Mortal Government Knowledge of Magic

[Snark Knight]

Or the car that tried to run him off the road?

Yeah, the car ramming in PG is one unsolved mystery (assuming it wasn't time travel shenanigans).

The bomb on Murphy's car in WN is another one, albeit also credibly attributable to Madrigal.

[Shift8]

Speaking of the FBI incident, I never gave this much thought before, but I now think it would be seemingly impossible for the FBI to not know "something" out of the ordinary happened.

I mean, a major FBI building had a huge shootout with dozens of monsters. I dont think the standard explanation of "people like to believe other things" is going to work.

[forumghost]

Speaking of the FBI incident, I never gave this much thought before, but I now think it would be seemingly impossible for the FBI to not know "something" out of the ordinary happened.

I mean, a major FBI building had a huge shootout with dozens of monsters. I dont think the standard explanation of "people like to believe other things" is going to work.

Keep in mind that this is the same universe where a Coroner can say 'these people aren't human' and get thrown in the loony bin despite having the bodies to prove it.

[Snark Knight]

Keep in mind that this is the same universe where a Coroner can say 'these people aren't human' and get thrown in the loony bin despite having the bodies to prove it.

It's going to be tougher to pull that if there's an intact corpse, though. A dispute about what intense heat does to a skeleton is pretty much inside baseball among coroners. If they actually left bodies behind, a greasy anthropoid bat-monster with fangs isn't going to be mistakable for human by first responders, even with its belly shot open or half its head caved in.

And while the Reds were certainly pretty deadly, it stretches belief that nobody in the whole building but Tilly and Rudolph saw them and evaded being killed.

[Shift8]

It's going to be tougher to pull that if there's an intact corpse, though. A dispute about what intense heat does to a skeleton is pretty much inside baseball among coroners. If they actually left bodies behind, a greasy anthropoid bat-monster with fangs isn't going to be mistakable for human by first responders, even with its belly shot open or half its head caved in.

And while the Reds were certainly pretty deadly, it stretches belief that nobody in the whole building but Tilly and Rudolph saw them and evaded being killed.

And that none of the other people in the building managed to kill some of them too.

[Snark Knight]

And that none of the other people in the building managed to kill some of them too.

Even if the rest of the FBI were too shocked to line up a headshot or hit the kill spot on the belly, just wounding one heavily enough to leave a bloodstain would be evidence. Forensics is going to be very interested in a DNA profile on any 'terrorists' that escaped with wounds after something like that.

The more we dig into this, the more I think Jim is going to have to include some explanation of the aftermath of that as Harry reestablishes himself in Chicago. Shit pretty much had to have hit the fan after that incident - it's one thing for him to have been out of the loop during past events, but once he's back on the grid, there's going to have to have been some fallout that comes to his attention.

[Aminar]

Even if the rest of the FBI were too shocked to line up a headshot or hit the kill spot on the belly, just wounding one heavily enough to leave a bloodstain would be evidence. Forensics is going to be very interested in a DNA profile on any 'terrorists' that escaped with wounds after something like that.

The more we dig into this, the more I think Jim is going to have to include some explanation of the aftermath of that as Harry reestablishes himself in Chicago. Shit pretty much had to have hit the fan after that incident - it's one thing for him to have been out of the loop during past events, but once he's back on the grid, there's going to have to have been some fallout that comes to his attention.

Or some fallout so conspicuously absent that its clear stuff was cleaned. Professionally.

[Shift8]

Or some fallout so conspicuously absent that its clear stuff was cleaned. Professionally.

Thing is though, that is impossible.

A major FBI building erupted into a chaotic shootout that took place on multiple floors. It is NOT POSSIBLE that they government could cover that up.

-Massive amounts of gunfire took place. People would have heard this for blocks. This would absolutely have been in the news. There would have been eyewitnesses, vidoes on youtube etc.

-Missing Persons. You cant cover up that people died. There are alot of families that are going to asking questions on how this happened. Too many to placate with bull.

-To many internal witnesses. Leaks would happened even if you tried. Your never going to convince over 100 FBI persons to keep their mouths shut after they saw vampires.

-Too much left over bio material, if not outright vamp bodies.

I could keep making this list, but it would go on for too long. Bottom line is that this was impossible to cover up. The FBI is not the CIA, and this incident did not take place in some jungle in South America.

[forumghost]

You can't cover up the attack no, but concealing the fact that 'we were attacked by a race of Vampires that Secretly controlled South America for longer then this Country has existed' is pretty damn easy.

