[Media] Journalist’s book accuses Alliance of “turning a blind eye” to Cerberus.

Journalist’s book accuses Alliance of “turning a blind eye” to Cerberus.

Jelik Moraw, Kithoi Tribune

Freelance journalist Andrew Frye has created a storm of controversy around his recently published “See No Evil, Speak No Evil: The Alliance’s Failure”, which accuses the Alliance of neglecting to take effective action against the Cerberus organization in the years prior to the Reaper invasion.

Frye in his book made note of the numerous shell corporations as well as wealthy Cerberus sympathizers within the Alliance military-industrial that helped provide funding and resources to the organization, as stated in this excerpt “Companies such as Cord-Hislop Aerospace, CDR Holdings, Haribon Military Industries and other fronts, many that were formed shortly after the Cerberus manifesto was published, had been able to transfer vast amounts of resources for years. But only after the war started, did the Alliance began to properly investigate their ties to the organization”. Frye also went on to accuse the Alliance of dismissing the pre-war reports that were published by both the STG and Spectre intelligence regarding Cerberus’ increase in military strength prior to its invasion and occupation of Omega.

Since the book’s release, Alliance officials have derided Curtis’ book as “Sensationalist and groundless journalism”. Spoke Adjutant Elizabeth Curtis “The Alliance was engaged in numerous counter-terror operations aimed at curbing Cerberus’ influence well before the invasion. To say that we dismissed the threat Cerberus presented is a complete falsehood, and it should make anyone question Mr. Frye’s credibility as a journalist.”

Despite the outcry by the Alliance, or perhaps because of it, Frye’s book has appeared on several #1 bestseller lists alongside other books riding off the backlash against the Alliance for its pre and post-war policy decisions.

Frye's book completely fails to discuss the extensive lengths Cerberus went to to prevent Alliance interference. It took a great deal of effort to avoid their attention.

Kind of think that was intentional on his part.

I'm betting this site did more to destroy the idea of Cerberus than the Alliance did. I mean, there's nothing that hurts your image more than being made the subject of mockery, you know? Especially when you combine it with total lack of interest in any response from the group in question, like you don't even care what they think. Having a whole group of people from every race in the galaxy meeting under the Cerberus name, having it associated with a diverse group of insa- of colourful aliens arguing about Blasto movies and the colour yellow, or whatever - was there any greater sign of the disdain in which people held them? I mean, really. It's like when your brother's clan-by-contract invites you to an official function only to totally ignore you, you know? It's far more pointed that just not inviting you at all. I think this site did that. Or something like it.

Or, thinking about it, maybe the Alliance *did* do more than people think to stop Cerberus, behind the scenes, but publicly their strategy was something like what I just mentioned - you know, refuse to legitimise Cerberus in the public's eyes by not giving them the satisfaction of getting worked up over them? Like with terrorists in general; yeah, you need to stop them and bring them to justice if they strike you, and all, but if you get all worked up and panicked you're giving them more power, you know? If they blow up your government hall, you don't flinch, you build a new government hall and you save the desperation for behind the scenes. If they think you're falling apart or terrorized, they're just emboldened.

I bet the Alliance did more to stop Cerberus than people think. It's just that they didn't want to legitimize their power by being upfront about it. People think humans are upfront like turians, but they've got a fair bit of salarian in them, you know? That's what I think.

I must agree with Bitterskin on this. If actions against other, not as well known groups can be used as an example, the Alliance has a habit of putting on a front of 'Not Caring', while behind the scenes, stuff is getting done and bad guys are getting blown up. Not saying that actually happened versus Cerberus, but that's what the Alliance has done with everybody else.

Well, there's an obvious, desperate, attention grab if ever I saw one. Poor guy's either out of his mind or got no pull left if he's trying for stunts like that.

I can only imagine the shenanigans you pulled to make that slush fund big enough to fund your wn private army.

Especially considering your biggest asset disappeared overnight.

You know, Earth.

Cerberus had Alliance prototype tech and the modified to fit their own stuff, and their tolerance testing was stat for stat in line with Alliance milspec or better, and their personnel was directly recruited from Alliance or ex-Alliance billeting and staffing.


And in other shocking and worldview shattering news, asaris have blue asses.

Should we blame the Alliance for not taking out Cerberus, while ignoring that the Hierarchy has had similar issues in its past? After all, Cerberus poised only the same threat Saren did, and we didn't lift a flying talon against him. The asari, too, have done this. As have the Salarians, the Batarians, the Hanar, possibly even the Elcor and other governments. Should we be upset about this? Oh, definitively. It displays a glaring breach of the personal trust we are intended to have for our governments. Should it surprise us? Not if we study the patterns, look at the histories. Cerberus represents only one thing that other examples don't; they... brought a sentient race of immortal slave-bots upon us. That certainly makes the formula more daring, but not any different. Rather, we should not be surprised but we should learn. We should strive to find a balance between letting these groups run rampant, as the Alliance did, or striking out all groups entirely, as the Hegemony (tried) to do. I believe that in our thousands of years of existing as species, we could surely make some progress towards not ruining everything constantly. But, they do call me an idealist...

I am reading this book and it is brilliant.

Do I really think, that back when the Reaper threat was ridiculed, Cerberus' indoctrination unknown, the Alliance was killing themselves trying to defeat in a group dedicated to 'advancing human interests'? Heck, in the Black-Ops community or whatever you call it, they probably all knew each other from before Cerberus split.

