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Paranatural Incident Task Force

The Paranatural Incident Task Force (PITF) is the small FBI unit, created at presidential request in 1992 and run out of a derelict Washington barbershop, whose four investigators are the player characters of the campaign and whose name is the title of the show.
Type Organization (FBI task force)
Aliases PITF; the task force; the Paranatural Task Force; "Pitfa"; Foreign Threat Investigation Task Force (FTIT, public name)
Parent FBI, under Big Bill's Foreign Influence Task Force
Leader Andrew Howard
Headquarters D.C. barbershop
Founded Assembled May 24, 1992
Status Disbanded on Inauguration Day 1993; members recalled as consultants in April 1993 (as of Radford Horrors 04)
First appearance Radford Horror 01

Overview

The task force investigates disappearances, sightings and incidents that nobody else in the Bureau wants. Andrew's own description on the first morning is "we're hunting aliens", and he calls the unit "the first task force of its kind made for the FBI": "We're bleeding edge here, guys." Explaining it to a Georgia sheriff later, Kurt describes "an early warning system" that looks for patterns of disappearances, most of which turn out to be nothing. In Utah, Andrew calls it "kind of an oddball task force... kind of like the front line of people being weird". (Radford Horror 01, Appalachia 04, Walkers 05)

Officially the unit is real but classified. Its reports go up under the code word SKYHOOK, and the public is given a different story about every case it closes. Once the Georgia scandal made the unit famous anyway, it was known publicly as a national security task force; asked for its public name, Andre settled on the "Foreign Threat Investigation Task Force", which Dante immediately shortened to "the FTIT". (Summer Service 03, Summer Service 06, Walkers 01)

The name "Paranatural Incident Task Force" is not spoken in the first session, where it is just "the task force". It is first heard at the end of the first arc, when a visitor to the office asks Andrew how to abbreviate it: "Pitfa?" Big Bill later calls it "the Paranatural Task Force". (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 08, Roulet Estate 01)

Founding

The task force was created at the request of President George H. W. Bush. In spring 1992, with the Soviet Union gone and the FBI's Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism sections being downsized, four people are told separately that they are being moved to it. (Radford Horror 01)

  • Andrew Howard, who wanted the job, is warned by his boss that the thing "has boondoggle written all over it" and "smells like career suicide".
  • Kurt Larson, a CIA officer on loan to an FBI counterterrorism task force that is being downsized, is offered a "real sweetheart gig... hunting for ghosts and little green men for the president".
  • Dick "The Biz" Baxter of Counterintelligence is laterally transferred to what his chief vaguely calls "an investigatory task force related to possible technological threats to national security".
  • Huell Kendrick is thrown out of his old office and onto a "punishment detail": "some kind of make-work task force the president's idiot brother wanted".

Other agents treat the unit as make-work; the agent clearing boxes out of the new office wishes them "good luck with the aliens". (Radford Horror 01)

They meet for the first time on May 24, 1992, and a courier delivers their first file the same morning. (Radford Horror 01)

Bush gives Andrew the real reason for the unit that autumn, and it is not the "idiot brother" of Huell's office rumor: "my son asked me to." His son, identified at the table as George W., has an interest in such things and made him promise to get to the bottom of them if he won the election; Bush was "humoring the boy". Having read the files, he no longer treats it as a joke. (Walkers 01)

Members

Member Role Played by
Andrew Howard FBI agent; leader of the task force Rita
Kurtis "Kurt" Larson Consultant on loan from the CIA, formerly of UTAW; carries no FBI badge Dante
Dick "The Biz" Baxter FBI agent, formerly Counterintelligence Ezra
Huell Kendrick FBI agent Zack
Diane Secretary; runs the office and the phones Andre
Donald McManley Forensic support from The Summer Service onward, with two interns and an RV laboratory Andre
Daniel Webster FBI Special Agent placed over the recalled team in The Radford Horrors Ezra

(Radford Horror 01, Summer Service 03, Radford Horrors 01)

At the start Andrew is the only one who knows that Kurt is CIA rather than FBI. Kurt is variously introduced as "Special Agent Kurtis", as a private investigator, and as CIA "assisting the FBI". (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 05, Radford Horror 07, Appalachia 08)

OJ, a 25-pound stuffed alien sent to Huell as an insult by his old narcotics colleagues, is the unit's mascot, with a tie and a badge. See OJ the stuffed alien. (Radford Horror 08)

Chain of command

Andrew reports to Big Bill, head of the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, which is the unit's parent body because "it was determined that alien visitations are foreign by definition". Big Bill reports to Deputy Director Floyd Clark, who reports to the President: the team is three levels down from Bush. (Radford Horror 01, Summer Service 03)

