Luna Uber Alles

NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

I am a big fan of the modern Cthulhu investigative game Delta Green. In fact, that is why I made this blog. 

For some years now, I have been researching an idea for a game where Delta Green and other Mythos investigation agencies encounter each other on the Moon and decide to unite against the Unnatural or battle it out for national interests.  I call this near future setting Luna Uber Alles. 

This ‘hard’ science fiction setting would ask several questions.  How would the other Mythos fighting agencies like GRU-SV8, M-EPIC, PISCES and others, compromise their agenda and agents if national interests were on the line in a space-land rush scenario? In the Great Dark of Space when we are competing with orbital mechanics, confronted with the choice of cybernetic augmentation, assisted by some form of artificial intelligence, and dealing with a national mandate to exploit space before our competitors do; would we still be human?  What will individuals be willing to sacrifice to stave off humanity’s eventual apocalypse by mind warping forces we will never be able to understand?  Will we even want to? 

Above all, hangs our grey satellite as a harbinger of our uncertain future. Luna Uber Alles. 

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

News Reports and Papers

I’ve been fired up with these questions for some time. Over a few years I’ve been researching a few selected sources to create a background for this setting.  I’ll detail a few of these sources here, mostly news reports and scientific papers, with a summary of my thoughts under them. 

1) Demand Drivers of the Lunar and Cislunar Economy by T.J. Colvin et al. April 2020. From the Institute of Defense Analyses (IDA). 

In order for the USA and other nations to go to the moon and want to establish bases there, there should be more of an incentive than colonizing the moon purely for defense or scientific reasons.  Colvin et al., have created an interesting paper describing possible commercial interests that could drive people to invest in lunar and cislunar projects in the near future. 

Specifically, they mention that they have “identified goods and services that might generate sufficient non-government revenue [so that lunar investment could] to be commercially viable.”

Apart from space tourism, which I personally don’t think is economically sustainable to consistently fund long term lunar settlements, the paper describes that households on Earth may want moon rocks or lunar memorials (ie sending ashes of the deceased to the moon) from the lunar economy.  I think those economic drivers are a little anemic. However lunar advertising, mining precious metals from the Moon, extracting Helium-3 for sale on the Earth, disposing of hazardous Earth waste on the Moon, manufacturing in the lunar vacuum, and supercomputing and data storage as driven by corporations might be more feasible.  I’m taking this data from Table 1, page 8 of the pdf. 

Anyway, there are a lot of ideas to mine in this reference that would be useful for the Luna Uber Alles setting. 

2) Manufacturing In Space: An Inside Look At A Seemingly Crazy Idea by Ethan Karp. September 2024. From Forbes.com.

So, are space factories true and feasible? 

Pharmaceutical companies are interested in the lunar space for manufacturing chemicals in a no-gravity or microgravity environment.  Specifically, this relates to slowing the kinetics of crystal formation which is a useful method for identifying the mechanism of pharmaceutical function. Merck is doing this right now evidently. 

Heavy industry and polluting industries might also be considering operations in the lunar and cislunar space. 

3) In exchange for a lunar rover, Japan will get seats on Moon-landing missions by Stephen Clark. April 2024. From arstechnica.com.

Japan is partnering with the USA to have a Japanese astronaut join a USA team under the NASA-led Artemis program. Also, UAE, Canada and the European Space Agency are involved as well. 

In Luna Uber Alles, Mythos exploiting and Mythos suppressing organizations could have a presence on the Moon in future.  In the case of Canda, Delta Green lore already describes M-EPIC as a counter-Mythos agency. 

What Mythos organization should I look at including in Luna Uber Alles that could have an interest in Japanese lunar operations? In Delta Green (pages 34-37 of the Delta Green Handler’s Guide) the Black Ocean Society is directly described as being in Japan and other countries. That may have potential. 

4) Mining helium-3 on the Moon has been talked about forever—now a company will try by Eric Berger. March 2024. From arstechnica.com.

News report describing interest in and feasibility of harvesting helium-3 from the lunar regolith and selling it on Earth. Helium-3 does not occur naturally on Earth and “it exists in only very limited quantities from nuclear weapons tests, nuclear reactors, and radioactive decay”.  May be an important component in the quantum computing and medical imaging sectors. 

The news article specifically describes the company Interlune. 

5) Soldiers, Spies and the Moon: Secret US and Soviet Plans from the 1950s and 1960s edited by Jeffrey T. Richelson. Posted July 2014. From The National Security Archive. 

A series of declassified USA documents about potential miliary applications of lunar occupation. Deals with the Cold War, and US and Soviet interests in the Moon. Project Horizon is mentioned, which includes technical details from the US Airforce and Army about building a military Moon base. 

There is a section in the article A Study of Lunar Research Flights that talks about the feasibility of detonating a nuclear device on the Moon. 

Both of these articles would be useful for developing the setting Luna Uber Alles, particularly on the US side, and Project Horizon has details for military personnel on a theoretical militarized Moon base. One of the questions I must address in future is, “Are all nationally and corporate funded moon bases in Luna Uber Alles built with the military in mind, or instead do they consist of quasi-militarized or dual-use architectures?”

Books

I have several additional news references for Luna Uber Alles, but that’s enough for now. 

In terms of books that may have information I want for the setting, I’m looking at On the Future: Prospects for Humanity by Martin Rees. Specifically, Chapters 2.1-2.2, biotech and cybernetics, and Chapter 3, which deals with the solar system/space exploration, may be of use.

For historical reference I picked up Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon by the Mercury Seven astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton. I wanted a rough timeline of lunar exploration and mission objectives. 

Games

Now the question is, has anyone published a ttrpg similar to the setting I’m working on? There are a few Cthulhu in Space games, but one of the more recent ones that is closest to my ideas for Luna Uber Alles is Eldritch Horizon. 

Eldritch Horizon is a game set in the “early star-faring future of the human race” where humans are exploiting the outer horizon of Earth’s Solar System to support civilization back on Earth.  Add to this the alien and ancient things that already occupied the Solar System from the Cthulhu Mythos, and you have Eldritch Horizon.  

The setting is somewhere between the scope of Eclipse Phase (without the transhuman tech and themes of that setting) and Orbital Cold War (which I discuss below).

I skimmed Eldritch Horizon and found some elements that could be interesting in a Luna Uber Alles setting. Specifically, I like how Eldritch Horizon deals with Artificial Intelligence, and how AI would react to exposure to the madness of the Cthulhu Mythos. 

There are Sanity rules for Artificial Intelligences.  AIs are treated as being based on AIs of the modern day, just refined and moderately competent.  At least for mundane jobs. AIs are also prone to hallucinations when they encounter data or situations that are outside their training data baseline.  Also, the United Nations has mandated a kill-switch for higher level AI functions (like mining or attacking or so forth) while maintaining life-support and power generations.  This kill-switch is called the Skynet Protocol.  

So how and when do AIs take Sanity Damage? AIs are rather mentally fragile. If they encounter an observation or data outside of their training data, they accumulate Sanity Damage that cannot be removed. Eldritch Horizon calls AI Sanity Damage “Paradox.”  Whenever an AI would take a Sanity Check from the Unnatural/Cthulhu Mythos, they take maximum Sanity Damage equal to “the maximum human loss from a successful SAN test” or 1 Sanity Damage, whichever is higher. AI’s do not take San Damage from Helplessness or Violence sources, unless the GM decides the AI has an empathy prototype and wants to make that call.  