It's not like I'm arguing people should tear down the Alliance, but yeah, before the war, probably a lower priority. A mistake. Maybe an apology is in order. It's never, EVER going to happen, I'm not deluded, but still.

The sheer logistics of putting together an army like Cerberus did after close to (or more than, depending on which numbers you accept regarding the military evacuation from Earth-Arcturus)99% of the population disappeared is actually incredibly impressive.

I'd also love to know how the fuck they did it.

I'm guessing 'by sticking Reaper bits in everyone's heads'.

Explains the numbers, not so much the materiel. Or how they got all the damn Reapertech in the first place.

Saren was also a SPECTRE, and literally above Hierarchy law. Union and Republic, too, really.

didn’t exactly have that luxury.


Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha.


...Which is exactly what I'm getting at. How the shrell'd they hide the capital in the first place?

You know, shit's classified for reasons. So I think the nice journalist should just sit down and be quiet.

inb4 stg

I'm getting that book for late-night reading, see what I can learn from it.

Interesting.

The problem with any conspiracy is that for it to work, people must know about it.

The more people know, the more information leaks happen. The more mistakes happen.

Cerberus subsequently made many mistakes.

To indulge in a bit of a thought exercise I would say that it was a twofold thing. Firstly the establishment of extra-Council Space black sites (presumably established with the capital and aid of sympathetic backers) and legitimate facilities under the auspices of the same to serve as warehouses and hardened C&C nodes. There are approximately thirty years between the publishing of the original Cerberus manifesto and the Reaper incursion; plenty of time to start accumulating resources from all your various holdings and shell corps. You would want to avoid major and impressive thefts really, just skimming off stockpiles, parts, microtransactions between organizations where a few credits here and there wouldn't be missed accomplishes the job just as well with fewer risks. You'd want to keep at least a portion of that as free credits for various and sundry expenses (operations, bribes, legitimate purchases of stock, and the like) but the majority you'd want to transfer into material assets. Minerals. Weapons. Ship parts. Allies. Nanites for fabbers. Construction teams. Leverage. Things that can instantly be made use of without necessarily having to go through a middle man. At this point you're leaner and more flexible; your number of affiliates and backers outnumber your actual troops and you can afford to sit in the shadows, taking pieces when the opportunities present themself. Accumulating more power to accumulate more resources to accumulate more power etc, etc. You build up a warchest essentially that you can draw upon in the event of a future conflict.

The second part is the advent of the Reaper invasion. Judging by their apparent familiarity with the tech, influence in the Alliance intelligence community, and association with individuals of note heavily involved in the Eden Prime conflict, it's not that much of a leap to say that they were fully aware of what was coming and may have even had a loose timeframe for when it would occur. What you do then, or rather what I would have done, is you start disregarding caution. You begin using up your stores, making contact with recruitable elements you've passed over previously before because they didn't suit your more clandestine goals, you start putting your manufactories to work producing the necessary military tech. You will proceed to draw increased attention from concerned governments but enough of your facilities are outside their authority (even if they knew where they all are) and nobody will have long enough to make a decisive impact on your operations in any case.

Some time before the batarians are attacked you start to cash in your chips, liquidate stock, activate your assets, seize every material good that you can (cargo, vehicles, populations centers a la Omega), leaving behind as few infiltrators and loyalists as you can get away with. Consolidate your power at your black sites, where it will be beyond the effective reach of both the authorities and the Reapers (for the time being at least). You begin to bring facilities necessary for the mass production of integrated soldiers online and prep the more public fronts for implementation where appropriate. When Kar'Shan goes dark that's when you mobilize, attack high value intelligence targets that pertain to your goals, open up into all out war.

Most likely way I see it working really.

Ugh. And people ask why SATAE's starting to get a cold reception, with attitudes like that.

Frye's pretty heavy handed, and doesn't take into account, as RTB noted, the extreme lengths they went to avoid detection. Despite their insanity and megalomania, Cerberus seemed to be more like the Hydra than the mythological guardian of the underworld. Cut off the head, and two more take its place.

That said, the Alliance policy towards Cerberus always seemed to be a reactionary one, often to detrimental extremes. The kidnapping and murder of Rear Admiral Kahoku, a Blitz veteran, should have prompted a more stringent offensive, but Cerberus still persisted. The cycle of retaliation continued until the very end of the war, with the horrific events at Horizon proving the last straw.

In other words, the Cerbies were crafty, but given their actions prior to the war, we should have been more thorough in wiping them out. Frye might not be willing to grant the Alliance any realistic leeway, but he's right to point out that serious errors in judgement were made.

I agree with Sandman's financial assessment, it rings extremely plausible.

As for how they managed to acquire so many recruits?

No one quite knows how many Agents and Operatives they had before hand but we can assume they had a substantially staffed and professional group to hold off action by various governments and other rivals. And it is known they used aggressive yet subtle techniques to entrap unwary civilians into their techniques. There is many a tale of the average man donning the white and yellow at the influence of recruiters. And who knows how many Cerberus kidnapped and enslaved when they invaded Eden Prime and such Colonial holdings? Add in the refugees they duped with Sanctuary.

But I would bet that the bulk of the army came from Humans they either coerced or forced to join their ranks when they conquered Omega from before the war and until it was retaken by the Pirate Queen and the Hero of the Galaxy. There seemed to be very, very few Humans left by the time Omega was liberated.