Praetor Intelligence Commission of Earth

An official intelligence body belonging to the Terran Empire which provides information on the discipline of military assets and the relative loyalties of other, more specialised investigation or inteligence communities directly to the @[Grand Imperial Palace] bureaucracy.

Culture

While their semi-formal remit is to watch the watchmen, the Praetor Intelligence Commission of Earth consider themselves commissars to the commisars. A long line of imperial spymasters have worked to maintain a culture in which all other services are subservient, inferior and suspect. Their powers grant them the right to censor, disband or declare illegal whole other intelligence bodies, while their proximity to court allows them to shape other spys' reports to their benefit. A fair proportion of the delay between a Terran agent discovering a valuable secret and the policy-makers learning of it can be attributed to the Commission extracting or altering details from any reports.
Due to these tendencies, other intelligence services within the Empire prefer to operate outside of the Commission's view or knowledge. Many agencies will studiously ignore incoming reports, while some (including the Imperial Dreadnought Corps) will opt to make the intruding Palace officer disappear. Out in the imperial periphery, where the wishes of the Palace are distant and rarely if ever relevant, some services will simply ignore them until they go away.
It has been suggested that the meddling and imperious attitude of the Praetor Intelligence Commission is a large part of why the Terran intelligence landscape is both inconsistent ans self-reliant, worsening the problem they exist to solve.

History

An offshoot of the classicically named Praetorian Office, itself responsible for palace complex security and ensuring the compliance of related organisations, the Praetor Intelligence Commission began as a temporary special body responsible for ensuring no other government spy rings were trying to influence the Palace's policy or attempting to circumvent security clearances via the Palace. The initial operation involed a single fully qualified Praetor along with several independently recruited agents and Earth police officers.
As the commission completed its report and precipitated a purge of Praetorian Office representatives whose loyalty was in question, it found itself acting as an informal liason channel with other intelligence bodies, and was informally retooled to act as a surveillance tool.
In modern times, the commission exists in limbo, officially long disbanded and absent from offiial command structures but still found in budgets, letterheads and formal consultations.

Type

Military, Intelligence