AI Sanity Damage (Paradox) matters because that value subtracts from the AI’s ability to make skill checks.  So, if you have 20 Paradox and your AI’s Mining skill is 65%, it’s effective Mining skill becomes 45%.  Essentially, exposure to the Unnatural/Mythos will degrade an AI’s ability to carry out actions until it is destroyed.  However, if an AI attempts to use a skill where the modified success score is zero or below, roll d100.  On a failure it just shuts down. On a roll of doubles, it develops an aggressive psychotic response.  

I like the AI rules from Eldritch Horizon because they are appropriate for Artificial Intelligences (AI) that are marginally better than we have today. I think these rules work well for the Luna Uber Alles setting.

I am not going to include Artificial General Intelligences (AGI) in Luna Uber Alles because frankly I don’t think AGI will be developed in the timeline I foresee Luna Uber Alles taking place in.  So, AGI is out in my setting, and I don’t have to worry about rules for it. 

Eldritch Horizon is currently available as a 73-page free quickstart pdf.  They advertise that the full game will come out in 2026 sometime. 

The other question I had was, is there any near future space game that I could use as a backbone to build Luna Uber Alles on? The answer is “yes” and that game is Orbital Cold War.

Orbital Cold War is an alternate timeline near-future setting where the Space Race between the USA and the Soviet Union never stopped and continued through the early 1990s.  Player characters are astronauts, scientists or possibly soldiers, with the objective to maintain or have adventures in space stations in orbit or on the Moon. 

The geopolitical tensions in this setting between the USA-European alliance and the Soviet Union is exactly the type of drama I want to replicate in Luna Uber Alles.  However, in my setting I want more factions vying for space and the Moon. I am envisioning the following nations/agencies as having stakes in the lunar surface: USA, Canada, UAE, Russia, UK, European Space Agency, Japan, China, and the corporation Intuitive Machines (USA). 

Some of these nations/agencies have organizations aware of the Mythos according to the Delta Green lore; namely: USA (Delta Green), Canada (M-EPIC), Russia (GRU-SV8), and UK (PISCES).  In addition, Japan is mentioned as having the Black Ocean Society embedded in their territory, and that organization may have Lunar ambitions.  

So, what does Orbital Cold War provide as a backbone for my setting? It has a great deal of excellent information about spaceflight with historical examples of space vehicles, information for human survival in space stations and on space walks, and detailed diagrams on Moon bases and space stations.  I’ll be using all of that information to inform the development of Luna Uber Alles. 

Conclusion

Looking back on the past few pages, I think I have a decent rough sketch of some of my ideas for the Luna Uber Alles setting.  The idea of mankind colonizing the Moon, and the Mythos’ response to our first halting steps to get off our singular planet, is very exciting to me.  I have at least 15 news sources or scientific papers that are relevant for research for the setting, and I have broadly detailed five here.  I’ve found two books and two ttrpgs that would be relevant for Luna Uber Alles; and I think that is a solid enough foundation to build upon to move forwards with this Delta Green-spinoff without succumbing to research inflation. 

Adapting Delta Green Shotgun Scenarios to Call of Cthulhu, The (Un)Natural Man

 

Example sovereign citizen licence plate
 by Merrrittt - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Delta Green (DG) has a wealth of quality fan created adventures and material. The shotgun scenario contest, which has been run annually for 20 years, alone has generated approximately one thousand adventures. 

The problem is my home game yearns for the simpler gangster era of the 1920s, rather than the messy spycraft of the late 90s.  So, what is a Handler to do?  Adapt, evolve, and change. The adventure that is. 

First of all, my players are all veteran Call of Cthulhu (CoC) investigators and wanted that era. I am more comfortable with Delta Green’s systems, so I pitched a CoC game with DG mechanics and they agreed to that.  DG and CoC are both based on Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying d100 system, so the transition mechanically was not hard. 

The next issue is that I wanted to run some of the DG adventure gems I was familiar with in the world of 1920’s Prohibition era.  Specifically, I had a four-hour session coming up and I wanted to run the award-winning (2020’s contest) DG shotgun scenario The (Un)Natural Man by Bird Bailey.  GMs, please read the scenario before continuing. It is short. 

** Players please avert your eyes. Spoilers for The (Un)Natural Man will follow. **

Here was the trouble. As awesome and compact as this adventure was, the adventure hinges on the main character, Elroy McIntyre, being a sovereign citizen. 

The sovereign citizen movement believes, generally, that all government statues do not apply to them unless they consent. The way you access sovereign citizen powers is through pseudo-legal mumbo-jumbo which includes writing down certain statements on legal documents.  Also, importantly for the adventure, sovereign citizens hate taxes and do not believe the government can legally take money from them. 

Sovereign citizens show up in the US around the 1970s. My players wanted a Prohibition era 1920s game.  

The (Un)Natural Man scenario summary

First, I will explain the plot of the scenario. 

In The (Un)Natural Man, Elroy McIntyre wants to avoid paying taxes, divorce payments, etc. and thus purchased a pamphlet filled with instructions and a ritual for separating his real self (Elroy original) from his legal self (Elroy fictional) by giving his True Name to a God.   Unfortunately for Elroy original, the ritual purchased was real and summoned Nyarlathotep, in the guise of The Black Man, whom Elroy original struck an infernal bargain with.  As a result of putting his True Name in The Black Man’s book, Elroy original got his wish of being immune from taxes and alimony.  However, since Elroy original sacrificed his True Name, Nyarlathotep created Elroy fictional, a perfect copy of Elroy original except a Hunting Horror in disguise, designed to kill Elroy original and take his place in the real world. The reason for Nyarlathotep’s creation of Elroy fictional is uncertain and done for inscrutable cosmic reasons, but I suggest Nyarlathotep did it because He thought it would be funny.  

The completion of the ritual leads to Elroy original getting blackout drunk from the horror of the ritual, waking up to Elroy fictional being present, being physically assaulted by Elroy fictional, attempting to fight back and kill Elroy fictional, both Elroys being arrested by the police for a domestic disturbance, and now both Elroys accusing the other of being an imposter while nursing an epic hangover in a police holding cell. 

One story that inspired Liam Myrkr. Available here

Adding a new character: Liam Myrkr, cultist-lawyer

Ok. Having said all that, I asked the author of the scenario if they had any ideas about converting the game from the modern era to the 1920s, given that there were no sovereign citizens in the 1920s.  

The author suggested that Elroy McIntyre may have fallen for a bad legal advice scam and now he was crazy. 

I turned the idea that Elroy had been suckered by bad legal advice into a character. A Nyarlathotep cultist-lawyer, to be specific, who arrived at a discovery of the Mythos from delving into the law, religion, and accounting.  This cultist-lawyer was responsible for drafting and selling the ritual to Elroy. Since one of my players chose the Swedish language at 40%, I made the cultist-lawyer Swedish and named him Liam Myrkr. The name was an Easter egg meaning literally “Light Darkness” as a Haunter in the Dark reference.

In the original The (Un)Natural Man scenario there was an NPC lawyer Al Silverstein. The purpose of that lawyer NPC was to be a vehicle to inform the players about crank sovereign citizen theory necessary to the plot, and convey that Elroy McIntyre original got into a scuffle behind a local diner in his past, thus establishing that Elroy is pugilistic curmudgeon. I decided to move those clues from the character of Al Silverstein into the notes and files of Liam Myrkr. 

Importantly I made the decision to have Liam Myrkr not reachable as an interrogatable character. I took a page from Dreams in the Witch House and had Myrkr disappear to unnatural parts unknown by carving the Gate spell into the corner of the bedroom of his apartment.   This allowed the players to gradually discover Myrkr through his writings and annotations found in his law office and home. 

