Bureau of State Protection

The Bureau of State Protection or BSP is the secret police of the Democratic Republic of Corumm. Responsible for internal security, foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence and border security among many other tasks. The Chairman of the BSP reports directly to the Chancellor of the Republic and is not answerable to any other ministry or legislative body.

History
The Bureau of State Protection is the direct institutional continuation of the Commission of Public Safety that existed under the military regime for the entirety of the post-imperial era. After 1992 Linge Chen and the Party of Corummese Democrats renamed the commission, exponentially increased its funding and began transferring members of the PCD's organization department into leadership positions at the renamed bureau. A partial purge ensued with many agents perceived as unreliable being disappeared. For those that remained of the pre-1992 structure, Party membership became mandatory. The curricula was modified to include PCD ideology and most notably a book written by Linge Chen, the Management of Brutality. The changes in training and the influx of ideologically motivated agents into the organization resulted in a more ruthless approach being used on security matters as exemplified by one of its more notorious official actions, Operation Brakion. Whereas the Committee of Public Safety might have simply arrested or condemned Shen Doik to internal exile, the BSP determined that he be humilliated and executed in brutal fashion.

War on the Left
By mid-1993 the BSP had been given the directive to begin the repression of the Communist Party of Corumm (CPC) and its armed wing, the Army of Common Men (ACM). Operation Dendron decapitated the communist political leadership and left the party directionless however the cell structure of the ACM prevented most of its leaders from being found out and killed. This operation also had the secondary effect of rendering the CPC and the political path almost irrelevant in the conflict to come. Dendron marked the beginning of a bloody period of state terrorism as the government sought to crush the armed resistance of the ACM by any means necessary. Hundreds of thousands of left-wing activists, students, journalists, writers and anyone suspected of sympathizing with the political left were imprisoned, tortured and killed. The ACM responded by unleashing a wave of terrorist bombings, hit and run attacks on military and police targets and killing of government employees as reprisals. Increasing efficiency in intel gathering on the ACM resulted in the design and implementation of Operation Eschaton, which succeeded in killing hundreds of leadership figures all across the country. Finding itself increasingly cornered in urban areas by the security organs, the bulk of the ACM moved into the countryside whilst leaving only smaller three-man cells in the cities. In rural areas the organization had a degree of grassroots support, especially in the poorer west part of the country. PCD initiated security reforms had not yet reached these locales and the local security forces were too weak to suppress the ACM on their own. While the ACM had appeared to be on the backfoot or even the edge of defeat at the end of 1995, its move to the countryside allowed it breathing room to reconstitute itself and Operation Eschaton had not yet taken an irreversible toll. It coerced peasants to join its force in increasing numbers and began expanding an area of actual territorial control that surrounded several provincial cities. By the summer of 1996 the ACM had recovered in numbers and stormed the city of Khov, defeating the local garrison and with the local police force fleeing without a fight. The ACM declared a Khov Socialist Republic and invited the 'revolutionary' sectors of the city to join its forces.

The government responded by initiating a special combined operation by Army and BSP battalions to clear the city and the surrounding area. Power and water were shut off to the city, roads blockaded and supplies turned back while a massive artillery bombardment began. ACM forces attempted to repeatedly break the siege by using truck bombs and exploiting the temporary gaps created but air power turned them back everytime. After two months of sluggish advance amid heavy fighting, the government was in position to assault Khov and did so starting in September 1996. Of note in the Battle of Khov is the participation of a new entity called the Peace Brigade, which had links but was not subordinated to the BSP. It is rumored however that the Peace Brigade was the brainchild of Prib Dodd, head of BSP at the time. Three more weeks of fierce urban fighting ensured that most of Khov was destroyed and the brutality of the Peace Brigade made sure most of the population followed their city into oblivion. Only three members of the ACM's Directorate survived the battle and fled the fall of the city using tunnels dug under the city, escaping further west.