Witness Accounts? Notoriously unreliable, and the building was darked out in any case. Obviously that combined with the stress from the attack has caused the witnesses to see things. I mean, there's no such thing as bat-monsters. Besides, the Attack Pattern used is recognised by the FBI (According to Tilly) as matching those used by the Cartels.

Bodies/Blood? Taken away and examined by a Coroner who's either on the take, or refuses to acknowledge the truth in front of him (like Butters Boss).

Clearly this was a Cartel hit aimed at the Wanted Terrorist Susan Rodriguez. The only question is, what did she do/know that would make them desperate enough to launch an attack on a federal building.

[Shift8]

I'm sorry but I think that is a bit absurd.

It would not be at all easy, and quite frankly impossible, to cover up that attack in the manner you describe. Were talking dozens of witnesses here, and that's just inside of the building. This is not a UFO sighting with some obvious crap video footage to back it up. This isn't two dudes in the woods claiming to have seen bigfoot. This is a huge building full of FBI agents who had a massive shootout with a shitload of Ramps. You could not even come close to containing this. Before you ever thought the words "cover up" word from these people would already have leaked. And no one with half a brain cell is going to be able to disregard that many testimonies as fabrication. This is not the sort of thing the government has the capacity to cover up, period. It doesn't work like that . People don't just wave magic wands and make this kind of incident go away. The government is NOT that powerful. Simple as that.

As for bodies and blood, I would love to know how you think that would be disposed of without every agent in the building seeing all of that. Not to mention how many other groups you might have to get involved to actually clean this up. Some of the clean up would require complete building remodeling, carpet removal etc. I could go on etc.

Cartel hit? Where are the bodies of these are cartel members? Where is the camera footage of their arrival? Where is the evidence of their escape? ETC ETC ETC. You think the news media is going to buy that without evidence?

There are simply too many actors involved here to pay everyone off, not to mention that with this many people you would have legal risks out the butt if anyone blabbed to a reporter.

Not to mention the big issue that would be all the families of the deceased who want to know what happened.

Sorry, that that crap was not covered up. Please take the time to look at the picture of the FBI building and its location in Chicago.

I think the best we can get out of this is that no one would no what they actually encountered. They clearly encountered creatures never seen before, but that's not a reason to assume and entire supernatural world. But claiming they totally covered up those details is IMO not possible.

[Snark Knight]

Bodies/Blood? Taken away and examined by a Coroner who's either on the take, or refuses to acknowledge the truth in front of him (like Butters Boss).

Taking away bodies and bloodstains would require a team of cleaners prepared for a coverup pretty much on standby outside the door as soon as the shooting stopped. If the FBI survivors regroup enough to start sweeping their building and come across something that blows secrecy, any cleaners are too late.

Plus, institutional arrogance is going to work against a cover story that the elite federal police force got their asses handed to them to the tune of probably a high double-digit body count by a pack of drug-smuggler rabble who then vanished into thin air. Neither the FBI nor outside oversight is likely to buy that an attack like that got done without an edge well beyond what's known of cartel capabilities, without costing the attackers way more casualties than they did.

And even if most of the survivors didn't directly see the Reds in action, a lot would have heard the Ick - 'vanilla cartel gunmen' isn't going to suffice as a cover story for something so big it shakes the floors when it walks and has a heartbeat audible across half the building.

[forumghost]

We're talking about the Dresden Files here. A world where someone has actually tried to argue that Zombies aren't a thing- literally moments after surviving a Zombie attack.

And no, there aren't going to be too many witnesses. Most of the survivors won't recognize what they saw (Because again, the building was in a blackout) and most of the ones that did see were probably Squished by the Ick.

So we have a small number of survivors, most of whom saw little to nothing. The ones that did are mostly burying their heads in the sand because "Monsters aren't real", and the ones that don't are gonna be dismissed as either crackpots or suffering from PTSD. The power was down, so there were no Cameras. All they have to do is ensure that the guy that picks up the bodies is in on the cover-up.

I mean, it's canon that an Entire City once vanished from the face of the earth in the DF before suddenly reappearing again, without anyone realising the supernatural is there, do you really think they can't hide this?

And Blood? Oh yeah, there'll be tonnes of Blood. Most of which will be regular human Blood, from either A) The Victims, or B) The Gut of any Rampires that the defenders managed to take down. It'd be pretty easy to lose anything Rampire related if they wanted too.