Specifically, I added three clues at Liam’s law office to illuminate the purpose and nature of the ritual sold to Elroy original. 

The first clue was information about making pacts with God through the law (in a bizarre interpretation of the Magna Carta) and pacts with otherworldly Beings through trade or an exchange of one’s life/soul/True Name.  I put these details as annotations in the book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) by Margaret Murray which was discoverable in Myrkr’s office library. 

The second clue I added was contained in a French Bible (one of my players chose French as a language) as more annotations.  These annotations stated, that the Catholic God was not the real God, and cross references between God and the US and Swedish law. Also, there were musings about the fundamentals of the law based on Catholicism, pacts, trade, and Gods.

The third clue was in Liam’s accounting notes. It discussed people owing money to the state, odd mathematical gibberish about taxes, the soul, blood, what “one owes to God,” one’s True Name, and separation from worldly legal taxes or financial responsibilities to the government.  

The purpose of these clues was to lead the players to a scenario resolution where they could get rid of Elroy fictional by having Elroy original reclaim his True Name from Nyarlathotep by signing a contract with the US government or the Catholic God.  More on that in the resolution section. 

Adding a new character: Wilma McIntyre, estranged wife

In addition to Liam Myrkr, I added Elroy’s estranged wife, Wilma McIntyre as a character. I added her to tell the players that Elroy did not have any twins, brothers or cousins that looked like him.  This was to remove the possibility in the player’s minds that Elroy fictional was a natural human and have them consider unnatural possibilities. 

Also, an important clue Wilma conveyed was that she had been pressing her claim for community property in California (California had community property laws back in the 1920s) for 5 months since the divorce, and then mysteriously dropped the claim and did a complete reversal saying that she no longer wanted her half of Elroy’s property and money. 

The reason for Wilma dropping the case was that Elroy successfully executed the ritual giving away his True Name and obtaining his wish of immunity from alimony from Nyarlathotep. Wilma was now under the magical influence of Elroy’s ritual, and her sudden reversal made the players very suspicious of what Elroy original had done in the days prior to Elroy fictional showing up. 

I also positioned Wilma “off camera” by having her in Florida with her mother and only reachable by phone.  This limited the party’s interaction with her and allowed me to suggest that Wilma only had two clues and otherwise was an investigative dead end.  

Additional changes and 1920s Tax Law 

One important change was that I made Elroy a landowner (small plot of land with a two-story house) in Castaic in outskirts of LA county.  I did this so that it was clear Elroy had the resources for legal recourse incase players got frustrated and tried to use physical methods to get to the truth of who was the real Elroy.  Which would not have worked anyway because Elroy original was the real one, and Elroy fictional had access to all of Elroy original’s memories and motivations. 

Another change I made was to change Tony Linetti into Elroy’s gardener rather than Elroy’s landlord. Tony Linetti’s clue about there being no breaking and entering to the Elroy house remained the same. Also, he served as another source of the information that the party could receive from Wilma McIntyre, namely that Elroy had no twins, brother or cousins that looked like him.

So how did I deal with the main issue that sovereign citizens do not show up in the USA until the 1970s? Well, I decided to sidestep the issue. By looking into taxes. 

I leaned into the idea that Elroy was a drunk who has gotten increasingly crazy over the years and hated the high taxes that had been issued post WWI. 

Let’s talk about tax law in California in the 1920s.

 For reference, individuals and businesses in California were subject to the federal income tax, which saw significant rate reductions during that decade. In 1920-1921, the top marginal rate was 73% (on income over $1,000,000).  In 1922-1923, the top marginal rate on that same level of income was reduced to 58%.  Lower income brackets also saw reductions, with the lowest marginal rates falling from 4-11% in 1921 to 1.5-5% from 1925-1931.

Now I’ll be honest, I got this information from the google AI summary. I like my readers but my mind slides right off things like tax law so I didn’t do a deep dive and verify any of this. 

Even though the tax rate was dropping, Elroy was still a hoary chestnut and wanted to weasel out of his taxes. The high tax rate and the community property Wilma was demanding from his divorce were the two main motivations for Elroy to find Liam Myrkr and execute the ritual that summoned Nyarlathotep.

By Iohn Wright, Public Domain

Resolution and After-Action Report

One of the ways to resolve the scenario is to get Elroy original to reclaim his True Name by willingly signing himself over to some form of government authority. 

I modified this resolution end point by allowing Elroy original to also reclaim his True Name if he willingly signed a document rejoining himself to another God, specifically the Catholic God. 

In the Liam Myrkr section, I had introduced three clues that suggestively pointed to the idea that one could reclaim one’s True Name (or do the reverse) by making pacts/contracts with Gods or the government. 

I thought all three clues would help make it clear that Elroy would need to reclaim his Name legally by signing a contract with the US government or the Catholic God in order to get out of the previous ritual contract with Nyarlathotep.  

This was not obvious to the players at the penultimate portion of the game and I had to prompt them a bit. I was reading the Three Clue Rule by The Alexandrian again recently and realized I violated the Corollary: Proactive Clues A.K.A Bash Them On the Head With It. I should have been clearer and more direct. 

In retrospect, the players and I were pressed for time at the end and I accepted Elroy signing a contract with “God” in general as breaking the previous Mythos contract. When Elroy original signed the contract, Elroy fictional disappeared in a crack of unseasonable thunder and a scream from a room on the other side of the cell block.  

Honestly, I have some misgivings with this conclusion because the Catholic God has no power in Lovecraft’s Mythos, but I did not really specify which God Elroy was making a new contract with either.  Lesson learned for next time.

The following are my post-game musings. 

I think putting Liam Myrkr and Wilma McIntyre off camera this focused the attention of the party back on Elroy once they realized there was no cultist to intimidate, which was a good thing! One player was trying to get a reaction out of Elroy saying that the OTHER Elroy was going to remarry Wilma because he wasn’t a drunk and was a better Elroy than him.  This led to both Elroys breaking down into blubbering messes, because Elroy fictional was part of the original Elroy’s Jungian Shadow and I played them both as sad and regretful drunk assholes. 

Another gem by the players as they tried to get to the truth, was threatening the Elroys with “being put at the bottom of the LA reservoir if you don’t tell us what’s going on.”  It was a darkly comical opening move and I think inspired by the film L.A. Confidential. Naturally, it made the Elroys more frightened and belligerent.  

After the game I explained the original plot of The (Un)Natural Man to the players.  One player found the premise of the Elroys and the sovereign citizen elements interesting and different from most CoC games.  My other player keyed into the idea of the scenario being inspired by Doctor Faustus once the Elroy was discussing signing a contract with “Someone” or “some God.”

A good time was had by all in about 4-5 hours of gameplay. Thanks to Bird Bailey for writing The (Un)Natural Man.

Additional Delta Green Scenario Thoughts

Found two relatively new science articles that inspired some Delta Green ideas.  I am also including a declassified article from the Department of Defense from October 1966 on the subject of hypnosis, along with my thoughts on a recent review (2024) on the possible mechanisms of hypnosis, because why not.

A mind-reading brain implant that comes with password protection

The subheading reads, “A brain–computer interface decodes in near-real time the imagined speech of people who have difficulty enunciating words.”  

But is that really what the research news shows?  What defines “imagined speech” and how is it measured? Is it really thoughts that are being read by the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI)?

To drill down and answer some of these questions I investigated the original research paper in Cell that the science news story is based off of. The title of the research paper is Inner speech in motor cortex and implications for speech neuroprostheses by Kunz et al.

