Lit ISB vs Intelligence

It seems to me that a lot of authors back in the day confused the two.... a lot. Kind of really annoying actually, for someone who likes to keep continuity as clean as possible. The Imperial Sourcebook makes it clear that they are two separate organizations that exist for similar yet different purposes. However authors just seemed to either be ignorant of these facts or just didn't care. Example, Intelligence is the one that targets Garm for assassination in Interlude At Darkknell, a task that seems more like the workings of the ISB, since Garm is committing a political offense by speaking out against the New Order on Anchoron and is not yet officially part of the Rebellion (if you take it that the events of that story take place prior to the Corellian Treaty, as is implied despite the Essential Readers' Companion saying 0 BBY). In fact, ISB seems to not be featured in really any C-canon level content outside of a few WEG supplementary side adventures. Intelligence seems to have taken the spotlight and filled the role of both standard intelligence agency and internal ideological secret police (implied by Isard's role as "internal security director").

For ISB being the larger of the two agencies, it appears that they're nowhere to be found, outside of Zahn's Allegiance. And Zahn is one of the ones who appears to have confused the two organizations back in the 90's with Interlude.

Thoughts?

 

So is COMPNOR the direct equivalent of a political party, or is more like......IDK......a social movement or something ?

 

FWIW, as far as comparative usage goes, I think ISB also has the advantage of a catchy acronym, whereas "Imperial Intelligence" is just... mundanely descriptive.

 

Yeah, I'm positive that the reason ISB gets a lot more attention post-reboot is simply that it has a catchier name/acronym than Imperial Intelligence.

 

This is just a great topic! Intelligence vs ISB is really a very interesting relationship within the Empire. I do think there is logic in them overlapping, because they were rival organizations that were doing anything in their power to outsmart and outplay one another.

From what I recall, Intelligence is a military branch, just like Armada or Army. ISB is the security division of COMPNOR, the immense organization that controlled propaganda, education, surveillance, etc, at a civilian level. ISB is bigger, and often would tread into Intelligence territory because it had whole divisions devoted to that area, like the ISO.

Now, I'm sure things have changed a little bit in Canon, like the fact that Armand Isard is now Director for COMPNOR and not Intelligence, but there is still a lot of room for development. Didn't the Aphra comic just showed an interesting looking high ranking officer of the Coalition of Progress?

And they have the Ubiqtorate, too! or at least they had it, in Legends... always liked the sound of it!

 

The ISB is focused on internal security, while intelligence is mostly focused on external security. In a galactic empire, these aims overlap a lot. Which led to a lot of their tension.

 

The way I always thought of it was ISB is the FBI and Intelligence is CIA.

I hate how they both have the same uniform.


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Intelligence could be seen as the SVR(modern Russia) and the ISB as the FSB, or GRU.

 

Hmmm, I wonder if my frustration comes from the fact that ISB is very rarely featured in Legends, so there's just not enough information or literature to take as examples of how they operated or what life was like living under their heel. I do agree that the current canon does a better job at differentiating between them (I.I. being clearly defined as defense intel and ISB the state security arm) and makes more logical use of COMPNOR as a concept. I would love a story like The Lives of Others where the ISB takes on a role akin to the Stasi.

Legends, as much as I do really love it and its overall narrative, does not portray the Empire as a totalitarian state. The pieces were laid out by WEG for it to be one, but the authors opted to go for the martial stratocracy route rather than the totalitarist one-party state/USSR feel. I wonder if it were left to continue on if we would eventually get more stories set in the period between Ep. 3 and 4 and really get to explore the more dystopian side of the Empire/COMPNOR, instead of the rebellion period and the decline and fall of the Empire. Legends gave us more information about the Empire as it stood after its fall from power than we do during the height of it.

Yeah, I had to check the Wook for that one. Since the subject was brought up, I find it interesting that Progress' uniform is similar to ISB. White tunic, black cover and trousers. So, the white uniform is now a general COMPNOR uniform, I guess. Would love to see some variations on other COMPNOR uniforms at some point.

I'm glad you mentioned this, I have almost found, to some degree, that the current canon is more faithful to WEG concepts than the EU ended up being in the long run. Ironic, seeing that WEG was the bedrock for most of the EU.

