outset on the special operators of the Joint Special Op- erations Command (JSOC). They conducted psycho- logical warfare (going out of uniform to embassies to shape media campaigns), trained foreign troops, and performed so-called “surgical” strikes. JSOC strikes disrupted terrorist networks for years with “kill/ capture” missions, murdering a few fighters here and a few there in midnight raids. Such small-scale raids were less costly and politically dangerous than sending the regular army to occupy foreign territory.
Authorized by “lethal findings” of the National Security Council, targeted killings soon became more politically expedient than taking captives. Extraordi- nary renditions, after all, led to concerns over inter- rogation techniques and prison legalities, and stirred public sympathies. Leaving a target dead on the ground meant no risk of a thoughtless guard in some black site posting a trophy photo online.
The notion of “surgical” strikes was always a problem. Senior commanders estimated that JSOC had about a 50% success rate at choosing the correct targets. Viral videos and photos showed villages and weddings reeling from overnight killing sprees.
And the shaky legal framework under which the kill teams operated led to internal complications. The cultures of some JSOC forces became warped after years of White House-sanctioned murder, cover-ups, and unaccountability. An “above the law” attitude became common. Many service members learned to rely solely on each other for support and for justice,
and never to allow a disciplinary or criminal issue to be taken outside their own unit.
The White House soon reduced the tempo of JSOC operations in favor of drone strikes. In some regions, a generation of children grew up listening for the terrifying whine of a drone’s engines over- head. And the switch did little to improve the odds of choosing the right target, despite the promise of using surveillance drones to study a target’s “pattern of life” before a strike. Even so, drones alleviated many of the risks of keeping special operators in battle. The National Security Council, JSOC, the CIA, and all branches of the U.S. military all maintain their own kill lists.
In 2014, U.S. special operations forces deployed to 133 countries in raids, rescue attempts, and train- ing exercises. JSOC’s powerful data-mining system in Washington, D.C., puts its techniques for identifying targets based on particular criteria to work for the FBI, the DEA, and ICE.
By many accounts, JSOC operators have been increasingly active against drug cartels in Mexico. The Mexican constitution limits the scope of action of the U.S. military, but FBI and DEA agents work with Mexican police and military forces every day. JSOC operators embedded within U.S. federal law en- forcement, and within the Mexican military, serve as tactical and technical advisors, provide SIGINT, and provide training—and lethal skills and experience if they just happen to get drawn into a firefight.
Delta Green, naturally, leverages JSOC’s flexibility for its own operations at every opportunity.
TOP SECRET//SAR-DELTA GREEN
» 3 JAN 2013: An ISIL car bomb kills 28 Shia pilgrims and injures 60 in Baghdad. ISIL attacks will kill 1,041 and injure more than 2,200 in Iraq by the end of the year.
» 13 JAN 2013: Lyle Ramshaw, leader of the Cult of Transcendence-af- filiated Church of Interlife, dies of a heart attack. Some of his followers buck against an aggressive takeover by Ramshaw’s superior,
128
// The Past //
// Delta Green: Handler’s Guide //
» 15 FEB 2013: A 20-meter-wide meteor explodes over Chelyabinsk, Rus - sia, with the force of a 400-kiloton nuclear blast. The shock wave damages 7,200 buildings in six cities, injuring about 1,500 peo
- ple. The meteor went undetected because its approach radiant was close to the sun.
» 20 FEB 2013: Bioengineers and physicians describe creating an artifi - cial human ear with living tissue and 3D printing.
» 7 MAR 2013: Abandoning the goals of the Cult of Transcendence, former “bishop” Nathan Harmati establishes his own cult, Naya Prayasa (Hindi
for “The New Endeavor”), dedicated to his unhinged obsession: foment - ing war and civil conflict. Naya Prayasa’s chief means of influence is Americans Against Covert Enemies, an extreme political group that opposes immigration.
» 3 APR 2013: Lionel Glass, a “bishop” in the shattered Cult of Tran - scendence, establishes himself as leader of one of its member cults, the Exalted Circle. The Exalted Circle focuses on using its members’ great wealth to increase its influence in the U.S.
» 15 APR 2013: Two Chechen-American Islamist terrorists detonate two bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring hundreds. » 15 MAY 2013: Biologists announce success at cloning human embryon
- ic stem cells.
» 5 JUN 2013: The Guardian publishes the first of many reports based on NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations of the NSA’s global sur
- veillance programs in partnership with governments and corporations. » 21 JUN 2013: A Bloomberg Industries analysis finds that about 70 per - cent of the $49 billion U.S. intelligence budget for 2013 is con
- tracted out, primarily to a small handful of companies such as Edward Snowden’s employer Booz Allen Hamilton. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence says about 20 percent of intelligence personnel work in the private sector.
» 9 JUL 2013: Severing all ties with the Cult of Transcendence, the Brotherhood of New Potential relaunches as the New Potential Move
- ment. Led by the Dorian Grey Society’s Henry Nemmers, the New Poten
- tial Movement increasingly struggles to recruit younger members. » 13 JUL 2013: Florida murder suspect George Zimmerman is acquitted in
the 2012 killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. International outcry inspires the Black Lives Matter movement.
// The Past //
// Delta Green: Handler’s Guide //
Worm, the Exalted Circle, and Naya Prayasa, quietly keeping to their own malevolent interests, have deftly avoided attention.
