British Military Intelligence -- Section 7
Contents
Explanations
If your reading this, then you have breached a standalone computer system with state of the art security and countermeasures. Congratulations, though it is unlikely you have very long in which to gloat over your success, for as you are reading this, a small but heavily armed squad of paramilitary experts is already within striking range... Good Luck - Really.
As you are looking over your shoulder or listening to those sounds your not sure were there in the background before you read the above warning, you were wondering why is there a heavily encrypted file on a nonexistent British Military Intelligence Section on an isolated computer system in a supposedly abandoned building in the poorest district of the city?
Well, to be fair, the answer is simple. British Military Intelligence - Section 7 is an ultra-secret department of the modern British government. It has close ties to the Monarchy, Parliament and in all likelihood the Church of England. At least it did as of the autumn of 2042. In all probability it has vast financial resources, contacts throughout the government and the British Military, but it probably has spies in every city of importance in his majesty's Kingdom of England. It also has something else of importance, a mission to find, infiltrate and destroy all the supernatural species in England.
Wait, did you read that right? Yes, the writer said that Section 7 hunts all of the supernatural species of the Kingdom of England. And yes, that means there are supernatural beings out there, more than one species of them in fact. Oh? Your not sure you believe it? Keep reading...
Now that you know two things no-one should know and that will in all likelihood get you killed by any number of agencies who don't want you to know what you have already discovered, including the secretive cabal whose computer you just manually hacked, you might as well continuing reading and satisfy your curiosity. Consider it your last request, granted to you by an entity who has peered into the inner workings of Section 7 and who has survived far longer than you will.
Introduction
While cited from time to time in fictional works, MI7, or British Military Intelligence - Section 7 was a very real department of the Directorate of Military Intelligence, a subsection of the War Office and was designed to oversee the dual spheres of censorship and propaganda.
History
In February 1915 a Directorate of Special Intelligence was formed which in turn gave rise to MO7, a branch of the War Office concerned with press publicity; it was MO7 which gave the first war correspondents permission to visit the Western Front in May 1915, ensuring that the military authorities would maintain control over the correspondents' work. In January 1916, as part of a reorganisation of the Imperial General Staff, a new Directorate of Military Intelligence was created and MO7 became MI7.
Section Organization
British Military Intelligence - Section 7 was divided into four essentially equal sub-sections which were distinguished from one another and titled by lower-case letters inside brackets. The specifics and duties of each of the sub-sections mutated over the passage of time, but at one time, they corresponded to the follow descriptions.
- -- MI7 (a) - censorship.
- -- MI7 (b) - foreign and domestic propaganda, including press releases concerning army matters.
- -- MI7 (c) - translation and (from 1917) regulation of foreign visitors.
- -- MI7 (d) - foreign press propaganda and review (part of subsection (b) until subsection (d) was formed in late 1916).
Surviving Documentation
As a branch of military intelligence, the service maintained strict security, and paperwork was routinely destroyed. When MI7 closed, a further large-scale destruction of papers was organized. However, a large number of documents from MI7 (b) were preserved by an operative of that branch, Captain James Lloyd, and these were discovered after his death, when his property was being sorted and cleared in 2012. The archive consisted of two broad categories of articles written between 1917 and 1918 - the "Tales of the VC" some 90 or so stories of individual heroism by men from all over the Empire can be seen on the websites of the National Library of Wales and on the Europeana 1914-18 website. Samples of the remaining 60 or so articles can be found in "MI7b-the discovery of a lost propaganda archive from the Great War" which can be downloaded from the internet.
Current Agents of Section 7
- -- Gregory Pierson (sighted in York - 2042)
- -- Goffrey Algernon - Chief Inspector
- -- Wilhelmina Navs
Relevant Websites
http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-20949,00.html
