Intelligence Handbook

This article is written from an Out-Of-Character standpoint and is intended to help players perform the role properly.

Part 1: The Purpose of the Intelligence Officers

So you see the Intelligence Officer position on a ship's roster, and immediately get an image in your head of a cross between James Bond and Section 31. Unfortunately, this isn't really what it's like to wear the grays of the Intelligence department. So what does it mean?

Intelligence is the most important thing in the world to the CO of a ship. On any mission, from delivering medical supplies to a plagued planet to fighting a guerrilla war with Klingon warbirds in a nebula, the most important thing to a commander knows the most up-to-date information on a situation as possible. As an Intel Officer, your primary purpose on the ship is to control information, and get the most accurate possible information to the people who make decisions about the ship.

Now, let's talk for a moment about the differences between field agents, administrative agents, and black operations. No doubt, the first thing that sprang to mind when thinking of the Intelligence agent was the idea of a field agent, stealthily sneaking behind enemy lines to sabotage the enemy and disable their ability to fight, or something like that. If this is what you're hoping for, you might be better off with a Marine. While Intelligence agents do field work like this, it's pretty rare. On the field, an Intelligence agent relies on stealth and cover. The primary job of a field agent is to gather information and transmit it to Starfleet so that when Starfleet does act, they know exactly who and what they need to act against. If your field agent does their job right, the enemy will never even know they were an agent. Ideally, if your intel agent was successful enough, the cover will remain in tact and that agent can use that same cover to infiltrate further if needed.

On a starship, your Intelligence Officers will probably never do field work. That isn't what they need you on a ship for. What they do need is information on everything. When the ship is ordered to a world, it falls on the Intelligence Officer to know everything that will be important about that world. When an alien ship is encountered, the IO will be the first one asked about what it might be doing and what is known about the commander. When a new lifeform is encountered, the IO will be involved in finding out whatever should be known by Starfleet about that race. Are they just now getting into space exploration, or have they already brutally conquered a dozen less advanced races?

A big part of the job of the Intelligence Officer will be dealing with misinformation. Both identifying it and spreading it. Whenever you're dealing with hostile forces in any form, you'll be sorting though a lot of information. A lot of it will be bad information purposefully spread by your enemies to throw you off. A large part of the work of the IO will be sorting the 'good' Intel from the 'bad'.

The other side of that coin is purposefully leaking bad information in a way that's convincing. A single piece of bad Intel acted on by the other side can shift the advantage to your side at a vital moment. Even leaking good information can be a part of the job of the Intelligence Officer. Spreading information is the name of the game. Sometimes Starfleet might want the Klingons to know about an upcoming operation or a new technology being researched, and as the IO, it falls to you to make sure everybody knows what they should.

Another important element of being an IO is counterespionage. That means a good dose of paranoia, investigating everyone's past, checking to see if there's someone that could be a threat to the crew, ship or the Federation itself. Spies exist everywhere and the IO job is to make sure there isn't any in his ship. That, of course, means that he will not be the favorite crewmember aboard, despite the importance of his work.

Lastly, we'll talk about Black Operations. Simply put, a Black Op is a mission which violates the law, and which Starfleet isn't legally allowed to run. However, for one reason or another, they decide they need it done anyway. Most people consider this to be the job of the Intelligence department because, let's face it, we're all a bunch of sneaky jerks who just WOULD do something like that, right? Officially, Starfleet does not run black ops. Unofficially, Starfleet really doesn't run black ops either. As fun as an idea of running the top secret black ops mission to infiltrate the Klingon Empire and get tactical data about the Empire's fleet is, that just isn't the way of the pristine Federation. Yes, Section 31 exists, but no, you aren't a part of it.

This is a very sticky area. The idea of the 'darker side of the Federation' is certainly intriguing, and if done well can add nicely to the depth of your sim, but it also leads to what's known as Super-Hero Syndrome, or the idea that your character is the most important thing in the sim. Beyond that, it's frankly a rather stark departure from the established Star Trek norm. Consider carefully these elements, and discuss them clearly with the CO of your sim before considering this type of thing. In general, if you're going to add any kind of black ops history or focus to a character, it's going to be something bad to be overcome. In general, but not always.

Part 2: Where does information come from?

In practical terms, the IO gets his information from three main sources: Starfleet Intelligence HQ reports, his own informants or getting the info himself.

