Don't look now, but an unlikely combination of letters may be following you.

Okay, we admit it: our favourite acronym for an evil spy agency is the one in the Zoo Crew. A Cabal Recently Organized Solely To Instigate Crimes cannot be topped.

We will now proceed to separate the real from the imagined in the spy world. (We're clever like that.)

1. SHISH: real. It stands for Sherbimi Informativ Shteteror, or State Intelligence Service in Albanian.
2. NSA: real, although the US National Security Agency sometimes pretends it isn't.
3. BMLVS: real. Austria's Bundesministerium für Landesverteidigung und Sport has many jobs, from guarding the 'army forest' to military intelligence to training for the Olympics. (AEIOU, guys!)
4. SPECTRE: fictional. Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion seem to be out to get James Bond.
5. UNIT: fictional. And the UN hopes we all know this. They specifically asked the producers of Doctor Who to change the acronym to keep them out of it. We don't know exactly what the UN has against Gallifrey, but they'd better hope they know how to deal with Daleks on their own.
6. SUPO: real. Finland's Suojelupoliisi, or Security Intelligence Service, is probably spying on Milla right now.
7. BfV: real. And the weird acronym probably gives it away that this is a German agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz. It protects the constitution, but apparently is uninterested in sport.
8. VFD: fictional. Lemony Snicket gave us the amazing secret society known as the Volunteer Fire Department.
9. UNCLE: fictional. But oh, the girls swooned for Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin back in the swinging 60s.
10. PIS: real. What, you've never heard of the Puntland Intelligence Service in Somalia? Really, you must keep up with these things.

How many 'intelligence gathering' agencies are out there? Who knows? There are probably some so secret that they only use glyphs. Hey, let's start one of our own. It could be called Citizens All United To Intimidate Organised Numbskulls.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

16.05.16 Front Page

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