"During the winter of 1927-28 officials of the Federal government made a strange and secret investigation of certain conditions in the ancient Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth. The public first learned of it in February, when a vast series of raids and arrests occurred, followed by the deliberate burning and dynamiting - under suitable precautions - of an enormous number of crumbling, worm-eaten, and supposedly empty houses along the abandoned waterfront. Uninquiring souls let this occurrence pass as one of the major clashes in a spasmodic war on liquor."
"The Shadow Over Innsmouth", Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Background
Prior to the raid, a team of U.S. Treasury Department agents under the command of Special Agent Wade of the Secret Service conducted an investigation of the townsfolk of Innsmouth. Their findings prompted President Calvin Coolidge to authorize a raid under the code name Project COVENANT. The Department of the Navy, in the form of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) agents from the P4 Division, U.S. Marines, and U.S. Coast Guard troops, provided both firepower and manpower. The Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, under director J. Edgar Hoover, was brought on board for its legal authority to seize “suspected aliens and seditionists” for deportation.
Result
ONI captured two-hundred and nine Deep One hybrids; a copy of the log of the Sumatra Queen, the ship of Innsmouth’s most prominent merchant-captain and founder of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, Captain Obed Marsh; a Marsh family history dated 1862; two copies (one badly burnt) of the Ponape Scripture; five conical stone tablets inscribed with glyphs (weighing about fifty pounds each); and incomplete translation notes for the strange glyphs, compiled over many years by Robert Marsh, who was killed by Marines while resisting arrest. Rumors persisted for years afterwards that a submarine fired torpedoes off of Devil’s Reef at an unknown target, deep in the ocean.
Consequences
The capture of live specimens of half-human creatures proved the purpose of the P4 Division of ONI, providing evidence beyond all doubt that mankind was not aone on the planet and that the enemy posed a threat to the United States. The P4 Division began a protracted war against the Deep Ones, employing the Navy to depth-charge suspected Deep One colonies and the Army to destroy Innsmouth-like surface colonies in Central America. These actions laid the foundation of the future Delta Green.
See Also
External links
- Project COVENANT, summary by Raymond H. Rich.
Publication history
- Howard Phillips Lovecraft, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" (1936), excerpted above. Mentions a “series of raids”.
- Kevin A. Ross et al., Escape from Innsmouth (Chaosium, 1992). The name “Covenant” is invented for a large raid, described in detail herein as an RPG scenario. The name is explained as a biblical reference, but is not capitalized.
- Adam Scott Glancy with John Tynes, the title chapter in Delta Green (Pagan, 1997). The material on the operation itself is consistent with the Chaosium publication. The name is capitalized.
- Adam Scott Glancy, “Once More, from the Top” in Dark Theatres (Armitage, 2001). A fictionalized, more or less DG-canonical account of the action on the ground in Innsmouth.