Security Clearances, Task Forces and FBI RAs - 078

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transcript:

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​​This week on The Writer's Detective Bureau: Security Clearances, Task Forces, and FBI RAs. I'm Adam Richardson and this is The Writer's Detective Bureau.

Welcome to episode number 78 of The Writer's Detective Bureau. The podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime-related fiction. And this week I'm talking about security clearances, FBI Resident Agencies, which are their satellite offices, government budgets, and how chain of command works on a task force. So we've got a lot to cover this week. But first I need to thank my Gold Shield patrons, Debra Dunbar from debradunbar.com, CC Jameson from ccjameson.com, Larry Keeton, Vicky Tharp of vickitharp.com, Chrysann, Larry Darter, Natalie Barelli of nataliebarelli.com and Craig Kingsman of craigkingsman.com for their support. And huge thanks to my Silver Cufflink and Coffee Club patrons as well. You can find links to all of the writers supporting this episode in the show notes at writersdetective.com/78. And to learn about setting up your own Patreon account for your author business or to support the show for as little as $2 per month. Visit writersdetective.com/patreon.

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A writer named Jason asked a series of questions for me to answer on this week's podcast. Jason writes: My near future domestic US detective is going to be working alongside an agent from a foreign organization whose operating protocols are extravagantly different. This foreign agent will be operating within my detective's own agency's jurisdiction and under his leadership, so we'll be conforming to strange, stricter standards. What I need to know is how, and under what circumstances, might something even similar to this come about? Specifically, this partnership in my book will be officially secret. It's intended to be ended once the problem that caused it to form is dealt with in about three to nine years. And I'd like to hear things like the names of departments, standards of operation or liaison offices. What would the chain of command look like and what conditions would the agency that dispatched them to investigations impose on such a partnership and its own right?

Do law enforcement agencies or even individual task forces "Hide things in the budget?" Were a state-level bureaucracy intending to add extraordinary duties in a secretive department to handle them to a local law enforcement agency, what means might they use to go about transferring the budget, keeping it hidden? And could you tell me who exactly they'd be trying to hide this from? Oversight of some sort I assume, but I've got no details. I guess I most need to know what would confine those two in that sort of position here in now, how they'd be hidden from the public and any tells that might give such a thing away so I can start warping it into something futuristic and wacky.

And then Jason goes on to say, "It's hard to tell what I find most valuable from your podcast, but I find one of the most inspiring things to be the invitation you give for the layman to dig into this sort of thing in the first place Among all the valuable information. I'd like to thank you for that the most. Had I not found your podcast, I don't know that I'd have written this ever...                                                         Continue reading...