In an age of such easy communication, the most dangerous threats are not powerful and far-flung cults, but isolated and desperate individuals.
When some remnant of an aeons-old inhuman intelligence turns up in a museum, most experts clas- sify it incorrectly as a human work or a forgery and move on. When a grainy video of an unnatural horror makes the rounds on social media, most viewers know in their bones that it’s a fake, and those who know better look insane if they say otherwise. On the rare occasion when someone stumbles across an unnatural
Lurkers and Lone Wolves
Today, Delta Green—whether the Program or the Out- laws—does not face the well-organized cults and con- spiracies that threatened humanity in earlier decades. MAJESTIC, the Fate, and the Cult of Transcendence, all seemingly invincible in the 1990s, were crippled by internal power struggles. Delta Green uprooted the DeMonte Clan. The Karotechia fell to the coop- eration of Delta Green, MAJESTIC, and GRU SV-8, three rival groups who shared a far greater hatred of Nazis. Tiger Transit and its Tcho-Tcho backers went legitimate. Black Cod Island, the Disciples of the
» 21 AUG 2013: Bradley Manning is sentenced to 35 years in prison for releasing classified documents to Wikileaks. At first held in harsh conditions in Quantico, Virginia, Manning is later transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Manning’s lawyer announces on 22 AUG 2013 that his client is female and has changed her name to Chelsea.
» 9 SEP 2013: Delta Green agents in the Outlaws faction report the extermination of the last identified ghoul of New Orlean’s DeMon
- te clan. They also report signs that individual ghouls fled the city over the years, in human guise.
» 16 SEP 2013: Former Navy reservist turned information technology con - tractor Aaron Alexis shoots and kills 12 and wounds 3 at the Naval Sea Systems Command headquarters at the Washington Navy Yard before being killed by police.
» 30 SEP 2013: International Development Solutions, a subsidiary of Academi, Inc. (formerly Blackwater and XE Services), brings in $214 million in Department of State security contracts for Fiscal Year 2013. The related companies Blackwater Lodge and Training Center, Inc., and Academi Training Center, Inc., bring in nearly $62 million in 2013 contracts with the Department of Defense, Department of Home
- land Security, and Department of State.
» 20 OCT 2013: A Zika virus outbreak in French Polynesia affects thou - sands, with some researchers estimating more than 30,000 cases. Zika cases and outbreaks are reported in Japan and across the South Pacif
- ic in 2013 and 2014.
» 4 DEC 2013: USA Today publishes “Behind the
Bloodshed,” an ongoing, interactive examination of U.S. mass killings. As of early 2017, the data range from 39 cases with 184 dead in 2006 to 31 cases with 188 dead in 2016.
130
// The Past //
// Delta Green: Handler’s Guide //
tome on the Dark Web, scanned or transcribed and uploaded to an unnamed directory along with ten thousand other PDFs, it usually does no harm. Very few searchers have the linguistic skills, occult erudi- tion, and patience to endlessly cross-reference mis- translated words and lines in other, equally rare man- uscripts. Few of those who have such skills have the interest to do so much work for the obviously insane ravings of a lunatic or a crackpot. Often, a genuinely unnatural discovery leads to suicide or a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and the danger flares out on its own, appearing and vanishing like a virtual particle.
But it takes only one discoverer in a million, obsessing over horrors and glorying in the vengeance that can be wreaked upon the world, or simply compelled to find and reveal the truth no matter how strange, to make an unnatural discovery a terrible threat. Delta Green Agents must investigate the awful repercussions and suppress the evidence to make it even less likely to gain attention. And in a few weeks or months, they must move on to the next impossi- ble-to-predict horror, the next discoverer who drags humanity a little closer to the end.
TOP SECRET//SAR-DELTA GREEN
» 22 JAN 2014: DEA Special Agent Olivia Morales sends a sample of “Yer- ba Loca,” a popular marijuana strain distributed by the Sinaloa Car- tel, to the University of Mississippi Marijuana Research Project for
genetic analysis. The request is low-priority and soon gets lost in the system. The samples and their case numbers remain in storage, a possible lead to the heart of Tong Shukoran’s operations.
» 22 FEB 2014: Mexican police and marines arrest Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
» 8 MAR 2014: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappears over the South China Sea with 227 passengers and 12 crew. There are no survivors. » 18 MAR 2014: Russia annexes the Ukrainian territory of Crimea follow-
ing a widely disputed referendum on Crimean separation from Ukraine. The annexation draws condemnation by the U.N. and economic sanctions against Russia by the U.S.
» 14 APR 2014: Boko Haram, an Islamic terrorist group intending to cre -
ate a caliphate in Nigeria, kidnaps 276 female students from a school in Chibok, Nigeria. Fifty-seven escape over the next few months; more
than 100 others escape and are released over the next three years. » 23 MAR 2014: The World Health Organization is notified of an outbreak
of Ebola virus disease in Guinea. The outbreak kills more than 11,000 in west Africa before it subsides in mid-2016.
» 22 MAY 2014: Reports emerge of ISIL members destroying a 3,000-year- old neo-Assyrian statue from Tel Ajaja, Syria.
» 15 JUN 2014: The U.S. sends forces back to Iraq, at the invitation of the Iraqi government, in response to offensives by ISIL.