Here's hoping that FFG produces an updated, cleaner and more thorough new Imperial Sourcebook. One can dream, right?

 

I used to as well, until I found a reference that really shifted my understanding of Imperial Uniform colors. I had always been under the old fan assumption that White uniforms and Black caps were ISB, but it actually isn't so upon a deeper review of the EU. None of the early WEG ISB or Imperial Intelligence mentions ever said anything about the uniform colors being White. Both the Yularen (ISB) and Evax (I.I.) cards muddied the issue as early as the mid 90's. Through to 2014 the EU had multiple different images of White-uniformed Imperials variously said to belong to either organization.

I've had a series of personal Notes to myself about various topics, including this one. I could never rationalize the seeming overlap, and also plenty of depictions of members of both in other uniform colors, until I happened to re-read the latest Complete Encyclopedia and found the following entry:



...and I thought about what that really means. Uniform colors don't actually belong to any one particular branch of the Imperial Military or the Imperial government as one might initially assume. Instead, uniform colors serve as a visual indicator of the function/purpose/role of their wearer! In the case of White with black caps and black pants, they indicate a security role. So with that in mind, it ends up making perfect sense that certain ISB and Imperial Intelligence Officers can both wear the White tunic/Black cap/Black pants Uniform getup. It just depends on what their exact assigned roles/duties are.

Of course, it helps to extrapolate this to all of the other Uniform colors, and to assume that they also might indicate a certain role/function/Officer type, rather than membership in any particular Service or organization. Above all else, this approach helps with the Blackshirts- we see them as elite pilots, Intelligence Officers, Stormtrooper Officers, one Moff, etc. Even Curtis Saxton noted that they seem to defy classification back in the day. He theorized that the Black uniform could serve to indicate some sort of Join Forces specialist Officer, and usually somebody fairly more elite than a regular Grayshirt. If the TCE example for the Whiteshirts holds, than it can also prove that Saxton was right about the Blackshirts!

 

Personally, I got the impression that the overlap was deliberate, in universe, since Palpatine liked to have his underlings squabble for favor and power rather than have time to plot against him. It isn't an uncommon trick for dictators from what I understand, with Hitler as a notable fan of the tactic.

 

I agree, and this was certainly the intent. The difference however, is that while the Gestapo/SD (SS organs) and the Abwehr had similar intelligence gathering roles, they also had clear distinctions and purposes. Gestapo/SD were the political police that enforced an ideology and routinely mopped up dissidents, Abwehr sought out larger scale armed threats and gathered intel on military/paramilitary forces and acted in a defense intelligence capacity. ISB and ImpIntel are so mistakenly used in the EU that its maddening.

Also, the existence of senatorial dissent and planetary governmental opposition in the first place at all is evidence that both agencies failed miserably at their sole job. Mothma should have been shot almost immediately into the New Order.

 

I know it's a lot to extrapolate from just one brief Encyclopedia entry, yet the idea of uniform colors serving as a visual indicator of what role/duties their wearer is assigned struck me as being useful establishing some sort of harmonized Rank/Insignia/Uniform system for what's now known as Legends. It also meshes well with Saxton's idea about the Blackshirts. One of the very few good things about the EU having ended for now is that there aren't any new sources coming in and overwriting/retconning that which has already been established. It makes it possible to put together some sort of coherent, whole-EU system. I've been working on one for a while now. Or, at least one such system for the time around 0BBY. After all, there was no one, single system of Rank and Insignia throughout the Imperial era. They did change over time.

All we have to do is take an evidence based approach and go directly to the sources. Ideally, things that appear to be contradictory can be explained, even if a few references have to stretched just a bit, such as the above.

 

Yeah, that's what the names imply, but in a galaxy that's almost entirely run by the Empire, the foreign/domestic distinction stops making sense. Imperial Intelligence certainly has far too many "domestic" roles - right down to having liaison officers in planetary police departments, see Kirtan Loor in CorSec - for that to be the distinction.

No, I think the distinction is pretty much entirely in who they answer to - Imperial Intelligence is part of the military, ISB is part of COMPNOR (which is the closest the Empire has to "the Party" in the Nazi or Soviet sense). Basically, Abwehr vs. SS-SD. Or GRU vs. KGB.

