Lit ISB vs Intelligence

In addition, I just was finishing up some reading, and found that before the establishment of the office of the Director of National Intelligence here in the USA, the Director of the CIA was also the head of the entire US Intelligence Community, which included agencies like the FBI. Just another historical example to which this unitary intelligence theory can be compared.

 

Something I’ve never been sure of - what is the relationship between the Director of Intelligence and the Ubiqtorate? Legends has no information except that COMPNOR doesn’t understand what they are. Canon states that the Ubiqtorate is the “four heads of the intelligence agencies”. I can’t think of four intelligence agencies.


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I thought that was just the founders?

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ubiqtorate

The Ubiqtorate was one of several organizations established by the Galactic Empire following the transition from the Galactic Republic when the four heads of the intelligence agencies combined their forces to prevent corruption from senators, and unified into the Ubiqtorate.[1]

Legends lists 4 agencies of Republic Intelligence as the precursors to Imperial Intelligence:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Intelligence/Legends

Formed from

• Senate Bureau of Intelligence[1]
• Republic Security Organization[1]
• Interstellar Consortium on Technology[1]
• Special Acquisitions Branch of the Library of the Republic[1]

In Legends, the Director was normally the leader of the Ubiqtorate - which was akin to a board of directors.

 

I see. Interesting thing from the Interstellar Consortium on Technology article, "it was assimilated into Imperial Intelligence under the direction of Crueya Vandron." Vandron's a COMPNOR guy, so more overlap there.

 

I stand corrected, I must admit the entire thing is a rather confusing mess, much like our beloved Empire. Although yes, you have it right, my vision is one of a sister cooperation/competition reporting to the same director who holds dual roles and shares his power over one agency with "the Party".

I never noticed that, I tried finding the old source on HNN but I can't find it in the Internet Archives. Yeah, Vandron was the principle patron and co-founder of COMPOR/COMPNOR. If the Wook is correct, then that's really fascinating and gives even more weight to this theory.

 

There's also Republic Intelligence, which by the time of 22BBY was likely part of the Judicial Forces. During the Clone Wars the Grand Army itself had Clone Intelligence. There was also the Special Operations Brigade, and Military Intelligence.

COMPOR, the COMPNOR predecessor organization, which also had the grassroots New Order Party (which backed Palpatine's New Order movement) under it's control, also co-existed with these.

Wook is wrong, and neither Edition if the Imperial Sourcebook, nor the HNN article, say what is claimed by whoever edited that article. Somebody needs to fix that. Check the link below. Vandron had nothing to do the merger of the Consortium into Imperial Intelligence, and in fact was the primary benefactor of COMPNOR, and helped create the ISB in response to the unnervingly swift and seamless integration of the 4 main organizations that became Imperial Intelligence. They of course did not seem to realize that they had already been secretly integrated prior to the end of the Clone Wars.

Here's the old HNN link:

https://web.archive.org/web/20050221082930/http://www.holonetnews.com:80/50/news/1344_3.html

...and it is the Wook is yet again wrong, not you. Well, whoever edited that article on the Consortium is. Hopefully the article can be fixed in time.

 

One fun thing to do is to re-read the Imperial Sourcebook chapters on Imperial Intelligence and COMPNOR with the following in mind: the Sourcebook is (in Universe) just a compilation of various sources created by the Alliance. Their source for the COMPNOR chapter was an Imperial Intelligence report, which predictably shows their bias in how it claims that the average Intelligence agent is superior to the average ISB agent; and the chapter on Imperial Intelligence is from a report written by the ISB. That was also biased, notably in how it claims that the leak of the name "Ubiqtorate" by COMPNOR was unintentional. Yeah, right ISB...

 

So, per the Imperial Sourcebook, the Ubiqtorate is the shadowy governing body of all of Imperial Intelligence:

The Ubiqtorate oversees all of the activities of Imperial Intelligence at the highest levels. Details and tactical considerations are decided by the appropriate bureau or branch of Imperial Intelligence. The Ubiqtorate never concerns itself with those. The Ubiqtorate formulates strategies for the bureaus of Imperial Intelligence or, as has recently become common, presents the bureaus with a set of goals and very broad grand strategic considerations and asks them to plan an effective strategy. With the exception of Adjustments, members of the Ubiqtorate never have any communication with personnel at the sector or system level. They would certainly never deal with an individual field agent.

The members of the Ubiqtorate are anonymous. They are unknown to their subordinates; a member of the Ubiqtorate is likely to be acquainted with the identities of perhaps a third of the members, and to have personal contact with only a handful. When communicating to the rest of Imperial Intelligence, the members of the Ubiqtorate identify the originator as "Ubiqtorate," never an individual. This practice has been imitated by other organizations, most notably the Select Committee of COMPNOR.​

Of course, pretty much nobody remembered or used this, so it's never mentioned in any actual narratives outside of Zahn using the term "Ubiqtorate" as a metonym for Intell as a whole. So then Stackpole introduced the concept of Ysanne Isard and her dad as the Director of Imperial Intelligence, without ever mentioning the Ubiqtorate.

The Force Unleashed Campaign Guide explained that the elder Isard was the "public head" of Intell, with the Ubiqtorate taking a more shadowy role. Which makes sense, and jives with the Imperial Sourcebook's assertion that the Ubiqtorate was so secretive that the term wasn't even known until COMPNOR "accidentally" leaked it.

