Organizations in Deus Ex

The UNATCO (United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition) is a fictional United Nations organization in the PC and PlayStation 2 video game Deus Ex and its sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War.

Basic information
UNATCO were formed in the early 21st century as an ad hoc response of UN member nations to the growing problem of international terrorism in certain ways quite similar to the black organization "Rainbow" in Tom Clancy's novel Rainbow Six. By the game year, 2052, UNATCO has become a standing counterterrorist police force based on Liberty Island in New York City. The motto of UNATCO is from the Sententiae of Publilius Syrus: "Nihil aliud scit necessitas quam vincere," loosely, "Necessity knows nothing other than to conquer."

The exact date of the genesis of UNATCO is unclear: several characters have worked for the organization for many years, including Samuel Carter, Paul Denton and Gunther Hermann. The game's protagonist admits to adolescent dreams of working for the organization. For the two decades before the game's present day, UNATCO were one of any number of UN peacekeeping forces deployed to various areas of the globe, a roster of the most effective and elite counterterrorist forces in the world.

In the recent past of the game setting, UNATCO has grown from its roots as a loose anti-terrorist confederation. Before the present world crisis, it had less power as an organization, and far less funding for its non-cybernetic policemen. UNATCO spent most of its not-inconsiderable UN appropriation on cybernetic research, resulting in a small core of specialists "augmented" by mechanical prosthesis and othosis. Such "augmentations" are unsightly and the cause of great social stigma among the population at large. In the game setting, an entirely new generation of cybernetic soldiers indistinguishable from the non-"augmented" human beings begin to take over from the older "mech-augs," or mechanically "augmented" soldiers. Given that a new generation of weapon systems can take five to fifteen years to develop, it seems likely that UNATCO made the gradual transisiton from the unofficial relationships between counterterrorist forces in UN member nations to a full-fledged United Nations mission some time between the years 2031 and 2035. There is a long-standing relationship between INTERPOL and UNATCO: the relationship might well be analogized to that between a police force and its SWAT/SORT team, albeit on an international level. The current director of UNATCO, Joseph Manderley, is a veteran INTERPOL cop.

UNATCO's fame grew until 2051, when a terrorist bombing of the Statue of Liberty caused the President of the United States to ask UNATCO to permanently coordinate counterterrorist efforts in the United States, establishing a permanent base on Liberty Island. UNATCO funding also increased significantly during this period, allowing UNATCO to begin recruiting policemen on its own rather than attempting to hire away experts from other police/military organizations. By the game's present day, the organization has between five and twenty UNATCO Deployable Units or UDU, each with a complement of fifteen crack counterterrorist commandos.

These UDU are often led and coordinated by agents, specialists who have managed to distinguish themselves in UNATCO's structure. Most of these agents came up in the organization before the Statue bombing, and are in line to undergo augmentation surgeries themselves if they have not already done so. Due to the high cost of military augmentation surgery, there were probably only twenty or so mech-augmented agents in the history of UNATCO. In the game world, there are civilians with mechanical-cybernetic augmentations, although these prosthetics are probably only in use in mechanical occupations requiring high degrees of judgement not suitable for robot labor. UNATCO's cybernetic special agents, because of their prosthetics and orthotics, are often the most recognizable face of UNATCO, and are UNATCO's most feared and effective arm, both because of their superhuman abilities and because of their long counterterrorist combat experience.

The game's protagonist, J.C. Denton, starts out as an agent for UNATCO.

Characters in the game that are or were at one time UNATCO agents include Denton; his brother Paul Denton; the Israeli sharpshooter Anna Navarre; the German heavy weapons specialist Gunther Hermann; the New York entrepreneur Jordan Shea, and the American ex-general Samuel Carter.

Background and game information
In fictional world of Deus Ex, the establishment of UNATCO as a military force based permanently on U.S. soil is characterized as a response to the terrorist attack on the Statue of Liberty. In a turn of events unknown to the public, UNATCO themselves bombed the Statue, providing the pretext for the building of a permanent facility there, and the effective military dissolution of the United States into the United Nations.

At first, in the game, it appears that UNATCO's genuine intent is to defeat global terrorism perpetrated by groups like the Northwest Secessionist Forces or Silhouette. But as the story progresses the player discovers that the director, Joseph Manderley, is the pawn of a secret conspiracy that calls itself Majestic-12. As a consequence, UNATCO is just a particularly tool for global hegemony. By the end of the game the player works actively against the covert operations of UNATCO and Majestic-12.

UNATCO's American base is in the unlikely location of an underground bunker beneath Liberty Island. Deeper beneath the base are the Majestic-12 laboratories and prison. In the game's story this location could be seen by the general populace as symbolic given that the President of the United States supposedly chooses to keep the Statue of Liberty headless (as a result of the aforementioned terrorist attack) to remind U.S. citizens of the dangers of terrorism. The player and many more insightful organizations in the game see these actions as symbolic of world government's cutting off, metaphorically, of the head of Liberty itself. Several UNATCO agents have access to the MJ-12 facilities beneath the Liberty Island UNATCO base, including Manderley, Anna Navarre, and Gunther Hermann.

UNATCO enjoyed vast increases in funding and manpower in the two years before Deus Ex begins. The player uncovers the financial links that bind UNATCO to Walton Simons, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a key leader of Majestic-12. UNATCO do much of MJ-12's dirty work, including the disperal of biological warfare agents against the general population, and military suppression of any peaceful or military resistance to UNATCO member governments. UNATCO's establishment as a permanent military police in the United States in the year 2051 is the first open display of MJ-12's ambition for a world government. As Deus Ex begins, MJ-12 operates openly as a military occupier in certain urban sectors of France. The game does not make it clear whether Majestic-12's open operations there are due to government complicity or military takeover; the former seems far more likely. It is also made quite clear that the persistence in France of the strongest remnants of the Bavarian Illuminati necessitates Majestic-12's open military displays - much of MJ-12's effort in Paris centers around the eradication the French Illuminati and their allies, Silhouette. UNATCO resources would be wasted in France, where MJ-12 already conducts military operations with the consent of the French government.

Where it can, Majestic-12 thus fields its own armed forces, which are perhaps more numerous than UNATCO's, and certainly better equipped, but less well-trained for urban combat. Nevertheless, the tide of opinion in the United States and much of the western world outside of France has necessitated the promotion of a military force that represents Majestic-12's interests without exposing that military force to over-intense public scruity. It would seem that Majestic-12 had planned for UNATCO to be their publicly acceptable military wing from the very beginning of their revolt against the Illuminati in the 2030s, since UNATCO also began to come together as a UN mission at that time.

Trivia
An interesting detail about the location of Liberty Island is the skyline. In the game (which was released in 2000), the New York skyline does not contain the World Trade Towers that would have been visible from Liberty Island. Though the reason of their absence was a technical decision. One the designers remarked that the story's somewhat gruesomely foresighted reason for this was that a terrorist destroyed them and there is a succinct reference to a significant 'World Trade Center bombing' mentioned in the game, definitely not intended to be the 1993 attack since the footnote in the game mentions that this occurred only ten or fifteen years beforehand.

When the game was released in 2000 Ion Storm created a website (www.unatco.org) for the fictional organization to promote the game. After the September 11th terrorist attacks however, the organization might have been a little too believable, even if the website didn't look authentic. Ion Storm pulled the website shortly after the attacks.