Special Affairs Department

Special Affairs Division, or Department, commonly abbreviated as SAD, is a division within the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) dedicated to investigating crimes and criminal activity involving supernatural creatures or occult phenomena. It is one of the largest hunter orgs in the United States, possibly even the world.

In the United States, many of the operations of the coalition between intelligence services and the Vatican are conducted by the Special Affairs Division. Originally created to battle organized crime with ties to vampires, as well as supposed occult power within the leftist youth movement, the organization was resurrected in the early 21st century.

History

Founded in the early 1950’s, the Department is well aware of the threat posed by and has documented evidence verifying the existence of vampires, werewolves, and mages. The Department has also investigated cases involving ghosts and even UFOs but the bulk of the division’s resources and manpower in recent years has almost solely been devoted to criminal cases implicating the activities of either vampires or werewolves.

Nowadays, it is not uncommon for a Special Affairs agent to assist in the behavioral profiling of a serial killer or to help coordinate the case against a white-collar criminal. Still, if the Department’s agents do such work with other Bureau divisions it is always with the hidden agenda that such cases involve something far more monstrous, something that only S.A.D. is aware of and has the power to hunt down and destroy.

5th Edition Timeline

The Special Affairs Division has a long and storied and at times strange history that grew out of Cold War-era paranoia, including a period of time in which it was almost completely discredited and fell from favor. Indeed, SAD likely survived the 1970s through the early 2000s only because it’s a branch of the FBI. On the other hand, SAD is the only agency in the United States government that has been dealing with the supernatural for decades. Even its sibling-rival, the Information Awareness Office, has been operating for less than half that time.

The SAD played host to Project Twilight from the 1980s through to the early 2000s, when the project got ransacked for resources and shut down. Project Twilight focused on more folkloric Unusual Threats such as vampires and werewolves while the rest of the Division focused on 'modern-day' (at the time) sightings of paranormal phenomena, such as cryptids and aliens, and was responsible for most of the successes in those fields that the Division as a whole takes credit for. Unknown to the rest of the SAD, however, a small contingent of Project Twilight kept the lights on, now focusing on supernatural elements that the rest of the Division largely ignores.

With the NSA's discovery of what would be dubbed 'blankbodies' in the early 2000s, the SAD was given a wave of new funding and began receiving instructions and intelligence from FIRSTLIGHT to begin exterminating the occult terrorists within America's borders as part of the wider efforts of the Coalition.

Operations

The official mandate of Special Affairs has changed little over the years but the focus of the Department’s mission has undergone some shifts. The Department’s official purpose was to “investigate cases of a strange and persistent nature with the intent of determining, once and for all, whether such cases represent a nationwide hoax, or if they in fact possess some validity of truth”. It was under this mandate that the Department pursued investigations into UFO sightings, Bigfoot reports, and ghost hauntings. However, over the years the Department has clearly established itself as a special arm of the Bureau that investigates so-called “bizarre occult-style crimes” and, arguably, it is under this auspice that the Department has made some of its most startling discoveries.

Special Affairs' official mandate is, largely, a secret among other Bureau employees but the notoriety of the Department’s agents, especially during the late '50's and '60's, is something of a legend. At that time, agents were said to dress entirely in black suits and dark sunglasses and drove government issued black Cadillacs. This has led many theorists to speculate that Special Affairs Department agents were in fact the cause of many of the "Men in Black" of the period. Although S.A.D. agents are still secretive about their true mission they have also taken steps to work within the infrastructure of the Bureau mainstream.

As an extension of the FBI, the SAD is more of a policing and investigatory body than a military force, though there’s no arguing that it has been very thoroughly militarized. With everything at its disposal from homeland security materiel to cutting-edge blankbody-detecting technologies developed by the same defense contractor partners that outfit the armed forces, the only thing that distinguishes the SAD from the IAO to the civilian onlooker — despite the confidential nature of both orgs — is perhaps a handful of insignia.

Perhaps more than any other org, Special Affairs Division operates with an astounding array of resources. Its tremendous arsenal is only a single tool — it also has access to investigative technologies, impressive travel and logistics staff, and a media and public relations cadre that give the SAD one of the broadest jurisdictions out of any org in existence. This, combined with the U.S. government’s willingness to reach as far as it likes in pursuit of what it perceives as threats against itself, means the SAD can potentially be encountered anywhere, not just on American soil. In this regard, it sometimes surpasses the operational theater of its parent department, the FBI.

As part of its modern-day directive as a component of the Second Inquisition, the Special Affairs Division regards “the vampire problem” specifically as a form of terrorist threat, with manpower and tactics deployed to react. In most cases, it prefers not to deal with other supernatural creatures, with the occasional exception of the hidden Project Twilight subgroup. In practice, this means that if it concludes that whatever it's dealing with isn't vampiric in nature, it’ll push that investigation off onto the plate of its sibling-rival, the IAO, or even hire out local independent investigators like independent Hunter cells. When dealing with these last, the SAD generally prefers established companies with good reputations rather than loose cannons and wild-eyed zealots. Circumstances may change during any given situation, however — all those skilled PR people can concoct plausible deniability, if necessary.

As with any org of its size, agility isn’t necessarily SAD’s forte. Its ops gather intel over extended periods of times, and some critics consider that it allows too many victims to pile up during the information-gathering phase of a SAD campaign. Indeed, no small amount of independent Hunters, particularly of the Martial creed, started their careers with the SAD and left the org because of a perceived reluctance to act on its part. It’s an accusation that isn’t always fair, as the org prefers to have all its ducks in a row and to be factually correct when pursuing Unusual Threat Response, but compounded with its greater purpose of enforcing law and sovereignty whether those aims are just leads to a certain degree of mistrust. It’s never good optics when the black helicopters show up and discharge kill-squads that insist they’re the good guys.

Given the above, with the significant resources available to it, the SAD can occasionally resort to a shoot-first, ask-questions-later mentality, especially if operatives believe they’re about to lose control of an op for some reason or another.

Personnel

• Marcus Questor: Division Director
• Alan Kenchow: Research Director. Possibly a psychic.
• Gerald Osbourne: Interdepartmental liaison, coordinating information flow among the department’s legislative-branch benefactors as well as IAO and FIRSTLIGHT.
• Marsha Crowe: Former Regional Director who has recently returned to field work.
• Agent Samantha Donati: Head of operations in and around Tucson, Arizona.
• Agent (?): Also known as Cog.
• Agent O'Neill, present in Boston
• Agent Burgos, present in Boston
• Agent Edison, present in Boston
• Agent Eister, present in Boston
• Agent Hawthorne, present in Boston
• Agent Beck, present in Boston

Gallery

Symbol of The Special Affairs Department in Project Twilight

Bob Schnoblin's Pyramid of Satanic Power Chart

FBI Special Affairs Division. Art by Jim Di Bartolo

References

• VTM: The Hunters Hunted, p. 37-40
• WTA: Project Twilight, p. 27-41, 56-62
• HTR: Hunter: First Contact, p. 45-65
• VTM: The Hunters Hunted II, p. 127-135
• VTM: Second Inquisition
• HTR: 5th Edition Core Book, p. 227-229
• VTM: Camarilla