SPECWEAPS
CLASSIFICATION SAPPHIRE VORPAL JULIET
POTUS EYES ONLY
NSA/CANTRIP REF TAG JXJFF44890-SDKJA88-UUTDD8-1MMQOSU CODE GROUP NOVEMBER
XXX XXX XXX
Mr. President, this briefing is for your eyes only and must, as per Executive Order PEI-43Y (Secret) be read within twenty-four (24) hours of your assuming the office of President of the United States of America.
This is a familiarization briefing intended to acquaint you with the current balance of Archean power between the several parties of the Dresden/Yalta accords.
HISTORICAL INTRO FOLLOWS:
This briefing assumes you have read Document WEAPS-D/Y-MISK-112 (Miskatonic University Journal of Natural Sciences, 4Q 1927: "Some thoughts on the potential of harnessing Shoggoth plasmids in a controlled system," Dyer, Danforth, et al).
In 1929, representatives of the major powers met at Dresden, Germany to discuss the potential for misuse of various Great Old Ones specimens then known to exist around the planet. Subjects LAKE/1 through LAKE/8 were unavailable for study. The Soviet Army admitted to the discovery and charting of subject BALTIC/ALPHA discovered amongst ruins on the Baltic seabed. The British government described various finds in the Palestine and Arabian deserts. It was agreed at this time that any and all weaponization of these specimens (SIERRA PAPA) or any technology derived from them (KILO TANGO) was expressly forbidden under the terms of the Dresden Accords until and unless all signing powers agreed at a later date to nullify the treaty. The signatory powers to those accords were: The United States, Great Britain on behalf of the Commonwealth, The Soviet Union, Weimar Germany, Imperial Japan, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Argentina and Chile.
The United States Government immediately began a crash program of investigation into weapon systems designed specifically to overcome known physical limitations of the LAKE subjects and associated Shoggoth specimens. Early code names for the project included HOLY PRANDIAL, HAVE PORTAL and HOTEL PAPA LIMA CHARLIE before the outbreak of World War II. As that conflict escalated, organization DEEP BLACK was spun up to monitor potential breaches of the Dresden Accords on the part of any combatant. No breaches were discovered, and all signatories maintained communication updates on Dresden Incursion Notifications throughout the initial years of the conflict. In 1942, however, indications from station Germany indicated that designated personnel were being compartmentalized from activity and station Germany made its final report in April, 1942 with a fragmentary transmission containing the words "Thule," "Active" and "Seabed."
At this, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States formally activated clause IX of the Dresden Accords permitting them to develop sponsored weapon systems to cope with possible KILO TANGO incursions. In 1943 this program was formally tagged MANHATTAN in the United States and assumed critical importance. DEEP BLACK, in its nascent years, had recruited the surviving members of the Pabodie and Starkweather expeditions and begun defensive analysis of SITE GAMMA at Mount Erebus, offering full updates and observer posts to Soviet, British and German personnel. With the cessation of Dresden updates from inside Germany, the German observer personnel were detained onsite at SITE GAMMA and restricted from communications with their home state. All volunteered to join US exploitation efforts and repudiated Nazi Germany.
As Germany fell to invasions from both fronts, American servicemen liberated various Nazi concentration camps. Selectively briefed intelligence assets in those units confirmed the presence of KILO TANGO installations in most of these locations, with an emphasis on the likelihood of experimental control of SIERRA PAPA materials. Most disturbing were the discovery of two separate underground facilities containing coldwater containment systems approximately fifteen meters square. In both tanks, human ossiferous remains were discovered and later identified to be those of camp inmates. Railroad movements just prior to liberation indicated shipments of unknown content away from these sites to northern coastal installations, especially Peenemünde. Although no KILO TANGO or SIERRA PAPA materials had been found there, indications of transshipment were present. Several personnel at the rocket base were discovered to be suffering from what was later determined to be extreme radiation poisoning and a U-Boat sunk in the docks area by Allied airstrike was found to have large cargo loading portals half-installed over its aft torpedo spaces and ballast tanks.
Project MANHATTAN assumed a new urgency as no success was forthcoming in the location of these shipments. Evidence discovered later in the 1950s indicates that the Soviet Union had discovered one sunken Type XXI U-Boat in the Baltic Sea near the original discovery site of specimen BALTIC/ALPHA, but at the time no other information was available for several months.
In late 1944, a POW in the American zone of WESTERN/ETO declared himself in possession of KILO TANGO information to his intelligence debriefers. He was immediately transferred to the CONUS and sequestered with DEEP BLACK assets at Hanford, Washington, where he divulged that a shipment of SIERRA PAPA materials had been made via U-Boat to Imperial Japan.
