Millennium Group Funding

[Maxx Blackwell]

Have you ever wondered how it is that the Millennium Group exists financially?

The Group is of course based on The Academy Group - at least in the first season. So it's logical that the Group, like the Academy Group, gets paid for their consulting work by the law enforcement agencies they consult for.

But have you ever noticed how the Group seems to stick their noses into cases they stumble across? Or how they just seem to take on cases they're interested in because they seem relevent to the Apocalypse?

Take for instance this exchange between Frank and Peter in 203 Sense and Antisense...

[The caller hangs up. Frank replaces the handset and sits back, frustrated. Then he

notices something being pushed through his letter slot in the front door. He runs over

and picks up an envelope and then checks through the blinds. There's no-one to be

seen outside. He opens the envelope. It's a check made payable to him for ten

thousand dollars on which is typed, "Please consider your services rendered."]

[Later, Peter Watts examines the check.]

WATTS: Why didn't you tell me you took this job?

FRANK: I wasn't currently on a case with the Group.

WATTS: We're always on call.

FRANK: I'm only officially a consultant with Millennium. I'm trying to feed my

family, Pete. The situation with Catherine has created new responsibilities. I've got

two of everything. Two sets of toys, two rentals and a house.

WATTS: We work together, Frank. You should have come to us.

FRANK: It didn't seem like a situation the Group would be interested in. An infected

transient, essentially a missing person. It appeared to have no deeper meaning.

WATTS: Well, you're right we would have passed on it, but now it does have a

deeper meaning, and not just the obvious conspiracy. They used you and Giebelhouse. Believing that when you realized the consequences of their actions you would walkaway. That's why I'm working on making you more than officially a consultant, because you, and I, the group, we don't walk away.

FRANK: This isn't even about money, now. I'm responsible for this man.

WATTS: We'll take the case.

[Frank throws the case file across the desk. Watts picks it up.]

Thanks once again Libby!

First of all it appears that Peter is saying there is no life outside of the Group in spite of the fact Frank isn't a real member of the Group yet; he's only a consultant to and for the Group...

WATTS: Why didn't you tell me you took this job?

FRANK: I wasn't currently on a case with the Group.

WATTS: We're always on call.

FRANK: I'm only officially a consultant with Millennium. I'm trying to feed my

family, Pete. The situation with Catherine has created new responsibilities. I've got

two of everything. Two sets of toys, two rentals and a house.

WATTS: We work together, Frank. You should have come to us.

"We work together." The primary assumption here is he means Frank and Peter, but then he says ... "You should have come to us." Us has to be the Millennium Group.

Now we've talked conspiracy theories concerning the Group's involvement with Marberg and that this episode exhibits some of the bleeding like hemoragic fevers like Marberg exhibit so maybe he's trying to keep it all in house. Otherwise, what's the interest now?

(Stay focussed Maxx - you're straying here!)

So lets, for the moment, assume it's not that.

Frank was privately hired to help the investigation by an outside source - the Seattle Police Department - who was approached by "The Centre for Disease Control" which was actually the front used by the Department of Energy trying to recover one of their own.

So when the Group gets involved who picks up the tab? Frank? Probably not. The Seattle Police? Nope. It appears later in the episode that Frank approached Geibs about Patient Zero and got the Seattle Police involved to help find a man he thought was endangered.

So it appears that the Millennium Group must have money to burn - perhaps investments from a long-gone era or are being funded somehow else. Especially if they're doing stuff on the side like developing the Marberg PrP variant virus.

Are they perhaps like the Umbrella Corporation? ...

At the beginning of the 21st century, the Umbrella Corporation had become the largest commercial entity in the United States. Nine out of ten homes contain it's products. It's political and financial influences are felt everywhere. In public it is the world's leading supplier of computer technology, medical products and health care. Unknown, even to it's own employees, it's massive profits are generated by military technology, genetic experimentation and viral weaponry.

[/quote

So what do you think?

Maxx

[HighPlainsDrifter]

i always thought they where a part of the FBI. so funding came from the government

[Guest fledgling666]

my opinion:

yes, fuunding came from the government, but in the same way arms deals are done like Iran-Contra, drug deals are done during investigations into Columbian cartels, mujahideen are hired to stop the spread of communism, etc. the money is paid in grants to private labs, the private labs have discretion over the spending of that money, patient zero obviously gave the two test-tube anglos the authority to do whatever was necessary when his experiment was in force. in this case, it's my opinion that the check came from the company working on the Human Genome Project, by way of large government funded accounts.