In the field the team is told to route anything strange up the chain, to keep the true purpose of the unit out of what it tells other agencies ("that's for the report. With appropriate classification"), and, repeatedly, to do things by the book. Expenses are reimbursed and the Bureau pays for damage. (Radford Horror 03, Radford Horror 05, Summer Service 06, Appalachia 03)

Headquarters and equipment

The barbershop

The office is a run-down, disused barbershop in Washington, five or six miles south of FBI headquarters. It is former Capitol Police property with asbestos, water damage and fifteen years without renovation, which the FBI had been using for document storage. The building has three floors. The ground floor is still the barbershop, with its chairs, washbasins and a radio; upstairs are a few administrative rooms, at first with one desk, a telephone and an IBM PC with a modem. The basement is behind a keypad-locked steel door, which Kurt attacks with luminol and a blacklight, and holds a Vietnam-era arsenal including M16s, napalm, an RPG and landmines. (Radford Horror 01)

By June 1992 there are desks, chairs and a struggling window air conditioner, and the lockup has gained flamethrowers, claymores and the captured flashlight weapon. By October, after Marblehead, the office has four window units, no roof leak, a front desk with a bell "downstairs in front of the barber stuff", and a stock of joke copies and posters of E.T., Alien and Close Encounters sent by colleagues; what Diane calls "the petty cash" is the drug money taken in Radford. On Christmas Eve 1992 Diane decorates it, the tree trips the breaker, and Kurt restores power from the neighbors' building. (Radford Horror 08, Appalachia 01, Roulet Estate 01)

See D.C. barbershop and PITF office.

Cases

Cases arrive by FBI courier as a file. By October 1992, Andre noted, the unit had handled about ten cases, most of which "washed out". (Appalachia 04) The first was picked because Radford is a hotspot on the Atolean Paranatural Index, which tracks sightings and disappearances per capita. Between cases, leads fizzle: disappearances where the person turns up, pirate radio "Scooby-Doo stuff". The Utah case walks in off the street when Alberta Wilmarth knocks on Andrew's door; Diane had been asking what to do about the "crazy people" coming by, and the team had agreed on a tip box. (Radford Horror 01, Radford Horror 08, Walkers 01)

Vehicles

History

The Radford Horror (May 1992)

The first case, the disappearance of Amanda Lucky in Radford, Virginia, ends with the Radford Moth and a fight at a burning church that puts the whole team in the emergency room for a week. The sheriff closes the kidnapping case after two locals confess to abusing her. An unidentified cleanup crew got to the church before and after them. (Radford Horror 08)

The Summer Service (June 1992)

Sent to Marblehead, Massachusetts after an EPA/USGS survey team vanished, the team finds the Sons of Adam, a parasite and a creature offshore, and ends the case with a tactical nuclear weapon, the Davy Crockett, obtained through Kurt's old contacts. Big Bill takes it to the Oval Office, a Navy submarine is lost, and the National Guard takes over the town. Big Bill's order is that the unit's real purpose stays in the classified report. (Summer Service 03, Summer Service 04, Summer Service 06)

Three versions of Marblehead then exist: the classified report, the version the rest of the government gets (an extremist cult with nerve agent and a rogue nuclear device from the collapse of the Soviet Union), and a different public one. See Terrorist cover story. (Summer Service 06, Appalachia 01)

The Things in Appalachia (October 1992)

The unit is at its high point: the Bureau has stopped bullying it, the office is refurbished, and Andrew is formally a field agent. Kurt is questioned about Marblehead for a House subcommittee investigation, with Big Bill on one side of him and his CIA superior on the other. (Appalachia 01)

In Dahlonega, Georgia the team uncovers Jan Martense's gold-mining ring and its ape-men. It also becomes the center of the Clinton surveillance scandal, when the state police announce that the FBI is spying on candidate Bill Clinton and Andrew is identified on live television. Big Bill demands a full inventory of men and equipment and flies down. (Appalachia 07, Appalachia 08)

Quote

"Howard, don't fuck this up." (Andre as Big Bill, Appalachia 07)

Unrecorded session

The end of the Georgia case, Appalachia 10, was never recorded. Dialogue in Walkers 01 establishes that Jan was captured and is held at the CIA's Black Site Omaha, that the Spud Hut plant exploded, and that the Georgia State Police released the Biz's name.