In the paper, four people with specific BCIs called "BrainGate2" who also had trouble speaking, one because of a stroke and three because of motor neuron disease, had microelectrodes placed in their brain's motor cortex. The BrainGate2 implant was able to pick up words and numbers thought, by the patients, during "inner speech", as well as during perceived speech and silent reading.

In addition, the researchers used AI "...to recognize phonemes, the smallest units of speech, in the neural recordings. The team used language models to stitch these phonemes together to form words and sentences in real time, drawn from a vocabulary of 125,000 words." 

The researchers stated the following about decoding sentences thought by participants with the real-time inner-speech decoder when describing data in Figure S5:

“To further investigate scenarios in which decoding private inner speech may be possible, participants were prompted to reflect on verbal or autobiographical details (e.g., “think about your favorite quote from a movie” versus “think about your favorite food”) or to “clear your mind.” Neural activity during thinking was decoded offline using the real-time inner-speech decoder from the same day. Significantly more words were decoded during verbal thought prompt responses than when prompted to “clear your mind” (Figure S5). Although most decoded sentences were largely gibberish with occasional plausible phrases, we refrain from reporting the specific outputs given the uncertainty about their representativeness of the participants’ actual thoughts.”

So, if the AI is trained correctly and the implant is in the right place (motor cortex) then inner speech of the subject can be translated into sentences in real time. Mind reading. At least of surface thoughts.

In the Delta Green world, one can imagine this technology, or its next iteration, would be great when paired with enhanced interrogation techniques on a recalcitrant human subject. 

I can imagine two Delta Green scenarios featuring the mind-reading BrainGate 2 implant.  In the first scenario, some shadowy DoD project is being implemented overseas in a warzone or black site, using terrorists or enemy combatants as test subjects for improving the device by forcible implantation.   Perhaps the researchers unwittingly unleash the undiscovered Pineal gland in one of the unwilling subjects and he makes a deal with the Entities he can now perceive. Blood and chaos ensue in the overseas black site and Delta Green needs to clean up the area now haunted by extradimensional invisible creatures (see the HPL short story From Beyond) and figure out what happened.

In the second scenario, I am taking a page from Cyberpunk Red or Shadowrun corporate wars. One could imagine March Tech already has competing brain-to-speech technology from Mi-go braincase physical examples and research. Perhaps March Tech was waiting to introduce mind reading implants to secure lucrative DoD government contracts but the researchers behind the BrainGate 2 implant formed a corporation and just gained first mover advantage. Perhaps March Tech taps Delta Green agents in The Program to go investigate the BrainGate 2 implant research corporation.  

Or perhaps on the other side of the equation, March Tech sent out security from the paramilitary group the Breckenridge Corporation (see Handler’s Guide page 98) to suppress or destroy their mundane competitor's research. In this case Delta Green could be brought in to investigate the mundane competitor’s mind-reading research to see if there is any Mythos taint, and then backtrack on the Breckenridge raid to find March Tech is up to the real Mythos research. 

How you breathe is like a fingerprint that can identify you

Great. From the Department of New and Interesting Ways to Surveil Everyone comes this science article about how your breath can also convey your physical and mental state. Like anxiety or depression.  The Nature news article was based on the paper in the journal Current Biology titled Humans have nasal respiratory fingerprints.

97 participants wore a nasal respiratory device and researchers tracked their breathing over 24 hours. After a machine-learning algorithm was trained on the breathing data, and a second measurement was taken and analyzed, the algorithm could identify people from their breath patterns with 96.8% accuracy.

Now how could this information be useful in the covert world of Delta Green?  Imagine a subsection of March Tech that functions like Q Division in the James Bond world and gives Delta Green agents of The Program experimental devices for surveillance/counter-surveillance.  Spy-tech if you will.  

Now imagine a contact lens generated by this Q Division that automatically calculates breathing patterns of people you focus on and provides a digital readout to the wearer. It could identify people the agent has already seen before, cutting through disguises, or perhaps give the agent a mechanical bonus to social checks because the agent is informed if the subject is depressed or anxious based on their nasal breathing patterns. I could see such a device being used by the CIA or cutting-edge Delta Green agents in good standing with the Program. 

When I bounced this science news story off of members of the Sci-Fi RPG Collective discord, a short scenario idea was suggested by Sammy J. 

Scenario Idea: Breathprint

What if, in the race to find the most secure biometrics to replace password logins, nasal respiratory breathprints were used by a startup company as the method to replace personal data identifiers.  The idea being that the raw data for these breathprints could be stored in such a way that it would be very difficult to match a breathprint with an individual without specific proprietary analytic software.  The startup company acquires investors and establishes itself in a US small city because they claim if there is a data breech of the breathprint data it would be almost impossible to doxx their users. 

Now what if the startup founders had found an ancient Mythos manuscript that described cultivation of the human soul through the study of breath.  The manuscript mentions Qigong and other breathing techniques and capturing the soul through knowing how someone breathes. 

The Mythos-minded startup company, with their breathprint data, develops or implements a ritual to steal soul energy (POW in Delta Green mechanics) subtly and gently from those members who use their own breathprint as a biometric password. Think of this as a penny rounding scheme done en mass to all individuals enrolled in the company’s breathprint database.  A penny rounding scheme is a popular urban legend (for example seen in the movies Office Space and Superman 3) in which a programmer alters a program at a bank so it diverts fractions of a cent from every transaction to another account so he can collect it later. 

Where the Mythos-minded company is storing the soul-energy or for what ends is left as an exercise for the reader.  However, Delta Green could detect something nefarious is going on in the city where the breathprints are being stored by the company by identifying a measured uptick in suicides and insanity incidents caused by the massive POW fractional drain on the population.  Enter your favorite group of Delta Green agents.  Perhaps the agents could diagnose the source of the widespread Mythos malaise by interviewing afflicted people and uncovering common images in dreams about maze-like office corridors, incense filled server rooms, a humming radio tower on top of the Mythos corporate building or other evocative images that point to the epicenter. 

Thanks to Sammy J, Mangoes and MobiusTrobius on the Sci-Fi RPG Collective discord for discussion and feedback for these ideas. 

Hypnosis in Intelligence

A declassified confidential report from October 1966 indicates that the Department of Defense (DoD), was researching hypnosis and how to use it to control human behavior in the context of warfare and intelligence work.  Their exploration had two goals: to identify if hypnosis could be used to strengthen the will of captives and if it could be used to “gain compliance from otherwise uncooperative persons.”

The document starts out with an exploration of the history of hypnosis that references Anton Mesmer’s work as “mesmerism” (Mesmer first explored animal magnetism in 1774), goes into the methods of inducing trance including waking hypnosis and a focus on the “Sensorimotor Method” attributed to the psychiatrist Harold Rosen, discusses posthypnotic suggestion, and autosuggestion. 

The document is 33 pages and I will leave mining all the details of hypnosis as an operational aide to readers in the audience.  I will mention, there is an interesting section on hypnosis and drugs as well as a few paragraphs on the “defensive uses of hypnosis” and one section on hypnosis to enhance recall. 

What’s important for the next paper I will discuss is that as early as 1966, it was recognized that a hypnotized subject under trance (called somnambulism in the DoD report) could respond positively to the following suggestions: catalepsy and rigidity, a positive hallucination (subject sees persons or objects who are not there), negative hallucinations (subject fails to see persons or objects present), analgesia (inability to feel pain), and amnesia for events in hypnosis. 