Forming two organizations with the same (or at least heavily overlapping) beat, then sitting back and enjoying the show as they tear each other apart, seems entirely in-character for Palpatine.

 

Indeed, conflict between his underlings was a great source of amusement for Palpatine.

 

On that note, is there any material in the EU to suggest that Imperial Intelligence isn't far superior to ISB?

I mean, Ysanne Isard and Kirtan Loor are in no danger of winning a Karla award from John LeCarre, but they at least seemed minimally competent at the job they were doing. The commissars from Allegiance seemed like they were one step away from running Stalag 13.

 

Ha, well, Abwehr was also the center of German anti-Nazi & anti-Hitler plotting and assassination attempts for most of the war, in cooperation with the Vatican, until Hitler finally got wind of it & killed the Abwehr chief Franz Canaris. Which only highlights the basic Nazi structural feature of creating new, more loyal, more ideologically pure versions of governmental and military groups, and the rather severe conflicts that tended to create. It works very well, actually, to have ISB & Intelligence playing out that drama, and it could definitely set the stage for some cool stories at some point.

 

Obviously the intention in the beginning, when the Imperial Sourcebook was written, was to have the two be completely separate organizations who share the commonality of both being the Imperial intelligence and security agencies responsible for ensuring the stability of the Imperial State and, consequently, Palpatine's New Order. The sourcebook had the intention of making the two into the Star Wars equivalent of the GRU (ImpIntel) vs the KGB/Cheka (ISB), both serving to uphold the State and its dominant political ideology through radically different means and methods. You had your standard intelligence spooks competing with your ideologically zealous political police. Both were determined, skilled, and deadly, and both were competing for increased favor among the Emperor and his advisors. Again, this was the intent back in the late 80's when the Sourcebook was written. This idea may need to be revised just a tad to make sense of the greater context of the EU as it existed before its untimely demise in 2014. Pablo himself said in The Essential Readers' Companion that the EU is a "living document", and may need to undergo some revision as time goes on.

As time went on, and the EU was expanded into other materials, new books were coming out, games were being launched and WEG was increasing the amount of source material from which to pull information and lore, the distinction between the two became increasingly muddled. Although the majority of the EU did remain vastly coherent in story and narrative continuity (EU-haters will disagree), there were somewhat small facets/concepts of the EU that were either ignored, misunderstood or simply not known to a the OOU authors who wrote the stories. Authors are, after all, human. Humans are not the perfect species and make errors (despite what the Coalition for Progress may tell you ). I believe that this subject is one of the prime examples of this phenomenon, i.e. that ISB and ImpIntel were frequently misunderstood and misused by the authors that wrote the stories. OP and other posters here are correct in pointing that out.

However, we must perhaps take a step back and refine our view of the ISB vs ImpIntel conflict that has been around in the backdrop of the EU since the publishing of the Imperial Sourcebook. Remember, that book was made way back in '89. Its place as the foundation for the Galactic Empire's organizational structure and history rippled across the entirety of the Expanded Universe, and its influence was so pervasive in understanding how the Empire functioned that it is still the basis for the post-2014 newcanon under the Mouse House (but we're not talking about them). The sourcebook was written well before most of the EU was ever penned. Hell, it existed before most of it was even conceived in authors' minds. The other thing to remember is that the Imperial Sourcebook was written from the perspective of an in-universe Alliance intelligence report by Arhul Hextrophon. Intel is oftentimes flawed, misunderstood or not complete. With the plethora of EU material that has come out since the ImpSourcebook was written, it could easily be ascertained that some of Hextrophon's report may not have been entirely accurate in the first place. We, as "historians" of the Star Wars universe who look at it as if it were "real" or a series of historical events, must take an academic approach to this matter and make educated hypotheses and theses as real-life historians do when presented with firsthand and secondary source material. Where am I going with this, you may ask???

