The Star Trek Conspiracy Iceberg Explained

Sublieutenant Setal

Like Shakespeare's King Henry V — if Shakespeare was indeed the author — Romulan Admiral Alidar Jarok also posed as a 'commoner,' his own logistics officer, Sublieutenant Setal, when he first arrived aboard the Enterprise-D. It took a while for 'Setal,' or rather Jarok, to drop the disguise. The Admiral was a defector, whether he fully accepted that or not.

Jarok had crossed the line, left home and family behind forever to warn the Federation that the Romulans were preparing for war. In reality, Jarok had been the subject of an elaborate disinformation campaign by his compatriots at Romulan High Command.

There was no secret cloaked base on Nelvana III in the Neutral Zone. The Romulans weren't planning an attack. Jarok had been fed false records and communiqués to test his loyalty — a test he failed, of course, though his cause was just. The plot had terrible consequences. Unable to live with it, Jarok took his own life.

The Pegasus Experiments

The Treaty of Algeron existed for a reason — to keep the peace between the United Federation of Planets and the Romulan Star Empire. For all intents and purposes, it did its job for decades, and that even after the destruction of Romulus by supernova in 2387. Whatever their personal views on its content, it was a Starfleet officer's duty to uphold it.

That ethos on paper clashed with the rules of conduct in practice. In 2358, then Captain Pressman, acting under the aegis of Starfleet Security, conspired to violate the Treaty of Algeron by developing and testing an expressly prohibited 'phasing cloak' aboard the USS Pegasus.

The first set of experiments went terribly wrong. An explosion in engineering caused "heavy casualties". The First Officer, Chief Engineer, and a large part of the bridge crew mutinied. Ensign Riker, fresh out of the Academy, still buzzing with "duty and honour," sided with Pressman. They and a few others made it off the ship, only to witness what appeared to be its destruction. The incident was covered up and classified by Starfleet Intelligence.

In 2370, when Admiral Pressman discovered that the Pegasus was "still out there," it looked like events were about to repeat themselves. Commander Riker had done a bit of growing up, however, though not without some help from the holodeck. Eventually, he revealed the truth to Captain Picard. Pressman (and Riker) was arrested, the phasing cloak seized, and the Romulans informed.

Whilst we're on the subject of cloaking devices…

The Enterprise Incident

About a century prior to the Pegasus events, there had been the oddest of goings-on aboard the 1701. Captain Kirk, supposedly experiencing an episode of severe emotional distress that had affected his cognitive capacity, suddenly ordered the Enterprise to proceed through the Romulan Neutral Zone and into Romulan space. Things only got stranger from there.

Kirk was actually under secret orders from Starfleet Command to go steal a Romulan cloaking device — a newer, more effective form of the technology. The plot was complicated, to say the least. Surrounded by three Romulan vessels, including two of Klingon design, Kirk and Spock first beamed aboard the flagship. Spock feigned 'treason' to flirt with the Romulan commander for information, and 'killed' Kirk with a 'Vulcan death grip'.

Naturally, there's no such thing. Kirk was still alive. Back on the Enterprise, he was surgically altered to look like a Romulan. Now in disguise aboard the flagship, Kirk was able to nab the cloaking device with Spock's help. Before returning to the ship, and to Federation space, Spock accidentally nabbed the Romulan commander too.

The Tomed Incident

For this entry, we now move to the murky events that precipitated the signing of the Treaty of Algeron. Officially speaking, little to nothing is known about the 'Tomed Incident' of 2311, except that the death count was in the thousands. Unofficially, the facts of Tomed are clear.

Secondary literature records the events of Tomed as the catastrophic last actions of a fundamentalist, of hardline Romulan nationalist Admiral Aventeer Vokar, commander of the Romulan Imperial Fleet. Vokar had sought to start a war with the Federation, and so, in 2311, set his ship, the IRW Tomed, on a collision course at warp speed towards an asteroid base in the Foxtrot Sector of Federation space.

The resulting explosion of the Tomed's quantum singularity drive wiped out all thirteen Federation asteroid bases in the area. It also destroyed the USS Agamemnon in the process. Vokar was also killed, as were those thousands of Starfleet officers. War was only avoided when the Klingons stepped in on the side of the Federation, forcing the Romulans to step down.

In fact, only fragments of that story were true.

In reality, the Tomed Incident was a plot on the part of Starfleet Intelligence and one Captain John Harriman. Tensions between the Romulans and the Federation were already at their highest, with war a real possibility. Harriman knew, however, that the Klingons would give their backing to whoever was attacked first. And so, the captain of the Enterprise-B hatched a plan to fake that first strike.