The Walkers in Skin (October to November 1992)

The fallout is handled at the top. Bush calls Andrew to the Oval Office and tells him he is "personally responsible for the survival of the United States of America". The FBI sends the Biz on television to deny everything, with Huell backstage; Kurt is ordered to stay away from the taping. The unit is now publicly known, as the FTIT, and recognized wherever it goes. (Walkers 01, Walkers 02)

Big Bill approves a trip to Utah ("It's your task force. If you think it's worth looking into, you know, be my guest") to exhume Shelly Wilmarth. The case at the Sherman Ranch becomes a war with the skinwalker faction of two towns, fought alongside the Utah National Guard. Andrew is killed and replaced during it, and comes back changed; see Andrew Howard (duplicate) and Andrew Howard (the Monstrous). (Walkers 01, Walkers 06, Walkers 09)

Roughly 300 to 400 people die across the two towns, at least 50 or 60 of them Guardsmen, in the team's second mass-casualty case in six months. Big Bill's cover story is a radical domestic insurgency. (Roulet Estate 01)

Disbandment (December 1992 to January 1993)

After 53 days of paperwork, on Christmas Eve, Big Bill comes to the office party with the news. President-elect Ross Perot believes the task force is a cover for Bush using the FBI against political enemies. He has asked Big Bill to resign, will disband and reassign the unit on Inauguration Day, and is forming his own task force for the "insurgency incidents". (Roulet Estate 01)

Officials take the team's files. On Inauguration Day 1993 the four agents, technically in limbo and not yet reassigned, wake up hungover in the Roulet house in Rhode Island with Diane asleep in the car, having driven there overnight talking about finding proof for Perot. When the Biz phones the FBI for backup and mentions his task force, the operator is "not familiar" with it. The case ends with the Biz and Huell shot at a pharmacy. (Roulet Estate 01, Roulet Estate 02, Roulet Estate 03)

By spring 1993 the unit no longer exists. Its cars and car phone have been taken back. Huell is on disability, Kurt is training other agencies at Quantico, Andrew is on desk duty in New York, Diane is in FBI records, Big Bill has been fired, and the Biz has vanished from his hospital bed into Russian custody. (Roulet Estate 03, Radford Horrors 01)

The Radford Horrors (April 1993)

Perot's replacement team, five career agents sent to Radford, disappears; see Missing FBI task force. Perot telephones Andrew himself. The new FBI Director, Rudy Giuliani, brings the old team back as consultants "strictly there for informational purposes", under the operational authority of Daniel Webster, with two goals: find the missing agents, and establish an "acceptable fact pattern" for the first Radford case. (Roulet Estate 03, Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02)

The recalled team is Andrew, Kurt, Huell and Webster in Radford, with the Biz still in Moscow advising Boris Yeltsin. Within days it has a lawsuit pending over a standoff at a Safe Environment Fund fence, and Giuliani is telling Webster that running "lunatics in the field" is reckless. (Radford Horrors 03, Radford Horrors 04)

Standing

  • Inside the Bureau. A punishment posting at the start, briefly respected after Marblehead, and a liability after Georgia. Andrew cannot be fired because his misdeeds are buried in classified cover-ups; colleagues run betting pools on whether he is blackmailing or sleeping with the Director. (Radford Horror 01, Appalachia 01, Roulet Estate 03)
  • With Big Bill. Protective and frequently furious. He retasks a submarine and sends the Guard for them, and pays for it with his job. (Summer Service 04, Roulet Estate 03)
  • With Bush. Started as a favor to his son; by the end he considers it essential. (Walkers 01)
  • With Perot. A political dirty-tricks unit to be shut down, and then the only people who know anything about Radford. The Biz privately expects Perot to axe it for good. (Roulet Estate 01, Radford Horrors 01)
  • With Webster. He arrives believing it was Bush's political dirty-work unit, pronounces it the "worst political wetworks group I've ever... had the displeasure of dealing with", and soon admits its behavior fits no political conspiracy. (Radford Horrors 02)
  • With the public. Known through the Biz's television appearance and, in Robert Bigelow's words, as a "pretty interesting little task force" with "a lot of interesting stories" in its wake. (Walkers 02)
  • With FBI Counterintelligence. It surveilled the Biz at Marblehead over his money problems until Kurt told its agent that the unit was his to govern. (Summer Service 01)

Trivia

  • Three task-force names are easy to confuse. The Foreign Influence Task Force is Big Bill's umbrella organization; the Paranatural Incident Task Force is Andrew's unit inside it; the Foreign Threat Investigation Task Force is the name the public knows. (Summer Service 03, Radford Horror 08, Walkers 01)
  • The first day's send-off comes back at the end of the arc, when a visitor leaves the office with "best of luck with the aliens". (Radford Horror 08)
  • Dante's proposed title for the disbandment episode was "The gang gets unemployed". (Roulet Estate 01)

Appearances

The task force appears in every canon session.