CONCORD Report On Drone Region Operations Leaked

2008-02-25 00:00

By Svarthol

Yulai - The wall of secrecy that surrounds the CONCORD Inner Circle has been breached once again when a copy of an internal report was leaked to The Scope, as well as multiple other news agencies and public opinion groups in New Eden. In many cases the file itself has been uploaded to multiple public access servers for public download. From there the file made its way onto the public GalNet when capsuleer Mera Vahlsina, a recent antagonist of controversy involving the questionable retirement of CONCORD Commander Gispali Rhatal, relayed a link there to the general capsuleer population. The circulation of this report has sparked a diverse range of speculation about its authenticity and the motives of the purported source of the leak. The source of the leak had claimed to be a member of an administration support department under the Inner Circle, however there has been no success in verifying this claim given the level of anonymity the source has adhered to.

The report, produced by a division called the Code Aria Inquiry and titled Infested Region Progress Report, details an investigation conducted in the wake of the Infested Regions opening without warning over one year ago. Among the content of this report are details on the unauthorized gate activation incident, CONCORD taskforces assembled and sent into the new regions, a blacked out list of deceased and missing personnel and summaries of previous drone experiments that ended in disaster including an emphasis on the Orphyx incident over two decades ago. The Orphyx incident hailed a new era of Drone AI which ended in disaster following a malfunction resulting in the deaths of multiple people working on the project. Widely regarded in academic circles as the first documented instance of what have become known as Rogue Drones. The anonymous source within the Inner Circle states that the report had recently been released outside of the highest ranks of the Inner Circle of CONCORD, and that most details had been routinely censored for this reason. Of particular interest was the unknown source indicating that this lowering in classification was done at the urgent request of the Inner Circle in order to facilitate an audit on activity that was convened late last year. This is also evident in the report as an addendum points to this fact.

Worrying implications of the report's authenticity have been aired in a political debate session on Echelon Entertainment's current events channel when their own experts in CONCORD affairs revealed the following. "My own sources state that, as far as anyone is aware, there are currently no sanctioned activities beyond the secured empire boarders involving the Drone Regions themselves. And in the past such sanctions have been extremely rare. The Inner Circle has clearly withheld this information from lower ranks and the representatives of the empires for quite some time. The mobilisation of CONCORD assets into the Infested Regions without Assembly approval and debriefing, as is required with operations into unsecured space, is a major breach of CONCORD's charter."

"Currently the CONCORD Assembly seems to be in a state of numbness and shock over the leaking of this report." Stated another CONCORD analyst working for The Scope in the wake of the report leak. "We should not expect this to last much longer, given their reaction thus far is more indicative of caution against over reaction. After all, neither the source of the report nor the report itself has been verified as genuine." However, the moment the report hit the public domains and began to spread, the Inner Circle was reported to have launched an investigation into the source of this leak. In regards to this action The Scope's analyst stated the following. "This is a curious reaction on the part of The Inner Circle, and personally speaking it reinforces my belief that the report is indeed a genuine document. They are looking for the source of a leak before determining if the leak and the report itself are of CONCORD origins. Call it a gut feeling if you will, but I think that the Inner Circle has just let the cat out of the bag. I would expect that the CONCORD Assembly representatives will be up in arms at the next Assembly session, if not already enraged behind closed doors. What remains to be seen from future reactions in the CONCORD Assembly is if there was authorization for this operation which is simply buried in a pact of secrecy between The Inner Circle and the Assembly representatives, or there is no authorization and The Inner Circle have acted alone."