Since hypnosis is pretty outside my field, and I was curious as to what hypnosis researchers thought, I did some digging on pubmed as to the current mechanism theorized for how hypnosis functions. I found a free, recent (2024) review article on the subject with references back to 1959. It is titled How hypnotic suggestions work – A systematic review of prominent theories of hypnosis and it is quite fascinating. 

The review discusses hypnotic suggestions and presents current theories (at least 10 distinct theories including multicomponent theories) by which researchers hypothesize hypnosis works.

  

Several elements of hypnotic suggestion that have been researched in the literature since 2024 are discussed. I will describe just a few. The authors state that a hypnotic suggestion can be induced in a relaxed environment or during strenuous physical activity.  I was not aware of the idea that hypnosis could be carried out through strenuous physical activity. It made me wonder, if one is on a triathlon, or even leading a group of military men on an extreme march, could hypnotic suggestions be implanted?  

The review goes on to explain that there are three broad phases of hypnosis: an induction phase (orienting or disorienting), an intermediary phase consisting of suggestions (hypnotic or post-hypnotic suggestions), and a termination phase (de-induction). 

It was then discussed that the changes that the hypnosis procedure can induce in subjects are generally only well-learned or well-known responses. This is regardless of whether the suggestion is implanted in the hypnotic or posthypnotic manner. A classical example of this from research published in the 1940s suggest that when participants think of a movement or a well-known stimulus and its effects, then the result is participants usually execute that movement thought of. 

In the hypnosis nomenclature, changes in perception are commonly called “hallucinations.” Now, by examining the 1966 DoD report on hypnosis we went over the concept of positive and negative hallucinations.  So that is old news to hypnosis researchers. What is new in the review, however were documented examples of positive and negative hallucinations.  For example, a typical positive hallucination that can be induced is a color hallucination where subjects report seeing a grayscale in different colors when suggested to do so.  An example of a negative hallucination is “the hypnosis-induced elimination or reduction of pain inflicted by noxious stimuli.” 

In addition to positive and negative hallucinations, the review reports “hypnotic and posthypnotic suggestions can affect long-term memory.” Specifically posthypnotic suggestions can induce amnesia. This induced amnesia is very specific; about when, where, and how knowledge has been acquired.  To me this just codifies the classical example that hypnosis could be used to implant a suggestion in the subject and then wipe or muddle the hypnotist and the hypnotic situation from the subject’s memory. At least for a time. 

Hypnosis in the world of Delta Green

So, there is a lot here on hypnosis to use operationally for intelligence work or warfare in Delta Green or modern-day focused RPGs. 

One of the more immediate thoughts I had for the use of hypnotism in a Delta Green game is the inclusion of inducing positive or negative hallucinations or amnesia in NPCs.  A Delta Green trained hypnotist might be crucial for ensuring coverups of indemnifying evidence (that could lead back to the conspiracy) or attempting to have subjects ignore memories of traumatic supernatural events. DG hypnotists could achieve these goals by inducing negative hallucinations, in say police investigators, to coerce the subject to ignore an important name on a bit of paperwork or to suggest positive hallucinations where the subject is sure they saw a video tape even though DG teams absconded with it.

Now personally I do not think that mechanically any Sanity roll in Delta Green should be mitigated by hypnosis, or exposure to the unnatural Mythos can be “healed” by methods devised by humans, including hypnosis.  The Mythos by its fundamental nature is corrosive, and humans are biologically not equipped to deal with entities from other dimensions, other parts of space, or other times.  I think the Mythos impacts humanity on a genetic, atomic, or even deeper level currently unknown to science, in a way that unravels or erodes the fundamental essence of what is humanity in a person.

Regaining points of Sanity in a meager manner by a Delta Green agent going to therapy and being honest in Downtime, I see as humans telling each other lies about themselves so they can function for a little bit longer in society; not as “healing” a psychic wound with human invented psychological tricks.   After all, the more in the Unnatural skill the player has mechanically, the less maximum Sanity they have; indicating that understanding the Mythos is utterly antithetical to human mental stability. 

Having said all that I would find it interesting if mechanically a DG Game Master ruled that, pre-hypnotized Delta Green (or Majestic-12) agents could delay the onset of Sanity damage taken by an encounter with the Mythos, because the agents were implanted with reinforced positive and/or negative hallucinations.  Your game, your rules.

In terms of using hypnosis antagonistically against a Delta Green team, I can think of two interesting examples from media.  The first is the X-files episode Pusher. Incidentally Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad fame wrote this episode and it aired in 1996. In Pusher (spoilers follow), the antagonist is arrested by the police at the beginning of the show. Mysteriously, the antagonist repeatedly chants that “cerulean blue is a gentle breeze.”  This subsequently causes the police car to collide with the truck which allows the antagonist to escape.  The implication here is that the antagonist hypnotized the driver of the police car and his captor into a negative hallucination of not seeing a semi-trailer truck the color of “cerulean blue.” 

We learn later that a brain tumor may be responsible for enhancing the antagonists’ hypnosis ability to supernatural levels, which allows him to earn a living as a hit-man by inducing people to commit suicide or homicide through suggestion.   Granted this speculative use of hypnosis is not backed up by the real-life literature at all, but in the Delta Green world, fighting an antagonistic hypnotist may be an interesting change of pace for the agents. 

Secondly, there is the example of the use of hypnosis in Jeff VanderMeer’s book Annihilation.  Spoilers for that book follow.  I cannot say if the following discussion applies to the movie Annihilation (2018), because I have not seen it.  In the book, the main character the biologist increasingly becomes suspicious of her regimen of training under hypnosis that the mysterious Southern Reach organization has been subjecting her to before she started her mission into Area X.  After learning she is now resistant to hypnotic suggestion, she finds evidence that her perceptions were thoroughly compromised by hypnosis (i.e. not seeing the real truth of what a tower is made out of) and she finds that her psychologist “minder” had a series of post-hypnotic suggestion keywords on her to induce paralysis, induce acceptance, compel obedience or attempt to induce immediate suicidal actions in the biologists or any other member of the team.  Again, like the X-files show Pusher, we leave the world of real hypnosis research and jump into the realm of fantasy, but said fantasy is perfect for inspiration and fodder for Delta Green conspiracy-horror games. 

Delta Green and the 1970s Part 2: Analysis of the Testimony of James Jesus Angleton (1975) and Delta Green Ideas

Testimony Analysis

So what have we learned? 

According to page 11 of the testimony (which I did not quote last blog post) something called the “Colorado Case”, referred to by Angleton, resulted in the “rupture” in the relationship between the CIA and the FBI, to the point where the CIA could no longer rely on a supply of domestic intelligence from the FBI.  It is my understanding that Mr. Hoover on behalf of the White House (Nixon) “in May of 1970 terminated the official liaison” (page 10).  I believe the Mr. Hoover referred to on page 10 is one J. Edgar Hoover. 

Pages 13, 20, and 21-22 paint a picture of a great deal of domestic unrest in the summer of 1970.  Also, individuals in counterintelligence, at least at the CIA, that suspected foreign involvement in domestic unrest appeared unable to verify these potential domestic-foreign connections because they were working with limited intelligence or just fully in the dark thanks to the rift with the FBI. I suspect this may be an overexaggeration of the situation by Angleton, since we are dealing with a spy and a bureaucrat talking, but I digress.

Excerpts from pages 26-27 describe the military’s actions to gather intelligence, specifically from citizens.  Mr. Johnson (Loch Johnson, special assistant to the chair of the Senate Select Committee House Subcommittee on Intelligence from 1975 to 1976) says specifically, “But isn’t it true that during this period the military was under sever criticism for earlier civilian surveillance programs?” and “To some degree the military was under public criticism for being in the domestic intelligence gathering field.”

