Gang of Four

The Gang of Four was an American political cabal comprised of the NSA, CIA, FBI, and DEA, formed at some unspecified time in the mid-20th century. During its existence, the Gang of Four amassed boundless political and military influence, operating in an extrajudicial manner and with no Congressional oversight.

It is largely responsible for the The Collapse of the United States, causing a crescendo of political, social and economic instability due to its dubious involvement in both government and foreign affairs.

Origins (1950s-1990s)
Formed some time in the years following World War 2, Since the 1950's, the organization had on file a major percentage of every telegraph, telephone, and radiophone call made in Moscow until 1992. Even the encrypted calls were recorded, though some were not decoded for as long as twenty years. In the United States, they had records of every wire transfer and telegram from every on-line office in the country; detailed information on all manner of transactions, from stock exchanges down to the most insignificant savings account, was kept. The NSA was by far the most powerful of the Gang of Four agencies, working in or out of the United States with no legal restrictions whatsoever.

In the 1960's the NSA hired over 22,000 people a year as "analysts" - most of these individuals were either "attached" to the Department of Defense or untraceable, concealing themselves within the byzantine amount of paperwork generated by a bureaucratic process. Given the clandestine nature of the military intelligence field, the Gang of Four would continue to grow unchecked in both size and scope, acquiring nigh-limitless influence in Congress, the Pentagon, and various other military circles.

After the declaration of Martial Law in 1996, several theoretical mathematicians in the military intelligence community began to note a number of incongruities in the way that the various government agencies were operating in sync. There seemed to be a great deal of "black ops" being done without any authorization whatsoever. For example, in April of that year, one Alexia Valenze was "sanctioned" by operatives of the NSA and CIA. The girl was a nobody, a showgirl in a Las Vegas review. Yet her death was carried out with the care and detail of a high-level political assassination, costing the U.S. government thousands of dollars. In the end, the order for her death was traced to an empty office in the State Department. To this day, the motive for her death, and the man or woman who gave the order, remains a mystery.

In a totally unrelated move of desperation, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs formed the MIC, or Military Intelligence Cooperative, to deal with the vast amount of duplication in the nine intelligence agencies of the United States Military. The MIC was run by long standing Military Intelligence operatives, and despite the cries of the NSA and CIA, the MIC remained its own department.

Taking this as a discovery of their true motives, the Gang of Four took several putative steps to sabotage the MIC. At first the MIC thought it was under attack from just the NSA. Since the NSA was also attached to the Department of Defense it was believed that a natural rivalry would exist. But soon problems started coming in from the CIA, FBI, & DEA. This worried MIC leaders, who knew what those organizations were truly capable of.

By 1997, when the NSA withheld massive amounts of satellite information from military and Israeli sources during the "Mideast Meltdown," it was obvious that something was wrong. The NSA had over three hundred operatives in the Mideast. When war was declared between Iran and Iraq, they pulled out without relaying any information to the MIC. The NSA also intentionally withheld all satellite photos for two hours. By the time the information was received, the old Russian missile carriers were already in position and it was too late. The US lost critical assets in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Pleading that they'd needed to pull out their agents undetected, the NSA claimed that any action by the military would have set off the war before any operatives got out.

It was too much. Later that year, the MIC, under the direction of Mr. Seward (now considered the President), opened personnel files in the Department of Defense and started questioning.