After the decimation of the ACM at Khov and the end of their territorial experiment, the vacant Directorate seats were slowly filled by BSP infiltrators acting upon Operation Maniphage. If the ACM's leader was not a government agent by this point, he was certainly surrounded by them. The new Directorate blamed the conservative leanings of the peasantry and their lack of revolutionary zeal as the root causes for the defeat and moved to suppress them. During 1997 the ACM razed close to a hundred villages, stealing crops and cattle, massacring the inhabitants and conscripting the children into its forces. Crafted by the architects of Operation Maniphage, these attacks caused a decisive break between the ACM and the western countryside. This also led to schisms to break out in the ACM, with at least two members of the Directorate(non government assets) leaving the organization and branding it insane and terroristic. With insider information of the organization's movements, the BSP hunted down its remaining cells in quick succession during 1997 and early 1998. Chancellor Linge Chen declared the organization defeated in a speech to the People's Assembly on May 1st 1998.

Suppression of the Right
The persecution of the leftists was widely applauded and supported by the business class, especially the plutocrats that had benefitted by the cronyism of the military government that preceded the PCD. They mistook the government's savage attack on socialism as a sign that it intended to loosen even more its grip on the economy, perhaps by handing over control of strategic sectors to private capital. This mistaken conception would cost them dearly as the organs of terror began working again and the totalitarian nature of PCD thinking revealed iself in full. The BSP's systems of mass surveillance under Operation Panoptes had been in full swing since 1992 and the wealthy were not exempt. In March 1999 around fifty of Corumm's wealthiest businessmen were arrested and taken to Building 82, their personal bank accounts and those of their companies already frozen. With notaries present and under threat of torture or death they were forced to sign their assets away into the hands of the government. In a single move the Party acquired control of 25% of the nation's economic assets including industrial complexes, banks, mines, agricultural lands, hotels, commercial fisheries and much more.

Organization
The Bureau's organizational structure is by its intended nature an opaque one. The Bureau does publicly disclose a simplified organizational chart on its website that shows two main branches, an office devoted to operations in foreign countries and another one focusing solely on internal duties. In theory these two branches within the BSP work together seamlessly and with a high degree of coordination. Scholars of the organization suspect there are as many as triple the amount of committees and departments than those publicly acknowledged, with an entire office dedicated to growing and safeguarding the Party's economic empire.

Suspected Operations

 * Operation Brakion - The secret arrest and murder of Shen Doik, chief advisor and widely suspected power behind the throne of the previous regime. Immediately after the PCD victory, Doik left the country and took up residence in the Cape. In October 1994 BSP agents successfully kidnapped him in Cape Town and put him on a plane to Corumm. It is suspected that Doik was tortured and murdered aboard the plane and his corpse thrown somewhere in the Ocean of Cathay. Brakion was the first of many similar operations undertaken against former members of the military regime.
 * Operation Panoptes - Operation Panoptes refers to the concerted effort to expand surveillance of opposition politicians on both the left and right after the PCD victory. With the Ministry of Justice 'untying' its hands, the BSP began massively bugging private homes and offices, constant tapping of telephone and internet based conversations, intercepting and opening mail. Parallel operations were undertaken by tax authorities to create a database of opposition politicians and trace down their assets, both legal and illegal.
 * Operation Dendron - A two part operation, the first part was the orchestrated mass arrest and physical liquidation of the entire national and regional leadership figures of the Communist Party of Corumm. The second part was the taking of the infant children of the victims and their induction into BSP-run institutes to be raised as government assets.
 * Operation Eschaton - The targeted killing of leadership cadres of the Army of Common Men beginning in May 1995. The killings mostly took the form of car bombs, poisoning and in at least five instances with a remotely controlled machine gun. The operation lasted approximately two years and its success was a necessary precondition for the later Operation Maniphage. During Eschaton approximately 430 people were asassinated.
 * Operation Maniphage - The gradual infiltration of the leadership ranks of the Army of Common Men. In the months before the start of Operation Eschaton, BSP agents joined the ACM as low level operatives. The BSP's targeted decimation of the leadership forced the ACM to progressively rely on newer but apparently loyal members to fill the yawning gaps in the organization. By late 1996 seven out of the ten members of the ACM's Directorate were BSP infiltrators. The new leadership proceeded to direct the ACM into even more radical actions, especially against civilians. This caused whatever popular support it still had, to completely collapse by 1998.
 * Operation Alecto - The targeted killing of seven members of a cell of the Acirian backed NGO Free Corummese Movement for their involvement in illegal smuggling of Corummese nationals. After installing a device to automatically spread a nerve agent in their office, five of the seven died on the spot while the other two were taken to a local hospital. These survivors were later abducted and taken to Corumm were they were put on trial.