On pages 33 and 34 the NSA is discussed, specifically who or what organizations could be on an NSA watch list in the early 1970s. Mr Angleton’s comment, “Every participant [intelligence agency] is a consumer of NSA product [intelligence]. And therefore they all have a an equal interest, they all had a departmental interest in enhancing the coverage by NSA,” suggests to me that thanks to the rift between the FBI and CIA, the CIA was relying more on the NSA and it’s sources for intelligence, possibly to cover the gaps that the loss of the FBI’s liaison caused.

The Delta Green Connection

So in the summer of 1970 and before, the alphabet agencies were scrambling to regain their domestic surveillance capabilities after the White House blinded them (for good reason)

In the Delta Green universe, this is very interesting. Most Mythos cults in the US (ghouls, Deep Ones, etc..) operate domestic criminal organizations of one shade or another.  Removing the FBI from domestic surveillance cripples counterintelligence.

Angleton (page 21) “And more important, -- and I think this is axiomatic -- that counter intelligence is about only as good as the relations between the FBI and the CIA are.”

One can assume that Delta Green assets in 1970 in the CIA and FBI are working with one hand behind their back, figuratively. Unless of course, DG agents take circumspect action to illegally liaise with their counterparts in other intelligence agencies. Or simply carry out illegal domestic surveillance themselves and hope they do not get caught. Likely their FBI/CIA case officer could not cover for those actions given the pressure Hoover was under from the White House.

The tighter the noose around Delta Green’s operational neck, the freer cults are to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves. 

Delta Green USA Operational History (1968 - 1975)

What are Delta Green and US Mythos antagonists up to in the years prior to and including 1975? I am going to highlight some of the major points in the Delta Green Handlers Guide (2023) from pages 64 through 68.

·         22 APR 1968: MAJESTIC recruits CIA officer Justin Kroft, its future director.

·         19 JAN 1969: In Operation LOOKING GLASS, Delta Green airdrops 68 men into southeast Colombia. Only the commander, Maj. Walter J. Greyman, escapes a cult of genital-sacrificing Shub-Niggurath worshippers.

·         19 JAN 1969: Dr. Abner Ringwood, cryptographic studies chief at the NSA, is recruited by MAJESTIC to break the still indecipherable alien signals intercepted by Project AQUARIUS 15 years earlier.  Project AQUARIUS is MAJESTIC’s UFO investigations carried out by the NSA which was initiated on 18 DEC 1952.

·         30 OCT 1969: Club Apocalypse opens in New York City.

·         23 NOV 1969, Operation OBSIDIAN: The death of 300 Marines in a temple complex behind the Cambodian border, potentially could expose Delta Green operations to the world.

·         24 JUL 1970: the Delta Green classification was officially deactivated.

·         25 DEC 1971, Operation BINGO: the disbanded Delta Green used US air strikes to hit every known Tcho-Tcho village and religious site. 

·         30 NOV 1972: “The Bucket”, the spacecraft recovered at Roswell, is briefly reactivated at Groom Lake by Project REDLIGHT. It explodes, killing four MAJESTIC personnel. Justin Kroft’s opposition to Project REDLIGHT earns him a MAJESTIC steering committee position not long after.

·         29 JUL 1975: Future MAJESTIC steering committee member, Gavin Ross is recruited from the CIA as a member of MAJESTIC’s enforcement arm, NRO DELTA.

Potential Adventure 1: Over the Moon or Mi-Go vs Moon-beast 

 Attempting to synthesize the previous information into a whole that I could work with as a scenario, I had the following ideas:

MAJESTIC’s Project AQUARIUS functionally became relevant in 1953 when it detected “odd signal noise originating from deep space.”  On July 14, 1954, “MAJESTIC’s Project AQUARIUS briefs President Eisenhower on the odd signals it has detected, having determined that they are indecipherable fragments of intelligent and systematic communications originating from the moon and aimed at sites on the Earth and in high orbit. Eisenhower increases MAJESTIC’s budget, allowing a complete reorganization,” (Handler’s Guide, page 56).

Let us fast forwards in time for a moment and focus on the ideas of the intelligent signals originating from the moon and these signals being aimed at sites on Earth.  We know in March 23, 1978 that “NSA’s Project AQUARIUS makes contact with the Greys through deep-space monitoring surveillance antennas, thanks to cryptographer Dr. Abner Ringwood,” (Handler’s Guide, page 68).  We also know that Mi-Go use the Greys as their puppets and the Mi-Go have bases on the moon as well as Yuggoth (Pluto).  Thus, let us assume that the Mi-Go are sending Earth these intelligent signals from the moon, possibly by using the moon as an amplifier for their signals from Pluto via moon bounce, or directly sending the signals from the moon to the Earth from a Mi-Go moon base.

The Mi-Go objective is to interface and control Earth governments (MAJESTIC) that are sufficiently intelligent to interpret their signal so that they can carry out alien activities on Earth with relative ease. This will culminate in Mi-Go sending Greys to meet and negotiate with MAJESTIC on October 31^st 1980 and the signing of the “Accord” treaty, where MAJESTIC sells out the USA and the human race for alien technology, (Handler’s Guide, page 68).

My idea is that the Mi-Go desire to colonize and operate on the moon will not be unopposed.  Time moves differently in the Dreamlands, but the moon is already occupied. Moon-beasts and the Men from Leng, their enslaved servants who once worshiped them, live on the Dark Side of the moon in the Dreamlands.  The Moon-beasts hunger for more slaves, tribute and worship. 

 Why or how would the Mi-Go and the Moon-beasts come into conflict? The first possibility is that it is a religious conflict. The Mi-Go worship Nyarlathotep and Shub-Niggurath, which we know from The Whisperer in Darkness.  Moon-beasts worship Nyarlathotep. Perhaps it is a religious war between Mi-Go Shub-Niggurath worshipers and Moon-beast Nyarlathotep worshipers.  Or, an alternative I like better, Nyarlathotep pits his worshipers against each other for His own amusement.

The second possibility that occurred to me starts with the information that the Mi-Go bodies consist of a form of matter that does not occur naturally on Earth. Maybe the Mi-Go bodies are multi-dimensional and their bases on the moon partially overlap with the Dreamlands (another dimension) and thus bother the Moon-beasts.  Alternatively, we are talking about aliens, so there is no urgent reason for the Game Master to define this interaction; they can just leave it a tantalizing mystery.

At any rate, on the Earth, I was thinking that the Moon-beasts would use Men from Leng as catspaws while the Mi-Go would use human cultists or biological constructs. For biological constructs I was considering using Men In Black from ufology fame as the Mi-Go’s shadowy agents in the 1970s.

Currently, my idea for the skeleton of the adventure plot is as follows. Initially, Delta Green Agents must secure microfilm from an NSA dead drop to prevent it from falling into MAJESTIC’s hands.   They find that the location of the dead drop is in New York City’s City Hall on the roof.  This all just happens to occur on May 8^th of 1970s right in the middle of an event called the Hard Hat Riot. 

The Hard Hat Riot was a domestic upheaval in which “when around 400 construction workers and around 800 office workers attacked around 1,000 demonstrators affiliated with the student strike of 1970. The students were protesting the May 4 Kent State shootings and the Vietnam War, following the April 30 announcement by President Richard Nixon of the U.S. invasion of neutral Cambodia,” (Wikipedia). 