But then The Essential Guide to Warfare gave us the the following:

[Ysanne] Isard's power was officially circumscribed by a group of powerful advisers known as the Ubiqtorate. The young Isard made no argument about this arrangement, perhaps because she knew its real purpose was to allow her to monitor their behavior; those who attempted to use the Intelligence apparatus for their own ends were quickly reassigned to Lusankya.
​

Which is... a little weird?

And then! There's the assertion made in "The Emperor's Pawns" and iirc repeated in the Rebellion Era Sourcebook that the Director of Imperial Intelligence was actually Cronal/Blackhole, in spite of the fact that "Interlude at Darkknell" had already established that the position passed directly from Armand to Ysanne. Most later sources dealt with this discrepancy by simply ignoring it; The New Essential Guide to Characters for example writes Blackhole off as an agent of Intell, rather than the director. But finally the late-EU starwars.com article "Imperial Warlords: Despoilers of an Empire" explained that Blackhole was named "interim director" after Armand was removed. Which is kind of clunky, if you ask me.

So yeah. As you might have guessed by now, I have my own thoughts on this! Which are basically this:

- We know, per ISB and all subsequent sources, that Imperial Intelligence is made up of four separate divisions (not counting Sector Plexus): the Internal Organization Bureau ("IntOrg"), the Bureau of Operations (known simply as "the Bureau"), the Analysis Bureau ("Analysis"), and Intelligence.
- Although it's never been stated explicitly, these seem to correspond to the four different Republic intelligence agencies that were brought together to form Imperial Intelligence: the Republican Security Organization became IntOrg, the Senate Bureau of Intelligence became the Bureau, the Interstellar Consortium on Technology became Analysis, and finally the Special Acquisitions Branch of the Library of the Republic became Intelligence.
- The ISB says that after the four Republican agencies merged the Ubiqtorate was created as the "governing body for all parts of the organization"
- Armand Isard was previously the director of the Senate Bureau of Intelligence
- in Agent of the Empire: Hard Targets #1, Armand tells Jahan Cross that an assignment Cross is unhappy with was "decided at a level far above your pay rate or mine"
- the Bureau's remit lines up more or less with what we see both the Isards in charge of: infiltration, active intelligence gathering, assination and the like
- meanwhile, "The Emperor's Pawns" says that "as head of Intelligence, Blackhole has unparalleled access to the galaxy's unfathomable sea of information. [...] he holed himself away in his sanctuary, meditating on the countless data-documents streaming through his office, awaiting dark side visions to act upon."
- TEP also says that "the Emperor granted Blackhole unprecedented control over the entire HoloNet [...] this meant that Blackhole had direct communications with every ship in the Imperial Navy. Blackhole could appear aboard any vessel by commandeering its holocomm. In theory, he could even appear on the few civilian HoloNet nodes throughout the galaxy."
- the Intelligence division of Intell, per ISB, is where data gathered by Analysis is sent after it finishes "sorting, cleaning, decoding, or otherwise manipulating" it; Intelligence "combines the vast knowledge of its agents with the most sophisticated computer models in the galaxy to predict trends or future actions of the enemies of the New Order."
- further, the External Communications (ExComm) department of Intelligence "is a branch with its own communications equipment. [...] ExComm is used for emergency communication with system cells, or for priority communications with the military forces of the Empire."
-So: Armand and later Ysanne Isard were director of The Bureau of Operations, Cronal was director of Intelligence, and the Ubiqtorate was ultimately in charge of them all.

It's not totally perfect, because Interrogation, which is responsible for not only interrogation but also reprogramming captured rebels as double agents (ie Lusankya's specialty) was part of the Analysis Bureau, but it's possible that either Ysanne was sneaky and running her own operation (Lusankya was a super secret almost mythical facility, after all) or she was running Analysis as well by that point. Which is entirely possible, since there's the possibility that Orman Tagge was the head of Analysis (Insider #74's HoloNet News has him heading up a tech committee within the newly formed Analysis Bureau) and he of course died shortly after Armand did.

So yeah. Probably way more than you were asking for, but hope that helps! (Incidentally I posted a thread a few months back about the Ubiqtorate. It never really went anywhere, but I guess if anyone wanted to speculate further it could always be bumped.)

 

I've read the ISB more than any other WEG book and somehow never made that connection, but now that I read your post I can't believe that I didn't see it sooner. Thank you for adding that to my own head-canon, and I agree wholeheartedly that it is what happened. It makes too much sense for it to have not been so! I do hope a potential future EU work takes note of the idea and runs with it.

 

I suspect all these state apparatuses were designed to be intentionally overlapping with confusing and contradictory degrees of authority and oversight each other. With the chain of command, and departmental divisions being designed to be vague and often interlocking remits and purviews.

Basically a tangled spider's web instead of an ordered staircase.

This sort of environments leads to a lot of conflict, conflicting powerbases, scheming, maneuvering, deception and backstabbing. With subordinates spying on their superiors, superiors keeping eyes on their subordinates, department heads trying to undermine and one up each other, etc...

So in short the relationship between the ISB and Imperial intelligence was one of interlocking hostility and ever present tension.

 

Which was how Palpatine liked it.

 

Exactly

 

Speaking of sneaky Imperial espionage somebody bring back Delta Source. Evil trees!