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The Central Office for Recruitment Services (CORS) performs background checks as to the fitness and possible security risks of potential recruits. It maintains exhaustive records of agents’ specializations to reduce duplication of effort. Finally, it per- forms research into discovering the most favorable traits in recruited agents that determine mission successes and agent survival. CORS has undergone a number of changes over the years, reflected by the changing needs of Aegis, and currently applies pressure on members of Aegis Prime to expand CORS into an agency for both recruitment and training. Thus far, this bid for change has been effectively challenged by ISS, which fears a dramatic increase in security risks.

BRIEF HISTORY

This division sprang into existence as one of the original three committees convened by Aegis Prime. During its initial years, Aegis had a growth spurt and the micromanagement technique of hand-selecting agents was made too cumbersome by the sheer volume of new agents needed at the time. At that point it was headed by Leslie Dunham, a former FBI agent, and was called the Recruitment Office. Its primary function was to catalog all active Aegis agents and provide formation as to their geo- graphic regions and any special skills or connections. These efforts were extended in order to create an exhaustive and detailed report of locations and specializations needing attention by members of Aegis Prime in order to have a nationwide pres- ence. The RO also sought new potential agents and compiled lists of possible Cell members. Members of Aegis Prime then used this information to create hosts of parent Cells across the country.

Meanwhile, a number of agents within the RO began to worry about security, since this information was all being housed in a single office, and there were rumblings across Aegis about the need for security. Dunham worked to quell any rumors and took steps to ensure that the records were secure, and the data-gathering process quietly continued. As parent Cells began to recruit, they made more requests to tap into this database, and Dunham realized the danger of setting a prece- dent. He began to pressure parent Cells to look for local talent and argued that as the pressure to create a nationwide pres- ence had abated somewhat, it was more important that parent Cells extend their own resources. His only concession to this firm and fast guideline was in recruiting specialist agents for Aegis Prime members’ pet projects.

Ironically, in 1956, while on a mission to personally examine a researcher for recruitment onto an Aegis project, Dunham was killed. Records state that the researcher was already in the process of being indoctrinated into a project headed up by a Dr.

Xopolous, and it was determined later that Black Book agents were responsible. Upon Dunham’s demise, Aaron Cook, Dunham’s second in command, took over leadership of the RO and made security of the utmost importance. Not surprisingly, he was one of the strongest advocates for the development of ISS later that same year.

With pressure to focus on more internal matters until securi- ty could be resolved, Cook decided to improve the RO’s ability to track Cell members. He tasked a number of agents to focus on ways to mechanically code and catalog agents using a prim- itive but effective punch-card system. Over the course of five years this punch-card system was abandoned in favor of using an innovative computer the size of a small closet. This was deemed an efficient method for coding and storing information related to agents, but the RO quickly outstripped the sole com- puter’s capabilities. Cook had dreams of creating multiple stand-alone offices in different regions of the country, each with its own computer system. Once ISS had established reasonable security protocols, Cook lobbied to expand the RO with a num- ber of satellite offices. He argued that the coding system was nearly unbreakable and that completed records would be stored only at Area 51.

As a consequence, by the mid-1960’s, the Recruitment Office had splintered into multiple branches, one for each geographic region, and each office continued working closely with ISS to determine the best security protocols. They also learned from ISS staff some more effective ways to check potential recruits’ backgrounds and affiliations. By 1972 there were ten satellite offices, and only an overworked skeleton staff remained behind at Area 51 to sort and file computerized records daily. The Recruitment Offices placed heavy emphasis on personal recruit- ment of specialist agents and often entertained potential recruits using hefty expense accounts, and Cook was quick to cover up these gaffes for his own personal gain.

Each office operated relatively independently, and the expense of transporting personnel, secure records, and other items began to look suspicious to one of the skeleton staffers back at Area 51. Iris Erikson was the senior staff specialist in charge of accounting, and over time she began to track the movement of funds across all CORS offices, rather than focus- ing on a single office at a time. After she reached some inevitable conclusions, she quietly made a few observations in the right ears. Within a few days, Aaron Cook was stripped of his office, and, surprisingly, Erikson was elevated to his position. Erikson performed a spring-cleaning in all of the satellite offices and personally oversaw operations in each office for weeks at a time. The remaining staffers consisted of honest, hard-working agents or those who had been cowed into behav- ing properly. Over the next four years, Erikson also devised an improved filing system for the computerized records. She quadrupled the Area 51 skeleton staff to handle the influx of new information but encountered one problem:She had no reasonable (let alone secure) means for transporting data or

personnel to and from Area 51. As luck would have it, Hendricks of OpTac saw her plight and offered his assistance, in exchange for a small favor: The RO would assist OpTac in fielding highly specialized and well trained recruitment teams, under the scrutiny of OpTac, not the RO. After careful consideration, Erikson agreed.

