Second Main Directorate – Counter-Intelligence
• Third Main Directorate – Military Intelligence (also called Main Directorate of Military Intelligence (MDMI))
• Fourth Main Directorate – Economic Intelligence
• Fifth Main Directorate – Cryptography and Electronic Warfare
• Sixth Main Directorate – Analytics
• Seventh Main Directorate – Psychological Operations (also called Psyops)
• Eighth Main Directorate – Technology Research and Development
• Ninth Main Directorate – Administrative, Financial, and Personnel
• Tenth Main Directorate – Special Operations Forces
  • Omicron Unit ("Department O" or MDMI Special Forces)
  • Zeta Unit ("Department Z" or ISI Special Forces)
• Eleventh Main Directorate – Internal Security (also called Internal Discipline Office)
• ISI Archives
• Institute of the ISI

The Third Directorate, or the MDMI, military intelligence, is the single largest department of the ISI and is to a large degree autonomous with its own structure, followed by the First Directorate, foreign intelligence. The MDMI has been described as "an agency within an agency" and has jurisdiction over the Continental Armed Forces, both in gathering intelligence about foreign militaries and on surveillance within the U.C. military. The rest of the ISI's directorates are under the direct authority of the Commissar of Inter-Services Intelligence and have less autonomy.

See also

• Royal Intelligence Agency
• Central Intelligence Agency
• People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs