Organizations of Alias
Organizations of Alias
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Organizations of Alias

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Organizations of Alias


The following is a list of organizations in the TV series, Alias.

The Alliance of Twelve is a fictional international organized crime group in the television series Alias. It is involved in the trade of intelligence and weapons as well as in blackmail. SD-6 is one of its subsidiary cells. The organization was founded by Alain Christophe, once a CIA counterintelligence officer, as well as other former agents of various other intelligence agencies and wealthy individuals investing in the spy trade after the Cold War. The Alliance of Twelve is an enemy of the United States and a rival to the CIA.

The Alliance is led by a board of directors, one of them being Arvin Sloane. Some members are from the private sector, but most are former intelligence officers. All of them are wealthy. The organization is divided into 12 sections, named SD-1 through SD-12. "SD" stands for Section Disparu – literally, the section which has disappeared in French (Sydney translates it as "the section that doesn't exist" in the episode Q&A), this was coined by founder Alain Christophe. These organizational cells are spread over 12 major cities of the world. The Alliance takes in recruits and tricks them to believe they are working for the CIA when in reality they are not.

The purview of the Alliance is the black market trading of weapons, military secrets, industrial intelligence, medical technology, computer advances, and political agendas. Its clients include governments, corporations, wealthy citizens, and families.

The Alliance aims to eventually reach world domination through its control over organized crime and the trade of intelligence. According to Jack Bristow and Arvin Sloane, the Alliance once wished to change the world when it had achieved this, and rid the world of corruption, but had become bloated and corrupt over the years, diverging from their original vision and focusing instead on profit.

According to Sydney Bristow in the episode "Q and A", the Alliance of Twelve was responsible for the carbon proxy disaster in 1992, in which an accidental methyl isocyanate leak at the manufacturer plant in Bhopal, Madhyapradesh, India killed three thousand people and injured another thousand, leaving them disabled. In 1996, near Kyoto, Japan, a bullet train accidentally switched tracks and derailed, killing a hundred and fifty people. The Alliance was also responsible for that disaster. In 2001, the Alliance caused a transport plane in Germany to suffer mechanical failures outside Munich, killing twelve people. The disasters were falsely believed to have been accidents. In truth, some were acts of revenge, others were personal favors to those who helped fund the Alliance. Some were distractions so that local resources were occupied so that SD-4 or SD-7 could infiltrate a building somewhere and retrieve sensitive data.

SD-6, headed by Arvin Sloane and based in Los Angeles, is the focus of the first two seasons of Alias. SD-6 pretends to be part of the CIA and states its objective as "retrieval and study of intelligence both military and industrial throughout the world that is critical to the superiority and survival of the United States of America." Even its own members, initially including agent Sydney Bristow, believe it is a black ops division of the CIA; and only a handful of senior staff know the truth and are complicit in the deception.

In the first episode of Alias, Sydney learns from her father, Jack, about the organization's true character as a part of The Alliance of Twelve. During the course of the first season, other heads of the SD cells are eventually shown meeting. Among them was Edward Poole, head of SD-9 (played by Roger Moore), who manages to convince Sloane to kill fellow SD head Jean Briault to influence an upcoming vote on whether to declare war on Alexander Khasinau, who has eliminated rival groups FTL and K-Directorate. Another SD leader is identified by the first name "Ramon," but his last name and his SD cell number are unrevealed.

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