Systems Intelligence Administration
From FABT
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Active: |
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Organization: |
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Affiliation: |
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Branch: |
Sector Zero |
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Type: |
Civilian foreign intelligence service |
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Role: |
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Size: |
1.8 million employees (at its height)
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Part of: |
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Headquarters: |
Sydney, Australia (2150 CE - 2162 CE) |
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Motto: |
"The unseen eye, the invisible hand." |
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Commanders: |
Director Jorge Barden (last) |
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Notable: |
Jacob Taylor (former) |
- "The unseen eye, the invisible hand."
- — SIA motto.
The Systems Intelligence Administration was the civilian foreign intelligence agency serving the Systems Alliance that was tasked with gathering, processing and analyzing national security information and intelligence from across the galaxy in the interests of protecting the Systems Alliance and the human race with means that don't require military action. Formed on the 20 April 2150 CE, the SIA was modelled after numerous famous intelligence agencies on Earth, chief among them the CIA of the United States, with many of its operatives and personnel being chosen from the ranks of the CIA, MI6, Mossad, DGSE, ASIS, Russian FIS, German FIS, and others: the initial purpose of the SIA was internal security, maintaining the cohesion of the Alliance and the reliability of its personnel to maximize its role as a supranational entity and ensure its lack of meddling in terrestrial affairs on Earth, as the Alliance was prohibited from doing in its charter. During the First Contact War, SIA operatives on Shanxi employed sabotage and espionage to limit the effectiveness of the turian occupation until Alliance reinforcements could arrive to liberate the colony, as well as to gather intelligence on their alien enemy to find weaknesses. After the First Contact War and humanity's introduction to the galactic scene, the SIA's role was massively expanded, with new funding and an expansion of powers to make it a more traditional foreign intelligence service, this time for all of humanity instead of any one human nation, and with the goal of gathering intelligence on their alien allies, non-allies and potential enemies: initially they focused on gathering more intelligence on the turians, but this was eventually abandoned in favor of spying on the Batarian Hegemony, who would become an avowed enemy of humanity for the rest of the Alliance's existence. The SIA would eventually employ 1.7 million employees who operated in roles across the galaxy, with agents on the Citadel, Omega, most of the Council and non-Council homeworlds, major Council colonies, human colonies, the Attican Traverse and more. As the SIA expanded, so did its capabilities, and much like the agencies before it, it eventually adopted roles beyond its initial mandate, including but not limited to black operations, paramilitary actions, assassination, propaganda, monitoring and surveillance, sting operations and other wetwork activities. What information the SIA could not obtain on its own would be purchased from the Shadow Broker or other information brokers, and on rare occasions, cross-agency cooperation and information exchanges would take place between Council intelligence and the SIA: one such occasion was following the Battle of Virmire when the salarian Special Tasks Group agreed to share information gathered from Saren's base with the SIA.
This became mandatory however during the Reaper War, where the SIA lost significant amounts of its personnel, resources and funding when the Reapers ravaged human controlled space, and many of its operatives would succumb to indoctrination and play double agent, leading to many classified operations being compromised and even more SIA personnel being lost before anti-indoctrination protocols were eventually enacted to reduce the risk of misinformation, infiltration and counter-intelligence. As the military alliance Commander Shepard formed grew bigger, the SIA found itself sharing intelligence with more and more of its allies, and eventually participated in joint-agency black operations against the Reapers and Cerberus, although much of the SIA's paramilitary division's time was taken up with the latter. Many ex-Cerberus operatives and defectors would be assigned to SIA operations due to their intelligence value, and any captured Cerberus personnel were given to the SIA for interrogation and intelligence extraction, as was the case with the surrendering Cerberus general, Oleg Petrovsky. This was seen as a sweet irony, as Cerberus itself had been formed from the overly patriotic branch of the SIA formerly known as Sector Six, which had gone rogue after the First Contact War and formed the pro-human organization not long after. Cerberus' intimate knowledge of the SIA and how they operated meant they were often more effective than the SIA was, especially in its weakened state, but this went both ways, and ultimately helped the SIA to bring Cerberus down, especially once it accepted the help of Cerberus defectors and POWs. SIA intelligence proved crucial to the eventual knockout blow that would finish Cerberus for good in Operation Defiant, allowing the galaxy to focus on the Reapers and finally defeat them at the Battle of Sol.
After the Reaper War came to a close, the SIA was in a sorry state. It had lost two thirds of its original strength, having largely relied on intelligence resources and personnel from its allies and Cerberus defectors, its intelligence network was in ruins thanks to Cerberus and the Reapers, its budget had to be slashed due to post-war economic depression and prioritization of reconstruction efforts and restoring the exhausted Alliance military, and overall, the organization was in a piss poor state by 2187 CE. However, Alliance politician Connor Faringar (and secret Cerberus supporter) showed a vested interest in rebuilding the SIA and had the resources to do it, but managed to convince then-SIA director Jorge Barden that it could only be done if the Alliance was rebuilt "from the ground up", and invested in supporting the Voice of Shepard Party, with Jorge Barden was convinced to support as well: to this day, it's suggested SIA resources were even used to ensure the VOS won the 2191 CE election, which includes allegations of voter fraud and poll manipulation. Despite these allegations, these would not have changed the result by much, and VOS, even without manipulated votes, won the election by a landslide, by 31 December 2191 CE, the Alliance was no more, with the Systems Coalition Act (2191) being passed and replacing it with the Systems Coalition. True to his word, Faringar provided the funding and materials necessary to rebuild the SIA, and over the next few months, the SIA saw an increase in employment, resources, funding, intelligence infrastructure, and more: however, Faringar had an ulterior motive, and on 12 May 2192 CE, he managed to pass the Central Intelligence and Operations Bureau of the Systems Coalition Act (2192), which reformed the SIA into the Central Intelligence and Operations Bureau of the Systems Coalition, otherwise known as Prometheus, which would become the new and improved foreign intelligence arm of the Coalition, but this time with its own dedicated military division. This saw the dissolution of the SIA, with Prometheus taking its place, secretly as a successor to Cerberus with the goal of achieving what its predecessor never could.