First, Starfleet Intel HQ is a place where several reports from several IO come together. There's, of course, a good dose of secrecy involved and the clearance level an IO has. The higher the level, the more sensitive information he can access. Intel HQ doesn't know everything. Sometimes can even conflict with the IO own report. This means, HQ can't be trusted to be the only source of information. Which brings us the IO own informants. A good IO has connections everywhere, knowing all kind of people. Not everyone works in a high position inside a government. Sometimes, a report coming from a merchant could shed more light in particular situation than a double agent working inside a government. Simply put, anyone could help the IO get his information.

So how do you build up and maintain a good source of contacts? The key is to talk to people. This is the big trick to wearing Intel grays. Nobody wants to trust someone who they know is a spy, but to properly be a spy, you need to get people to trust you. That takes some people skills, and this is the secret to being an Intelligence Officer. In the same way that an engineer knows starship systems, you need to know people. An Intel agent needs to know how to get what they want from people without letting those people know exactly what it is they want. This is where the real fun of being in the Grays comes from.

The job of IO has a huge opportunity for social interaction with just about everybody around, from other ship members to NPCs to people serving on completely different sims. Being in Intel means talking to people. You never know who will have a critical piece of the puzzle, so talk to everyone and talk to them often.

But, if the IO can't trust anyone, he always can get the information by himself. How? There's always correlating several innocent reports and reading the between the lines. Seeing through one's separated actions, the IO can see the real agenda of someone, a plan or even a conspiracy. It's all about analyzing the data that normally wouldn't be important and find something that was hidden behind of all that. When all else fails, you can always get your hands dirty. The Starfleet Gray doesn't have its sneaky reputation for nothing. These are the 'big guns' of Intel and shouldn't be brought out unless every other thing has failed. Among the sneakier things an IO will be able to do is hacking computer files, eavesdropping on private conversations with listening devices, infiltrating groups by impersonating their members, and if nothing else, capturing and interrogating someone who knows what you want to know.

Remember, the Intel department employs specialists for special tasks. If you're the Chief Intelligence Officer, you're probably not going to infiltrate a facility yourself. You have a Field Officer for a reason. Use your assets to their best advantage.

Part 3: Starfleet Intelligence aboard the Ship

The Intelligence Officer in a Starship plays a discrete and yet important role to the missions. It is from him that most information regarding a mission comes. Most of the time, the Intel Officer gathers information from all sources we mentioned above and gives to the CO the information that is relevant to the completion of a mission.

There’s a great deal of trust involved. An Intel Officer trusts his CO enough to give him important information to help the CO make an informed decision, but there’s the information the IO can’t give the CO.

It’s the information that could harm the mission or the crew; could be the information that is better to kept from everyone to give them deniability. Evidently, the IO answers to the CO and his orders. Another job of the IO aboard a starship it is counter espionage. To prevent that information is stole from the Federation to a third party. The counter espionage work doesn’t make the IO a very likable person for the rest the crew, since he investigates their lives in order to assess their loyalty. As stated before, the job of Intelligence is collecting and releasing of information that is important to the ship and her crew. This can make interacting with other crew members a little tricky. It's important that the staff on the crew can trust you, not only to tell them what they need to know, but not to be careless with what they tell you. At its heart, Intel is all about people. What you know about people and what they're willing to share with you is the lifeblood of the position. At the same time, the secrets that people keep can and do endanger the ship.

Imagine a crew member with a fondness for Romulan ale occasionally buying bottles from a supplier in secret. Seems harmless enough, right? Except that since Romulan ale is illegal in the Federation, he's dealing with smugglers every time he does. So every time he does, he betrays the location of the ship to those that might use such information to stage an ambush.

This mix of intelligence and counter-intelligence means that the Intelligence department needs always be looking for any information which might prove important to the ship. This means talking to people. More than any other department, Intel officers should be interacting with every department. No Intelligence agent is an expert in the science, engineering, medical, tactical and diplomatic skills. However the ship has engineers, scientists, doctors, diplomats and tacticians on it. Consulting with senior officers about the actual meaning of information gathered is not only vital to the role of an intel officer on the ship, but it's also how most of your roleplaying posts will be made with other crew members. Getting to know everyone, even if it's just to stop in and chat for a while, is important to make those contacts so you can gather information, as well as get to know the crew so that if something is wrong, you can find out about it.

Respect for privacy versus the safety of a ship is a delicate balance which should be carefully considered as well. If you go snooping though the personal logs of a crew member, you'd better have an awfully good reason or you'll find yourself back in civilian detail real quick. However, Intelligence agents don't have the luxury of ignoring possible problems with their crew members which may affect job performance. Does that Bajoran have deep rooted issues with Cardassians? Does that human innately distrust Klingons? Is that guy always going to believe what he's told, even by a Romulan? Does that one have a secret addiction to some chemical substance? These things are important for you to know.