Particularly since Post-Changes the world has gone down the Shitter and the FBI has other crap to deal with, like those 300 Child Abduction Cases that popped up in the last week.

[Aminar]

I'm sorry but I think that is a bit absurd.

It would not be at all easy, and quite frankly impossible, to cover up that attack in the manner you describe. Were talking dozens of witnesses here, and that's just inside of the building. This is not a UFO sighting with some obvious crap video footage to back it up. This isn't two dudes in the woods claiming to have seen bigfoot. This is a huge building full of FBI agents who had a massive shootout with a shitload of Ramps. You could not even come close to containing this. Before you ever thought the words "cover up" word from these people would already have leaked. And no one with half a brain cell is going to be able to disregard that many testimonies as fabrication. This is not the sort of thing the government has the capacity to cover up, period. It doesn't work like that . People don't just wave magic wands and make this kind of incident go away. The government is NOT that powerful. Simple as that.

As for bodies and blood, I would love to know how you think that would be disposed of without every agent in the building seeing all of that. Not to mention how many other groups you might have to get involved to actually clean this up. Some of the clean up would require complete building remodeling, carpet removal etc. I could go on etc.

Cartel hit? Where are the bodies of these are cartel members? Where is the camera footage of their arrival? Where is the evidence of their escape? ETC ETC ETC. You think the news media is going to buy that without evidence?

There are simply too many actors involved here to pay everyone off, not to mention that with this many people you would have legal risks out the butt if anyone blabbed to a reporter.

Not to mention the big issue that would be all the families of the deceased who want to know what happened.

Sorry, that that crap was not covered up. Please take the time to look at the picture of the FBI building and its location in Chicago.

I think the best we can get out of this is that no one would no what they actually encountered. They clearly encountered creatures never seen before, but that's not a reason to assume and entire supernatural world. But claiming they totally covered up those details is IMO not possible.

I have a movie for you to watch. It isn't factual, but its realistic. It's called "Wag the Dog."
The government doesn't have to cover up anything(sort of). They have to keep it off the news. Then they don't have to explain, just shell out death benefits and clean up the mess quickly.
Besides, didn't you know there was a large stash of aerosolized LSD(swamp gas) kept in the facility after the FBI confiscated it from the CIA's MKUltra program. For safekeeping. A stray cartel bullet must have hit. And everybody in the office had been reading The Strain recently, so the hallucinations all went a specific direction.

[Kindler]

Consider that the bodies of the Red Court vampires would have had to be cleaned up immediately, presumably by other Reds, otherwise someone would have put together "Hey, these are the same type of bodies that have been discovered all over the world as thousands of people simultaneously died with no explanation." Remember, it's within twelve hours that the Red Court died.

Either the FBI, at the very least, knows what happened, or there was some kind of weird explanation that was kludged together as a mass suicide attack that was somehow global. (Or, you know, the flood of ectoplasm that Harry unleashed from the Erlking's stalactite ceiling washed away all of the evidence before disappearing).

Personally, I like to think that Tilly gathered the survivors, sat them all down, and formed an unofficial task force, like the FBI equivalent of the Black Cats. It's not inconceivable that this guy, who was capable and canny enough to keep his crap together in the face of the supernatural, got everyone's stories straight to keep the whole thing as quiet as possible. My money is on Murphy ending up consulting for them, reversing Harry's role from the beginning of the series. I even think that they're going to show up as a vested interest in Peace Talks, either at the negotiating table or approaching Harry about what's been going on for the past few years.

Final possible solution I can think of: Marcone. He does not want the FBI poking around in the supernatural, and I believe there may be some kind of obligation to maintain the masquerade as much as possible, as part of his position as Baron of Chicago.

[dspringer1]

You have three strong forces working to cover up magic's existence.   
1) The natural reluctance of people to believe or talk about issues.   Judging by Butter's actions in Dead Beat, this is strong.
2) Supernatural creatures do make some effort to minimize impact and/or take care of evidence/witnesses.  Given many of them have powers to control people or manipulate memories, that can be very powerful. 
3) We have a government agency that is almost certainly working to keep things secret -- while collecting as much info as they can on the subject. 

Combined, these forces can do a lot to hide supernatural events from the public eye.  Snark Knight and others are correct thought -- these three forces are going to have a lot of difficulty covering up the events of a major supernatural war, much less the supernatural equivalent of WWII.  I suspect the magic secrecy dam is really under strain right now -- and will break at some point (perhaps at the start/during the final trilogy).