The leader of the GoonSwarm Intelligence Agency stumbles into work on a cold December morning. Accessing his private intelligence network from behind his desk at a Washington, DC law firm, he can tell it's going to be a busy day at the office. Reading over reports and hastily contacting his agents in the field, the news begins to stream in from all corners of the EVE galaxy, steadily assembling itself into a coherent picture, minute by minute.

7:00 EST: The Tau Ceti Federation, a French corporation friendly to GoonSwarm, begins a surprise assault on the 1V- system, held by the enemy Lotka Volterra alliance. Lotka Volterra holds a sizable chunk of virtual real estate. GoonSwarm does not.

10:14: Then-GoonSwarm leader Remedial issues a call to battle, rallying his troops to assist their allies. "This is our moment of triumph and we shall not fail," cries the empassioned director. "Move to the battlefield and engage the enemy immediately." All this before lunch.

14:00: A tense stand-off ensues as GoonSwarm and its allies lay siege to the system. Hundreds of spaceships gather in one writhing armada, their sole purpose to knock out Lotka Volterra's stations in a single coordinated strike. All is going well, until their shocking opening shot is countered by an even more startling reply.

16:08: "Fucking hostile cyno 200 above the gate was tense but nothing came of it," comes an ominous report from GoonSwarm member Piggyblink. He speaks too soon.

16:10: A small light appears amidst the blackness of space. The spark then expands into a furious cloud of energy, chaotically spiraling around the seemingly-innocent cynosural field. The worst scenario has become a reality: Lotka Volterra's first Titan-class starship--a Death Star-like behemoth long kept secret from even the corporation's upper echelon--has revealed itself for the first time, activating its Doomsday superweapon from inside the system.

The resultant blast-wave stretches from one corner of the sector to the other, instantly vaporizing all but the most hardened vessels. When the confusion has cleared, hundreds of GoonSwarm, Tau Ceti and Red Alliance pilots are left floating in their escape pods, defenseless and dismayed. In-game assets totaling in the billions of ISK--the currency of EVE--are gone in the blink of an eye. All seems lost.

But even as the EVE forums discussed Lotka Volterra's impressive ambush, the allied pilots recovered from their losses, and The Mittani and his associates went to work. In the immediate aftermath, GoonSwarm would incapacitate five enemy stations and win key victories, becoming the sovereign power in the system after only a few days. In the weeks to come, a war of attrition between the two powers raged on throughout the southern territories. Within mere months, Lotka Volterra's corporate franchise was allowed to expire permanently--the once-powerful alliance had been wiped from the galactic map.

"That was easily the most intense day I've had in EVE," The Mittani tells me, chatting from his office in much the same way he would with an agent. "It was the [Lotka Volterra] members who were left shaking their heads and demoralized, thinking 'We even had a Titan, and they still won?'"

Arranging an interview with the famed spook, I wasn't sure what to expect. Sporting the classic forum avatar of Dr. Strangelove, his presence in GoonSwarm is legendary; his words sometimes curiously honest, and often intentionally duplicitous. As the founder and director of the GIA, an anomalous spy organization serving the thousands-strong, SomethingAwful.com-derived GoonSwarm alliance, The Mittani has seen over a hundred agents and sub-directors working underneath him over the past year. All have been devoted to one cause: the downfall of GoonSwarm's enemies, by any means necessary.

Supporting tens of thousands of players, the resources within the EVE Online universe are constantly fought over. At its most basic level the game is presented as a web-like star map, displaying various star systems connected by jump-gates, like a 3D series of intersecting roadways. At the core of the web is the friendly PVE territory, while dozens of outlying, sovereign player vs. player systems remain up for grabs. Territorial resources become a tightly controlled commodity, as does the information related to its management. Corporations--EVE's form of a guild--range from small pirate organizations, to massive world-conquering alliances.

Following the latter mold, GoonSwarm has risen as one of the largest such alliances in EVE, known for its comedic, yet unrelenting approach to the cutthroat universe. In a game that many find boring, GoonSwarm creates their fun through sheer force of imagination--and The Mittani is perhaps the best example of this phenomenon.

Throwing once-cultivated in-game virtues such as honor and fairness out the window, the GIA was controversial in its creation. As The Mittani puts it, "EVE is considered by many to be a 'sandbox' MMO, and in such a place, only the ruthless survive. The list of nasty things you can do is only limited by your creativity and your capacity for cruelty." In a persistent world where all deaths are final, ruining someone's day often becomes necessary on the path to glory. This presents the same ethical questions that face real-life politicos: Where do you draw the line in a lawless war?

The answer, as it often boils down to, is based on simple mathematics. Faced with a teeming horde of eager, yet un-skilled pilots, GoonSwarm had to get its hands dirty in order to compete. After some debate, the GIA was established in early 2006, becoming the only open-recruitment spy organization--and one of the few in-house agencies--in EVE. "Eventually we realized, much to our surprise, that there simply wasn't any competition," says a proud, but somewhat disappointed Mittani. Spy games are more fun with two or more players.

For instance, Mittani claims that one of the strongest organizations in the game--the famous Band of Brothers, or BoB--has an intelligence community on par with Mr. Bean. "When we got access to BoB's director forums it was a huge disappointment," he tells me. "For them, member-level posts on our forum, which is the single largest and most-spy ridden forum in the game, were a big deal. It was like finding out that there was no Santa Claus."

Though The Mittani may miss out on the fun of participating in a fleet action, quietly shuffling pieces across the starlit board brings its own reward. "If you're even mildly sadistic, or at least enjoy seeing the lamentations of people you dislike, this job is amazing fun," he explains while showing me a copy of Lotka Volterra's private forums, pointing out a few particularly amusing deceptions. He refers to his "job" as a "meta-game," a game-within-a-game. Like the Men in Black, he is above the system--beyond the system. Anonymity is his name; the GoonSwarm battle cry of "fofofo" his native tongue.

Much like a real-world bureaucracy, running one of the largest spy agencies in EVE is no easy task, requiring constant vigilance. In fact, The Mittani rarely logs into the game, preferring instead to act as a prime mover--an outside force, more concerned with the big picture than the day-to-day skirmishes and operations of the Swarm. Communication becomes a game in itself. "I'd get 20+ [reports] a day and, at one point, had 35 separate Trillian windows open," he explains. "AIM for Americans mostly, MSN for the Euros, and ICQ for the Russians."

The GIA's primary assets are its deep-cover employees--those agents who infiltrate enemy corporations in the guise of anonymous characters. These top-secret soldiers are required to run at least two EVE accounts to maintain their secrecy, voluntarily living out a video game double-life. The spies are forced to log enough play-time within the target organization to keep up the illusion of dedication, and because they are often enrolled as members of inept corporations, this can be a tedious affair. As real-life spies will tell you, the work is usually not as exciting as it sounds.

"Being an agent is a full-time job," The Mittani says of the in-game profession he helped establish. "It can be extremely dull and tiresome depending on the target, but it's necessary. Most fail horribly or lose interest, but you get a good number of solid agents, and every now and then you'll get a real James Bond type."

Of course, when one deals with James Bond on a regular basis, it becomes hard to break the habits of routine paranoia. Early on during our conversation, I can tell The Mittani is growing suspicious of my questioning. At one point there is a pause. Something is up. I consider escape.

"I just had Rycar run your IPs," he finally informs me. He just what? I look over my shoulder on reflex, half expecting to see some internet commando behind my back, gently pressing a knife to my throat.

Turn the page to find out whether or not this article comes to an abrupt end.