In general, you should limit any invasion of privacy to as little as you possibly can. Most potential problems can be identified by a keen ear just by talking to people. If Mary is in love with a Klingon diplomat, chances are there will be rumors about it floating around, and she'll betray something if you talk to her. Being direct will often lead people to get defense, so diplomacy becomes the key there.

Part 4: Classification and What It Means to You

Classification is very important to the Intelligence department. There are several reasons for information to be classified. Usually, the data is simply harmful to the Federation if released. This includes tactical information about ship deployments, technical specifications about how ships are built, information about the friends and family of high-ranking officials in the Federation, and topsecret research and development projects which Starfleet develops in secret to prevent her enemies from attempting to steal or disrupt the developing technology. Another reason to classify information is to protect others from the damage that it could do if publicly known. This includes weapons technology, location of potentially hazardous worlds (Such as Talos IV) or knowledge that is simply dangerous should it be in general use. (Such as Omega Particles) Other times, things are classified to protect certain people, such as the agents who collected the data. A significant amount of information about criminal groups such as the Orion Syndicate, and other governments such as the Romulans, for example, are classified largely to protect the identity of the covert agents who are still collecting the information for the Federation.

As an Intelligence officer, you are usually going to have level 3 security clearances. This is to allow you to research any activity which might relate to things important to you, such as the history of criminal activities or minor conflicts with other governments in your region. Any request for Intel must be processed and approved before being released, however, and in general, you'd better have a reason for wanting it. Classified information is classified for a reason, and someone who makes light reading out of classified documents will very quickly draw the eye of counter-intelligence.

In general, Intelligence agents will spend a good deal of time collecting information into reports and assigning a classification to them. Any intelligence discovered by the ship the agent serves on will be the responsibility of the ship's Intelligence department to compile into an Intel report and file with Starfleet's Central Intelligence. This job means that often, Intelligence agents will be writing reports that they do not have authorization to know about! In general, the policy when handling this situation is to simply deny knowledge when pressed about information by anyone without authorization to know it. This can sound a bit silly, when the person asking was there with you when it happened! However, carelessly talking about classified information is dangerous, both to the officer personally and to the ship as a whole. Classified information should always be kept need-to-know to anybody without level 5 clearances.

That being said, a good Intelligence officer should also know when to release information. If there's a problem that the science officer could help solve, it might be a good idea to bring him or her in, at least in a limited fashion. The balance of knowing when to hide information and when to share it can be tricky, but it can also be at the heart of what makes an Intel agent fun to play.

Part 5: Field Intelligence and Specialized Equipment

See Intelligence Equipment

So, we find enter in the one of most interesting areas of Intelligence. The Field work. As much it sounds like 007 kind of job, it is nothing of sort. It’s a lot more sneaky and stealthy. An IO always work in secrecy, under a false alias or completely invisible. So the CO has ordered you out on the field to gather some information, disable a key enemy device, or just cause some ruckus. Field intelligence is a whole different ballgame, and requires a different set of skills, approach, and mindset. Typically, field agents are a completely separate branch of Starfleet Intelligence, and are handled by specialized field agents, not by a ship's IO team. However, there might be a rare time when your ship might need specific information, and the only way to get it is by putting someone on the ground. The first thing to keep in mind is that there are two different types of field work. Embedded and Infiltration. Let’s start with Infiltration. When an IO infiltrates, he normally wants to be invisible to enemy eyes. Sometime is better to obtain top secret information from your enemy without he knows about. The obvious reason is because if he finds out about, he probably will want to kill. The second reason is that if you know what they know without they have a clue about, you can anticipate their moves, which wouldn’t happen if they find out you had obtained the information.

When on a field assignment, be careful, careful, CAREFUL that you don't fall into the SHS trap. SHS (Super Hero Syndrome) can easily creep into your posts on a field assignment because of how the odds can be stacked against you. You're not going to fight your way though six armed guards to get past a checkpoint. You're also not going to sneak right under the nose of six alert guards with them none the wiser. Your best defense against this is to have a carefully thought out plan. Reason how things are, and figure a logical way to get past, or simply avoid having to deal with those six armed guards at the checkpoint. Or don't, and get captured. Just because things turn against you doesn't mean you failed. Sometimes your best asset can be your enemy underestimating you.

