Central Intelligence Agency

The agency traces its lineage to the intelligence outfit that grew out of the wartime Office of Strategic Services, rebuilt into a permanent spy service once the Second World War closed. In the future the series depicts, a body carrying the same name operates as one of several covert branches serving the American Empire, gathering secrets and running operations that reach well beyond its own borders.

Its darker work surfaces through Project Sunset, a classified counter-guerrilla effort run during World War IV that Batou happened onto while deployed in South America. When one of the program's test subjects resurfaced as a killer preying on people in Japan, the agency crossed the Pacific claiming it meant to detain him. The real aim was to have Section 9 quietly eliminate the man and erase an embarrassing loose end.

Marco Amereti stands as the agency's most consequential figure in the story, though only as one of Project Sunset's subjects rather than an operative. The conditioning left him a disturbed serial murderer who hunted victims across Japan. Batou cornered him and came close to killing him, then chose to honor his oath as an officer of the law, taking Amereti alive and handing him back into the agency's keeping.