I don't want to be labeled a heretic, and many of you may vehemently disagree with me, but I am leaning toward this theory more and more lately. My assertion is that, combining the evidence we have to work with, Imperial Intelligence and the Imperial Security Bureau are both part of the same intelligence apparatus. The two are simply different "offices" or "agencies" under the larger umbrella that is the Imperial Intelligence Community. The ImpSourcebook just was written based on early Alliance intelligence reports with somewhat faulty information, although nothing serious, just a slight error in separating the two as completely separate organizations. Unitary intelligence ministries with competing offices and subagencies is a hallmark of Eastern Bloc totalitarian states. A real world example would be the KGB's makeup, how there were separate organs within the KGB that served a diverse variety of functions (one for external intel, one for internal, one for political intel, one for counterintel, one for presidential protection, etc.). Oftentimes, these offices were at odds with each other and were at each others' throats, not seeing eye to eye on a great number of issues, but all working under the same pretense of state security. What we typically refer to as "Imperial Intelligence" (i.e. the pragmatic spy network that was made up of the Republic's four intel agencies) was really just Imperial military intelligence. The ISB is the internal intelligence and political intelligence arm of the State, but both are under the umbrella of the Imperial Intelligence Community (IIC), and both report to Armand Isard's office. Imperial Security Bureau just has a dual responsibility, and reports in-parallel to COMPNOR and its leader, Chairman Ishin-Il-Raz. This dual-political role by ISB is hated by military intelligence leadership. This reflects the role of the SD as the intelligence arm of the Nazi Party, even though it also served as the primary intel arm of the Reich state itself -- it had a dual role, much like the ISB has. Each branch act as the right and left hands of the IIC, with Isard as the head. My theory is backed by enough evidence for it make sense... at least to myself.

Firstly, Isard is referred to as the Director of Imperial Intelligence and Internal Security Director. This may have sounded odd at first, given that the general understanding was that II and ISB were separate. But with application of my theory, it makes sense. In Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, Isard is seen as the director of both, with Internal Security agents (precursor to ISB) and ImpIntel both reporting to him. Luceno may have simply made an error, but mental retcons such as mine can be applied and the problem is practically remedied. Secondly, in Star Wars Insider's HoloNet News Special Inaugural Edition, it states that ISB was an "offshoot of Imperial Intelligence" and that it would be "folded" into the purview of COMPNOR. This backs up my claim that ISB reports to two "masters" in parallel. Thirdly, OP states that the attempted assassination of Garm Bel Iblis seems like an operation of ISB rather than ImpIntel. I believe OP is correct in assuming that it is, and by applying my theory, you could say that the agents of Director Isard who staged the assassination came from both Military Intelligence and ISB working in tandem with each other to carry out the operation. Solved.

A bonus perk of this idea is the solution to the ISB/Intelligence uniform question. Well, if they're part of the same umbrella organization, it is likely that they'd share a similar uniform, with only minor differences perhaps. Just like the Gestapo and SD shared the same uniform when in occupied territories, despite being two separate organizations, but they both fell under the umbrella of the ReichsSicherheitsHauptAmt (RSHA - Reich Central Security Office).

To summarize, the Imperial Intelligence Community was made up of Imperial Military Intelligence and the Imperial Security Bureau, headed by Armand Isard as Director of Imperial Intelligence and Internal Security. Military Intelligence is the organization we have referred to in the past as "Imperial Intelligence", while the ISB served the internal and political policing role, while reporting to COMPNOR at the same time.

MI - serves as the principal intelligence gathering, defense intel and executive action branch.

ISB - serves as the Stasi-esque "take information from other departments and informants and compile a massive dossier on you" and the "knock at your door at 3 AM and make you disappear" branch.

Both are similar, yet different enough to justify keeping them separate, all under the same general directorate and umbrella. As it stands right now, this is my internal retcon to make sense of things for myself. Maybe it can do the same for you. I could also just be some rambling lunatic, so there's that.

 

I'd love to see who is in charge of Imperial intelligence in the NuCanon....Maybe take that Abwehr v SS-SD allegory full on and Military Intelligence be run by someone who was in the Old Republic Judicial/PSF's forces and then the ISB be run by a Palpatine fanatic like Isard and something. That's just me of course.

 

I agree, there is almost a hidden blessing in Legends being sealed. Now, if only someone with "authority" at LFL could go back and write a series of sourcebook to mop up some of the minor messes and clean it up a little, since they don't have to worry about future material to contradict anything.

I went back and read those scenes and it does sound like this theory could apply to the newcanon (for the time being) as well. Maybe reading those scenes caused me to subconsciously start believing this.