Project Covenant
Project Covenant was founded shortly after World War II when an alien vessel landed in New Mexico, followed shortly thereafter by a landing outside of Kapustin Yar ("Russia's Roswell") in the USSR. People had seen what horrors man had ushered into existence just a few years before with the introduction of nuclear weapons; the possibility that one superpower or the other might gain the upper hand through researching alien tech was unthinkable. Nuclear weapons were already out of the bag, and there was nothing they could do to stop proliferation and an eventual arms race. But what if one of these technologies made even nuclear weapons useless? Sometimes the most threatening weapon is an impenetrable shield...
A small group of spies, scientists, military leaders and politicians broke their oaths of loyalty and founded a new Covenant for the sake of humanity, vowing that the weapons and technologies they discovered would never be used by men to conquer men, and also to build a secret military infrastructure--an extraterrestrial combat force--to repel a full-blown alien invasion should that threat someday come to Earth.
Since 1947, Project Covenant has been responsible for investigating possible alien activity, covering up XT influences and hoarding and protecting XT technology. If there ever were any Men in Black, these guys most closely fit the bill.
Project Covenant's response protocol was drawn up from information teased from the data banks of multiple alien computers from several ships that landed and were captured. The alien strategy became known as the SAIC doctine: surveillance, assimilation, infiltration, corruption. This method of invasion took years to complete, so the founders planned to take advantage of that window. They focused much of their efforts on counterintelligence and intelligence-gathering, hoping that if they could at least spot the first two steps in the XTs plan, they might stop the last two. During this window between detecting an invasion attempt and alien boots on the ground, the founders figured they would have years to come out of the shadows, fill their ranks and get a fully staffed force ready to fight the enemy.
These plans, however, did not account for the fact that the aliens (the Collective, from whom all the captured ships had been stolen) were in the process of changing their tactics, and the data in their ships' computers did not convey this updated information.
As they say, "You're always ready to fight the last war again."