The key points here are that New York City becomes a madhouse with 20,000 people on the streets and City Hall surrounded. There is a conflict on the roof of City Hall, in that the NY mayor ordered all City Hall flags to be flown at half-staff to honor the Kent State University student’s deaths which occurred on May 4, 1970. The counter-protestors (construction workers and office workers) who held American flags, wanted the American flag over the roof of City Hall to be flown at full mast. This resulted in a violent conflict between anti-war students and counter-protestors. 

I thought this would be an interesting environment to set a Delta Green operation in. Get in and get out; just don’t die. Into this environment will be Men from Leng Moon-beast agents who wear hard hats to hide their horns and who target the Delta Green agents because they do not want the Mi-Go signals on the NSA microfilm to be obtained by government officials, Delta Green or MAJESTIC.  Thank you Dragoleaf for the hard hat idea! 

Now what is on the NSA microfilm? As a reminder, the Mi-Go sent “indecipherable fragments of intelligent and systematic communications originating from the moon and aimed at sites on the Earth and in high orbit.”  Since the Mi-Go wanted to open communications with an official Earth government (or likely multiple governments), I think that the Earth sites that are being targeted from the moon are areas of concentrated civilization with political rivalries.  These would be Washington DC, Moscow, London, Beijing, New Delhi, Berlin, and Tokyo.

That is about as far as I have gotten with this scenario idea, but I also possibly wanted to include foreign agents, difficulties between the FBI and the other intelligence agencies, and some kinetic conflict with MAJESTIC, but we will see.

 Potential Adventure 2: Gyre and Gimble or The Great Race vs the Lloigor

The US military has used Alice and Wonderland references to discuss nuclear subjects, and I will be no different.  In October 1962, the US came very close to a nuclear war with the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  But what if there was a way for the US to be protected from nuclear weapons and fallout completely?

In the realm of science fiction, Issac Asimov needs no introduction.  He wrote a short story published in 1951 called “Breeds There a Man...?" about the possibility of development of an anti-nuclear force field generator. I will not completely spoil the story for you, but for my purposes I will say that Asimov floats the idea that aliens may not want humanity to have a counter for nuclear war.  This idea fits in perfectly to Delta Green.

In the Delta Green Mythos, The Great Race and the entities known as the Lloigor are at vicious odds.  Allow me to quote my own summary from a previous blog post. 

“In the Delta Green Handlers Guide on page 149 there is described a temporal war between The Great Race and the Lloigor.  To summarize the war, these two Mythos factions want either a radioactive future earth where a species of giant beetles dominate the planet, the Great Race’s desired outcome; or a sinister future human empire called “Tsan-Chan” to rise on Earth in approximately 5000 CE, the Lloigor’s objective.   The Lloigor’s objective is seemingly in direct conflict with the Great Race’s plans for a massive human nuclear war, as the Handler’s Guide says.”

If there was a possibility for humanity to gain a preventative measure against global nuclear war then The Great Race would be against it, and immediately deploy their cultists, The Motion, to interdict it.

What is sinister Tsan-Chan? In Lovecraft’s Beyond the Wall of Sleep, there is a conversation with an undefined cosmic star-like creature and the narrator. The cosmic entity says, “we are all roamers of vast spaces and travellers in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in the dark Egypt which you call ancient, or in the cruel empire of Tsan-Chan which is to come three thousand years hence”. 

This simple line from HPL has stimulated a great deal of imagination.  There is a Chaosium supplement for Call of Cthulhu called The Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan (2010) where Tsan-Chan is detailed in terrible and desperate terms. On the old Delta Green website, David Tormsen created the fan faction “the Collectors of the Long Vaults” about time-traveling agents from Tsan-Chan that show up to capture human psychics from the past (our modern age), kill them, turn them into essential salts, and reanimate them in the future in Tsan-Chan where they are needed in the fight against Mythos creatures that threaten the cruel empire.

Dovetailing with this, author Fee Fi Fo Fin further detailed these Tsan-Chan time-traveling agents (calling them Men in Black and Grey Men) and expanded on the other resources the cruel empire has in the modern day.  Notably, Fee proposes the idea that there is a sliver of the future timeline where Tsan-Chan exists without The Great Race’s interference. This timeline sliver is called The Narrow Way Through. 

If there was a technology to fully protect a civilization from nuclear weapons then the servants of the Lloigor, the cruel empire of Tsan-Chan, would strongly support it by changing the timeline to preserve or bolster the anti-nuclear technology.

My scenario idea is that there is a US mathematician, code named Gyre, who has been working on equations to generate an anti-nuclear radiation force field. These valuable equations are code named Gimble.  Delta Green (for some reason I have not figured out yet) is deployed to protect Gyre and Gimble as they move from one place to an elite mathematics conference.  At this conference the Delta Green agents will be made aware of the anti-nuclear significance of Gyre and Gimble, and the importance of this work to the USA and humanity as a whole.  Then they have to protect Gyre and Gimble (or perhaps make a decision between protecting Gyre or Gimble) from the deadly cultists of The Great Race, known as The Motion, who will stop at nothing to eliminate Gyre and Gimble from the timestream.  Time-traveling agents from Tsan-Chan will assist Delta Green, at first subtly then kinetically, with battling The Motion’s assassins.  Where this ends or how I fit in the alphabet intelligence agencies or events from the 1970s I have not identified yet.    

Since Potential Adventure 1 involved MAJESTIC, I did not want Potential Adventure 2 to involve that organization.  Variety being the spice of life and all. However, if I wanted to have an easter-egg link to MAJESTIC I could reference The Courtis Papers (Handler’s Guide, page 157) being a basis for the Gimble, the anti-nuclear radiation force field equations.  Dr Courtis wrote The Courtis Papers in 1949, derived from working on the alien craft, codenamed the Bucket (Handler’s Guide, pages 52-53).

Conclusion

So those are the ideas that have been bouncing in my head regarding the scenario contest and my three chosen themes: “Set between 1970-1989”, “Conflict between mythos monsters, DG in the middle”, and “Hook does not involve a murder or a dead body”.  I am pretty happy that both potential adventures 1 and 2 do not depend on ho-hum boring murders.  So, I am in the clear there. The second potential adventure would need more thought to place it somewhen interesting in the 1970s, and I want to add more 1970s flavor, for example relevant plot points and important encounters, to both potential adventures.  “Conflict between mythos monsters, DG in the middle” I think is represented well in both possible adventures, but I want to make sure I just don’t make one side the “good” aliens and the other the “bad” aliens. That is boring. Both sides are aliens and thus do not have humanity’s best interest in mind.  Actions and themes of both alien factions should reflect that.  Next blog posts on this subject I expect I will be sharpening hooks, building up plot skeletons and possibly be detailing NPCs. 

Delta Green and the 1970s Part 1: Testimony of James Jesus Angleton (1975) and discussion of the Church Committee (1975)

James Jesus Angleton

The Night at the Opera, Delta Green discord is hosting the 8th Annual N@TO Scenario Contest. 

 In this contest, scenarios written must choose at least three themes out of eleven. I have chosen the themes “Set between 1970-1989”, “Conflict between mythos monsters, DG in the middle”, and “Hook does not involve a murder or a dead body”.

The scenario hook should definitely not involve a murder/dead body because I strongly feel that the community should have more DG games without a starting corpse.  This was one of my heavy critiques with Call of Cthulhu adventures when I was playing in the 1990s. You couldn’t turn around in Call of Cthulhu without running into a corpse as the inciting incident.   Also, there are plenty of good fanmade DG adventures that do not start with a corpse, and I wanted to join those ranks.  So here we go. 