Just two years later, however, despite the best efforts to cen- tralize by using an information storehouse, it was decided that the RO needed to be run from a central office. With the bless- ings of Aegis Prime a new facility was ordered constructed on Area 51 to house this agency. Before the construction had even begun, the new “Central Office” was sought out by the now aging members of Aegis Prime to hand-select agents in active Cells for outstanding service that might warrant their inclusion in the support staff of Aegis Prime. Until this point, each mem- ber of Aegis Prime had selected her own staff, but with the pres- sures of duty and the ravages of time, they became willing to delegate this responsibility to others.

From 1985 to 1987, the Central Office worked closely with ISS to monitor close to 100 Aegis agents to determine their suit- ability for Aegis Prime’s needs, and began to recognize that many agents were limited in their usefulness because they lacked certain types of training. Of the original 100 agents, only 21 were found to be up to Prime’s exacting standards; the remainder were left to serve their Cells. Tasked with the dual responsibilities of relocating the Recruitment Offices and seek- ing candidates for Prime Support staff, it wasn’t until 1989 that all branch offices were officially abandoned and reformed into the Central Office of Recruitment Services, housed within Area 51 at Groom Dry Lake. Because of this centralization, OpTac lost a lot of leverage over CORS, since CORS no longer relied on OpTac for movement of personnel and goods.

In 1990, Iris Erikson resigned her position in CORS to take on other duties. It is rumored that she may be a member of Aegis Prime, but this has never been confirmed. A number of her for- mer satellite office managers report having seen her within the confines of Area 51 on several occasions since relinquishing her earlier position. CORS was put under the leadership of Benjamin Carlisle, a relatively young agent at 31 to hold such a position of power. Under his leadership, there was a definite shift from merely seeking out potential to actually tracking and evaluating both agents and potential recruits. To create a thor- ough system for keeping track of agents’ performance, Carlisle enlisted the expert advice of ISDM, which was able to develop a HERMES-friendly system to extract information directly from HERMES reports filed by individual agents as well as evalua- tions by Cell leaders and parent Cells.

Despite the fact that OpTac no longer held much power over CORS, in 1991, Carlisle made good on Erikson’s promise and worked with OpTac to field specialized recruitment teams, typi- cally taking on an advisory role to teams already hand-selected by OpTac staff. Under Carlisle, CORS reports have become increasingly vocal about agent fatalities and mission failures.

These reports point to the inevitable stagnation of Aegis’ suc- cess rates as a consequence of poor recruitment selections and uninformed choices made by parent Cells in selecting agents with minimal training.

In the past five years, CORS has continued to change its role within Aegis to be more advisory, providing expert opinions on recruitment procedures for parent Cells and releasing evalua- tions to parent Cells, agents’ supervisors, and Aegis Prime members. Carlisle places an emphasis on efficiency and sees to it that all of his interdepartmental units collaborate to keep one another informed of trends and irregularities.

CURRENT STATUS

CORS stays busy with the simple act of keeping pace with Aegis’ growing needs for personnel. Saddled with this task and the awareness that better trained agents make for less turnover in the long run, they are in the midst of a conflict about Aegis operations. In direct opposition to OpTac’s push to make Aegis more of a paramilitary organization, CORS has no interest in doing broad-based training of Aegis personnel, but rather to develop each agent’s own abilities to better serve Aegis with increased mission success rates and decreased fatalities. CORS is currently engaged in some wrangling with ISS over security issues if agents are to be trained by Aegis representatives, or even merely collected in the same location for training. ISS also resists the need to centralize, which is a goal of Carlisle’s.

Generally, CORS independently offers consultations to other Aegis divisions. The fact that CORS has a wealth of information pass through its files about many Aegis agents, combined with CORS’ extensive network of liaisons among the divisions, plus a heavy dose of healthy paranoia, often leads to support staff and agents being slightly wary of CORS. In an attempt to head off excessive amounts of anxiety, CORS recently enacted an internal confidentiality policy. This policy states that no CORS agent is allowed to reveal any portion of an agent’s back- ground check or current standing without express authoriza- tion. Furthermore, any release of information must be noted in the agent’s file, with notations as to the extent of data released and to whom the information was given. Obviously, these measures do not prevent others from sharing this released information, but CORS felt its steps were sufficient and appro- priate. All completed files are passed along to DAS, and CORS retains only summaries of the record, along with an agent’s skills, current standing, most recent evaluation, and specializa- tion and geographic location.

Ultimately, CORS is responsible for a number of duties, including research and evaluation, background checking, and recruiting. As such, CORS has a number of subcommittees to attend to specific tasks. These groups change as new tasks are dictated, but this is the most recent listing of subcommittees: Research and Evaluation, Background Processing, Recruitment, and Training Coordination.