[Guest zombieromero]

Maybe the Millennium Group gets its funding from religous fanatical groups or a radical group of people representative of the church. This could be most possible in the second season due to the Group's more cult like image.

Just a thought.

[The Old Man]

I always considered that the Group charged expensive professional fees for their consulting services but it was interesting to learn that Frank was on a fee basis only, not a regular salary. I also recall Bletcher making a comment about his departments budget and Millennium Group fees when he was discussing Frank taking a case for them, possibly in the Pilot episode?

Interesting topic Maxx!

[Guest zombieromero]

Considering the power which the Millennium group had, it is entirely possible that there was a certain degree of government funding.

[Raven Wolf]

I always considered that the Group charged expensive professional fees for their consulting services but it was interesting to learn that Frank was on a fee basis only, not a regular salary. I also recall Bletcher making a comment about his departments budget and Millennium Group fees when he was discussing Frank taking a case for them, possibly in the Pilot episode?

Interesting topic Maxx!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I agree! Interesting topic! I've always wondered about where the funding came from.

[Libby]

Whatever date we take as being the start of the Millennium Group, I would expect such a secretive and powerful group to have amassed quite a fortune. There's a real-life organisation (the name of which I can't remember) that has property in Washington that members (including Senators or whatever) stay at when in town. These kinds of organisations often own property (buildings and artefacts, etc) - I wonder how wealthy Freemasonry is, for example.

Incidentally, I'm just working on the "Owls" transcript and an autopsy is carried out at Bethesda. Finley says "This is a Millennium Group autopsy" which implies that the Group has access to facilities such as that in their own right. That implies government involvement at high levels, and quite possibly funding as well.

This is yet another interesting question (good thinking, Maxx!) and I suspect we'll find clues scattered in various episodes. I suspect also that the clues won't be clear, and we'll end up being no more certain about the funding than we are about the origins of the Group - but, of course, that won't stop us!

[Raven Wolf]

Libby,

Yes, I agree that seemed to be where all the money was coming from later in the series. (2nd season) But I wonder what the origional intent was, when Millennium was still CC's "baby", and it hadn't taken on such dark, gothic overtones.......

[Libby]

Good point, Erin. But I suspect the answer to Season 1 MM funding is pretty boring in comparison with the secretive, powerful organisation in Season 2. As the Group was modelled after the Academy Group, it and the members were probably funded the same way. These were mostly people who had retired from the FBI and wotnot, so would have had reasonable pensions. Most of them were probably paid on a case-by-case basis, rather than a salary, with most revenues to the Group coming from contracts with private companies dealing with internal fraud and such like. Involvement with law enforcement would have been paid by the agencies they were called in by, or by the FBI.

Thinking about it, the aspect of Frank's finances in Season 2 doesn't really sound right, given the years he must have been with the FBI. It's established in "Midnight of the Century" that Frank's in his mid-50s, which I suspect is around the time FBI agents would retire on full pension, or if he retired early it wouldn't have been by much. Given that Catherine was working, at least part-time, and Jordan isn't too expensive (yet!), the only reason the family would be stretched financially is because of renting two homes while still, presumably, paying the mortgage on the yellow house. We've paid off our mortgage, but then Hubby and I have been married for a loooong time. Frank and Catherine wouldn't have been married for so long (Catherine was born in 1963 - see Luminary) so maybe Frank hasn't been into property-owning for long enough to have paid off the mortgage.

Turning to Peter Watts: I don't think there's any reference to his age, except that in The Beginning and The End he mentioned working for the FBI in 1985, and assuming he'd be around 25 at least then, that makes his birth year 1960 or earlier. Given that he was around 40, he must have been recruited out of the FBI before retirement, so presumably must have been offered a good financial deal (maybe a full-time person rather than a consultant, as Frank is described) or had private money in order to fund his daughters through school and university. There's no mention (as far as I can recall) whether Barbara Watts had a paid job, but I kind of got the impression she would have been university-educated, so could have taken a paid job of some kind with a reasonable salary once the girls were old enough, so maybe she provided the regular income, while Peter earned consultancy fees.

I realise there are a lot of "maybe/presumably/possibly" here - perhaps this could be a task for one of the database volunteers, to be a roving, freelance, forensic profiler (see Jose Chung) and do the research and produce a profile of the Millennium Group!