Black Operations
A black operation or "black ops" is a covert or clandestine operation by a government agency, a military unit or a paramilitary organization in which the operation itself is at least partially hidden from the organization or government's own scrutiny. For example, in the United States, some activities by military and intelligence agencies are funded by a classified "black budget", of which the details, and sometimes even the total, are hidden from the public and from most congressional oversight.
A single such activity may be called a black bag operation;[9] that term is primarily used for surreptitious entries into structures to obtain information for human intelligence operations.[12] Such operations have been carried out by the FBI, CIA, NSA, KGB, Stasi, Mossad, MI6, MI5, ASIS, COMANF, DGSE, AISE, CNI, MSS, VAJA, R&AW, UDU, SVR, FSB, GRU, ISI, BND, BIN and the intelligence services of other states. History
Law enforcement has carried out undercover work in a variety of ways throughout the course of history, but Eugène François Vidocq (1775–1857) developed the first organized (though informal) undercover program in France in the early 19th century, from the late First Empire through most of the Bourbon Restoration period of 1814 to 1830. At the end of 1811 Vidocq set up an informal plainclothes unit, the Brigade de la Sûreté ("Security Brigade"), which was later converted to a security police unit under the Prefecture of Police. The Sûreté initially had eight, then twelve, and, in 1823, twenty employees. One year later, it expanded again, to 28 secret agents. In addition, there were eight people who worked secretly for the Sûreté, but instead of a salary, they received licences for gambling halls. A major portion of Vidocq's subordinates comprised ex-criminals like himself.
Vidocq personally trained his agents, for example, in selecting the correct disguise based on the kind of job. He himself went out hunting for criminals too. His memoirs are full of stories about how he outsmarted crooks by pretending to be a beggar or an old cuckold. At one point, he even simulated his own death.
In England, the first modern police force was established in 1829 by Sir Robert Peel as the Metropolitan Police of London. From the start, the force occasionally employed plainclothes undercover detectives, but there was much public anxiety that its powers were being used for the purpose of political repression. In part due to these concerns, the 1845 official Police Orders required all undercover operations to be specifically authorized by the superintendent. It was only in 1869 that Police commissioner Edmund Henderson established a formal plainclothes detective division.
The first Special Branch of police was the Special Irish Branch, formed as a section of the Criminal Investigation Department of the MPS in London in 1883, initially to combat the bombing campaign that the Irish Republican Brotherhood had begun a few years earlier. This pioneering branch became the first to receive training in counter-terrorism techniques.
Its name was changed to Special Branch as it had its remit gradually expanded to incorporate a general role in counter terrorism, combating foreign subversion and infiltrating organized crime. Law enforcement agencies elsewhere established similar Branches.
In the United States, a similar route was taken when the New York City Police Department under police commissioner William McAdoo established the Italian Squad in 1906 to combat rampant crime and intimidation in the poor Italian neighborhoods.[19][self-published source] Various federal agencies began their own undercover programs shortly afterwards – Charles Joseph Bonaparte founded the Bureau of Investigation, the forerunner of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in 1908.
Secret police forces in the Eastern Bloc also used undercover operatives.