Harriman and two Starfleet Special Operations officers managed to get aboard the IRW Tomed. They sabotaged the ship's systems and sent it flying at the Foxtrot Sector. No lives were lost on the asteroids — all deaths had been fabricated in advance. Refusing to abandon ship, only Vokar and members of his crew died that day.

After Tomed, after Algeron, the Romulans returned to RELATIVE isolation from galactic affairs — from the Federation — just as they had after the Earth-Romulan War. They made their grand return in 2364, though not without a few bloody skirmishes beforehand like Khitomer and Narendra III.

Admiral Leyton Coup

"You're too late. We're everywhere." Those were the dying words of the changeling that had impersonated Ambassador Krajensky in order to infiltrate the Defiant and start a war between Starfleet and the Tzenkethi. The fact is the Founders weren't "everywhere," but then they didn't need to be. The power of that particular conspiracy was to instil the belief, the fear, that they were.

Admiral Leyton and allies — other high-ranking officers among them — fell right in to that trap. They had first tried, and failed, to convince then Federation president Jaresh-Inyo that "sweeping security measures" were needed on Earth as a safeguard against the changeling threat. After the bombing of the Antwerp Conference (by a lone changeling), they decided to prove their point by other, more radical means.

In an attempted military coup, Leyton and co-conspirators used Red Squad cadets to sabotage Earth's power grid, casting the planet into darkness. Around the same time, Leyton had ordered a lieutenant stationed at Deep Space 9 to fix a subspace modulator to the relay satellite in the Gamma Quadrant. That caused the wormhole to open and close at random, as if a cloaked fleet was passing through.

The combination of events made it appear like the Dominion was about to invade. Backed into a corner, President Inyo had little choice but to declare martial law. Starfleet troops began beaming in to street corners across the globe. Captain Sisko and Odo soon uncovered Leyton's plot, however, with a little insider info from Nog.

Even after being found out, Leyton pursued his plan to the last. On a lie, he ordered Captain Benteen of the USS Lakota to prevent the Defiant — on its way to Earth with further evidence of the Admiral's treason — from arriving "by any means necessary". Those means cost several lives before Benteen stood down, before Leyton stepped away.

The Omega Directive

Crossing the Lantaru Sector is only possible at sublight speeds. Most think this is due to a natural phenomenon. Only a select few know the truth. The subspace ruptures that reach out for several light-years in the region, preventing the creation of a stable warp field, were, in fact, caused by the explosion of a single molecule in the late 23rd century.

Starfleet named that molecule 'Omega' — the end of the Greek alphabet for an end to the Starfleet and Federation way of life. In Captain Janeway's words, Omega was "the most powerful substance known to exist". One molecule of Omega was the energy equivalent of a warp core. A chain of them could power a civilisation. A chain reaction of just a "handful" could lay waste to subspace across a quadrant. No more warp, forever.

In the original Federation experiment, physicist Ketteract was killed along with 126 others. After that, Starfleet "suppressed all knowledge" of Omega. Little before or since has been kept more classified. Only starship captains and Federation Flag Officers were made aware of its existence. If detected, Omega was to be destroyed by any means necessary. That included not having to worry about the Prime Directive.

Omega was also the subject of myth across the galaxy. For the Borg, 'Particle 010' was 'perfection'. Federation cosmologists had also theorised that Omega might have been the cause of the Big Bang.

The Khitomer Conspiracy

When the Klingon moon of Praxis suddenly exploded in 2293, it sent political shockwaves across the galaxy. The explosion cost the Empire its key energy production facility, and plunged homeworld Qo'noS into an ecological disaster that would require significant resources to redress. In short, the Klingon Empire could no longer afford 'business as usual,' could no longer afford 'war as usual'.

Chancellor Gorkon of the Klingon High Council had little choice but to open peace negotiations with the Federation — to seek an end to decades of more or less open conflict and outright war. There were those on both sides of the Neutral Zone who were none too happy at the thought of friendly relations. The so-called 'Khitomer Conspiracy' was born.

High-ranking Starfleet, Klingon, and Romulan malcontents — including Admiral Cartwright, Lieutenant Valeris, General Chang, and Ambassador Nanclus — ganged up to scupper the peace process. The plot began with the successful assassination of Chancellor Gorkon by two Starfleet thugs in gravity boots aboard Kronos One. It ended in the attempted assassination of the Federation President during the Khitomer Conference, prevented by Kirk, crew, and Captain Sulu. The first Khitomer Accords were signed.

The conspiracy had achieved the opposite effect.