“Set between 1970-1989” was an interesting theme since I really did not know details about the actions of the intelligence agencies at that time, and this intrigued me. Naturally, I turned to primary sources for research.  Since the historical research community is all abuzz about declassification of JFK assassination files (originally, I was thinking of having the mother of all conspiracy theories have something to do with historical Delta Green activities, but I abandoned that idea), I stumbled into a mostly declassified secret Senate testimony of the CIA counterintelligence head, James Jesus Angleton, that was held in 1975.

It is 152 scanned pages and I have only breeched the first 40 or so of the testimony. It is a fascinating look at how the CIA, FBI, NSA and other organizations were acting in the early 1970s, before that date, and the troubles they were having. 

The Church Committee

When I posted this on the Night at the Opera discord, I was alerted by a fellow aficionado Agent Obtuse about the Church Committee which also occurred in 1975.  The Church Committee was a Senate select committee which was a blockbuster clearinghouse of information about investigations into intelligence abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI and IRS. It revealed at least five programs, including Operation MKULTRA, COINTELPRO, Family Jewels, Operation Mockingbird and Project SHAMROCK. 

I will just talk about three programs mentioned. MKULTRA was a CIA program to attempt to develop and refine protocols and drugs that could be used to force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.  Famously, LSD was used in this program. 

 Family Jewels was a group of reports on CIA programs. Among these programs discussed were funding of behavior modification research on unwitting U.S. citizens, and assassination plots against Fidel Castro and various other foreign targets, all said to be failures. 

Project SHAMROCK revealed the concrete existence of the NSA to the American public, and described its inception through an Armed Forces Security Agency (precursor to the NSA) espionage project to obtain all telegraphic information that entered the US called Project MINARET (1945). 

There is a lot here. Needless to say, in 1975 one could gently suggest that the intelligence services were on fire about what was being revealed. However, I am more interested in the early turn of the decade.  After all, in 1969 the US had the Apollo 11 moon landing, Woodstock, and the Manson Family murders.

So what state are the intelligence agencies in, during 1970? Enter the James Jesus Angleton secret Senate testimony from 1975. It is record number 157-10014-10004 from the National Archives.

Angleton (right)

Testimony of James Jesus Angleton to the Senate (1975)

Without further ado, here are excerpts from the testimony and my commentary. Brackets contain my inserts. Bolding is also mine.  

Page 6

“Mr. Johnson:  As the leading counter intelligence expert in the CIA, did you have any concrete evidence yourself that there was a foreign connection to this domestic unrest [Summer 1970]?

Mr. Angleton: The way I would comment on that is simply that the intelligence that we had gathered, fundamentally from December '61 on through, that the counter intelligence effort in the government was very important.”

Fucking amazing. Way to dodge a question and double down that your job is important.

Page 13

“Mr. Johnson: In the summer of 1970 it seems to me, then, the country and the intelligence community faced these facts of life: pronounced domestic unrest; inability to completely understand the degree of foreign connections over domestic unrest; and a severing of relationships between the FBI and the rest of the intelligence community.

Mr. Angleton: With the exception of the White House.

Mr. Johnson: With the exception of the White House.”

This establishes the milieu that the US intelligence agencies were finding themselves in during 1970. Almost sounds like a house of cards collapsed. 

Page 20

“Mr. Johnson: Is it true that Mr. Hoover underwent a kind of transportation in his attitudes toward what intelligence collection methods were feasible and acceptable in this country, and that he refused to conduct certain activities that he had conducted in the forties and fifties?

Mr. Angleton: Well, during the Johnson Administration and my facts by way of time may not be accurate -- he was being attacked in the Congress over many operational techniques. It is my understanding that he looked to the White House for some relief or approbation, and he received none.  I think his attitude was that if he was not going to have the support of the Executive, he was not going to subject the Bureau to a losing battle with politicians. Therefore he began systematically to cut back on all activities.”

Page 21-22 

“Mr. Johnson: So the upshot was for Mr. Hoover to eliminate certain collection methods he had used before?

Mr. Angleton: Gradually eliminate them.

Mr. Johnson: Now, what impact did this elimination of previous collection techniques have upon the CIA from your perspective?

Mr. Angleton: I think the basic thing was that it gradually closed sources of information and quality of information. And more important, -- and I think this is axiomatic -- that counter intelligence is about only as good as the relations between the FBI and the CIA are.

In other words, any activities we took up with the Bureau the Bureau always had constructive operational judgment to make. And I think by the same token we had a lot to say on the matter. As your data base disappeared, then your whole perceptions became cloudy, you didn't have the information. And you could not levy on the Bureau as we had prior to this requirement, targets, and other matters where we had coverage abroad. And this interplay between the external and internal is the heart of the operational task.

In other words, to us, if the Bureau is operating one part of the spectrum and we are operating the other, then we would have total coverage. But when you don't have this kind of relationship, and they can't follow up, and they are thwarted from doing many things, I would say the operational value diminishes, and eventually the final blow, banning, doing away with liaison.”

So, when the CIA and FBI had a rift as described at the time, then counterintelligence operations from the CIA just did not have as good information or any information at all. 

They were in the dark.

Rife with exploitation for Delta Green scenarios.

P26-P27

“Mr. Johnson: But isn't it true that during this period the military was under severe criticism for earlier civilian surveillance programs? 

Mr. Angleton: From where? 

Mr. Johnson: I believe the military was preparing for hearings before Sam Ervin's Committee on the subject of military surveillance over civilians. To some degree the military was under public criticism for being in the domestic intelligence gathering field.

Mr. Angleton: But I think the military took the position that they were responsible for their own security in conjunction with all other investigative agencies. 

In other words, there has always been a cardinal rule government that the head of every agency is responsible for his own security, that when the FBI develops information on any subversion, within any branch of the government, they send copies of those reports to the heads of the agency concerned for their action.

And, therefore, as far as I know no one had turned over the military prerogatives.

Mr. Johnson: Do these prerogatives extend beyond the military base itself?

Mr. Angleton: I don't know. I don't think it has anything to do with what directly affects the security of the armed forces.”

This discusses the Military gathering intelligence on civilians. Was this in the 1970’s specifically or earlier? 

P33

“Mr. Johnson: That just outlines for the NSA its mandate in monitoring the communications facilities, international communications facilities, used by American citizens. You might want to briefly glance over this section which explains it. 

[There is a white section here. Is it a redacted section?]

Communications intelligence is an activity of the NSA, as I understand it. And from reading the text it seems like NSA had primary interest here. But I wonder if the CIA was also interested in relaxing restraints in this area. 

Mr. Angleton: Every participant is a consumer of NSA product. And therefore they all have a an equal interest, they all had a departmental interest in enhancing the coverage by NSA.”

Discussion of the NSA and it’s “product” (intelligence) by Angleton. 

P34 

“Mr. Angleton. Normally [when gathering foreign intelligence] all customers [intelligence services], to my knowledge; would levy requirements on NSA.

Mr. Johnson. In the case of the CIA, what would be an example of a name that might be sent to the NSA to be placed on a watch list? You say a terrorist.

Would that be an example?

Mr. Angleton: A terrorist, an organization, intelligence individuals, political individuals, travel control.

Mr. Johnson: Would any of these names include the names of American citizens?

Mr. Angleton: As of that time I don't know. …”

Sure, Mr Angleton. Sure

Discussion of the Angleton testimony and the Delta Green angle on all of this will be included in Part 2.