Being resourceful is key element to an IO doing Field work. Sometimes it’s using things that around you that you may complete your mission. Sometimes is using someone to achieve an objective. Just remember, no IO is perfect and even with the best equipment around, things can go wrong. Ah, computer hacking. This term can bring up images from a heavy-set man eating Cheetos at a dull gray computer to guys in trench coats having kung fu fights on the top of high rise buildings. However for Intel, it's tremendously important to understand. Computer hacking, at its heart, is all about getting access to the administrator functions of a computer system. No matter how fancy they are, computers are just machines, and do just what they're told. Whether this computer is controlling a keypad lock, running the central network for a military base or steering a robot vacuum over your carpet, it's still the same basic machine.

Working in Intelligence means that you'll work with these machines a lot. Most information in the universe is stored on computers in one place or another. Likewise, most security is handled by computers. So whether you're trying to get some data off a system or just bypass a lock to get to where the data is, you're going to need to do some hacking. The name of the game in hacking is encryption. Computers have to talk to each other. Even that keypad lock has to talk between the keypad and the server to see if the code is correct. Beside of this, Starfleet has systems which are very, very good at breaking encryption. In the hands of an agent trained in cryptology, most computer encryptions can be broken in a relatively short amount of time. Hacking is, in large part, trial and error. It's sending data to the central server and seeing if what you return is better or worse. It's also a lot of passive listening to look for certain key hooks that you can start unraveling the mess with. Sometimes it's just a lot of moving around to look for this or that little flaw. Remember, most computers have defenses against hacking, but no defense is perfect, because in the end, people don't want their computers completely shut out. Sometimes a database can only be accessed from a certain location, and you have to get there. Sometimes you'll get completely shut out and you'll have to find a man with a password to unlock the system before you can have any access at all. Sometimes you'll get lucky and you'll find an unencrypted data steam which lets you log the main administrator's password and give you full access. Try and keep it more complex than sitting back at your terminal and pecking at your keyboard in your ship's Intelligence suite, however. Remember, nobody ever made a movie about what computer hacking is really like.

When hacking fails, you always can get the person who knows the password or has the clearance to go in a top secret location. It must be done discreetly. Kidnapping isn’t an exact science, but to the IO, the least people know about, the best chance he has to infiltrate without facing overwhelming odds. An agent is considered to be embedded when they're trusted by the people they're spying on. One can spend months, even years, working to get inside a group. They're the bread and butter of information gathering. They know the language, they look the part, and they work with the people they're spying on day in and day out. Typically, an embedded agent will have virtually no contact with Starfleet, and will only be known by a codename in order to protect his or her cover. The only contact with Starfleet will be in sending quick reports to update the Federation on the status of whatever it is they're gathering Intel on, and occasionally receiving special orders to hinder or direct the actions of that group. An embedded agent will typically have a position with low authority but high access, such as security or distribution. Becoming an embedded agent is not easy, and requires a good grace period of building trust with the group you are trying to get into. If you try and embed an agent into a group, remember that you have to earn the trust of that group. Generally, that means you'll be doing something illegal, such as smuggling arms or forging documents or simply stealing stuff. If you show any reluctance, the odds are you'll blow your cover. However on the other hand, there are certain lines you can cross in the interests of gathering intelligence, and certain lines you can't. If the group is a tremendous danger to the Federation, you'll be given more room to wiggle between those lines, but try and keep in mind that in Starfleet, the ends does not always justify the means.

Sometimes, your ship doesn't have time to embed an agent. In that case, infiltration is called for. This is where those James Bond or Sam Fisher fantasies that probably got you interested in Intelligence comes in. Infiltration is all about sneaking into somewhere unnoticed, getting something, be it information, an item of interest, or a person, and escaping to report back. Usually this requires going into somewhere alone, even unarmed. Stealth is the key in these situations. Remember, you're not a Marine, and even if you were, you're not going to shoot your way into a guarded facility. Play to your strengths. Reposition often; sneak though areas that aren't as populated, use diversion tactics to get past guarded places. Keep in mind the level of security you're dealing with. A bunch of tents in a forest won't have much in the way of scanners, but will have a lot of people around. A secure bunker will likely have scanners that will detect energy weapon fire. A larger base could have perimeter scanners which would have to be bypassed.

Of course, there’s always the option where the IO has to spread a false rumor, create a deception in order to obtain what he needs. For that, he’ll need resources and a lot of improvisation. The deception and misdirection a part of an IO job. Imagine that instead of invading a ultra defended base, you spread a rumor or plant a false news that makes the enemy move the soldiers away from the base. Really helps you odds to infiltrate. Or, you after a person, so you plant information that will bring her out her security location.

If you can’t get the information, you can always make the information comes to you. Just think of the options. The equipment is only a mean not an end and it never will be enough to an IO complete his mission. It requires will force, wit and sometimes a bit of strength.

External Information And Credits

• Thanks to Camila for compiling this information