Once his information was verified, President Roosevelt was briefed on the likely delivery point of the SIERRA PAPA material - the Kokura Arsenal or Army Marine Headquarters. Immediate use of early MANHATTAN assets was recommended to ensure destruction of all KILO TANGO and SIERRA PAPA materials in the target areas; however, President Roosevelt, determining that DEEP BLACK was not positive of the arrival of these materials, decided on continued conventional firebombing.
In early July, 1945, however, President Harry S. Truman was informed by DEEP BLACK leadership that they had credible evidence of the arrival of an unidentified German Type XXI in Hiroshima Port. President Truman, up to that point unaware of DEEP BLACK, Dresden Accords or the original purpose of Project MANHATTAN, signed Executive Order PEI-43Y to ensure his successors were not subject to strategic surprise. At the same time, he authorized the immediate MANHATTAN strike against Hiroshima in an attempt to neutralize any loose Dresden-regulated materials.
Unfortunately, after the mission plan for Hiroshima was finalized, new information indicated that the submarine in Hiroshima harbor was transporting bullion assets of the Nazi government, and that another Type XXI had been possibly spotted in the Nagasaki docks nestled among two IJN I-Boats. President Truman withdrew for two hours, consulting with DEEP BLACK briefer Edwin O. Reischauer, then authorized an additional strike on the Nagasaki target.
Following the close of hostilities, the principals met secretly at Yalta (already established as neutral ground) to clarify the Dresden Accords. The Accords were reaffirmed, and the right of any state to use MANHATTAN assets to combat the spread of KILO TANGO or SIERRA PAPA materials (now termed SPECWEAPS in their potentially weaponized state - Strategic Potential Ectomorphic Weaponized Elder/Archean Protoplasmic Systems) was laid down. The Soviet Union requested, and was granted, information from project MANHATTAN to ensure that any loose SPECWEAPS material in the Japanese Archipelago would be within reach of adequate firepower. Great Britain was included in the knowledge transfer, and initiated programs in Australia to backstop Soviet monitoring.
Following the war, early discovery of additional SPECWEAPS just outside the main ring of Berlin resulted in a Soviet exploitation mission to recover these materials. Their security zone required the isolation of the Berlin area, resulting in a Western supply airlift - the Soviet Dresden organization (code named Древний Дракон / ELDER DRAGON) requested Western resupply due to local insufficiency of resources. To maintain security, the incident was advertised as a hostile encounter. When the materials had been cleared, access to Berlin via land corridor was resumed.
In early 1950, the People's Republic of China became aware of the existence of Dresden/Yalta, possibly from Soviet defectors. Although no known reserves of SPECWEAPS were available to them, they discovered a potentially unknown reserve of SPECWEAPS information at a site in Kaesöng, North Korea, and began immediately to maneuver for the acquisition of a security zone around the site. These efforts, whose motives were kept from Korean government officials, were mistakenly interpreted by the latter as backing for adventurism, and war broke out. The United States did not become aware of the involvement of a SPECWEAPS situation for several months; once it did, however, effort was ramped up heavily and DEEP BLACK action units were dispatched into North Korea to attempt to neutralize any SPECWEAPS materials or personnel found.
Although most available information had been removed from the Kaesöng site by the time of MacArthur's incursion, fear of the United States garnering 'hard evidence' of a Dresden/Yalta violation (and thus solidly tying their motives with those of the USSR which up until that point had been divergent) China intervened directly to protect the site, which was destroyed with conventional bombardment. No DEEP BLACK personnel or materials were extracted.
It appears that North Korea did manage to retain some SPECWEAPS information or materials, however; not enough to utilize, but enough to extort the PRC government's support, which continues to this day. No attempt on the part of the US or other Dresden/Yalta signatories has been made to locate or determine the type of the North Korea find, as China has indicated privately to both that no utilizable materials were discovered there.
XXX END SECTION ONE XXX
NEXT SECTION DEEP BLACK
CLASSIFICATION SAPPHIRE VORPAL JULIET
POTUS EYES ONLY
NSA/CANTRIP REF TAG JXJFF48980-SDLK203-UUTDD8-1M734F CODE GROUP OSCAR
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This node is dedicated to Charles Stross, whose ideas these mostly are (Google for "A Colder War" to see what I mean, if you don't know); to DonJaime who asked for it, and to H.P. Lovecraft for obvious reasons.