Trope-a-Day: I Did What I Had To Do

I Did What I Had To Do: This is the defining trope of the Fifth Directorate, whose entire existence as a too-black-to-even-have-a-budget quasi-independent, not asked about and definitely never telling, doing things which not only should decent people not know about but which it is important that they don’t know about, agency is to be That Evil Which Exists In Order To Oppose Worse Evils.  (Specifically, things of the order of existential threats.  Mere wars, terrorism, and suchlike trivia are not their concern.)

(Well, it’s one of them: the other is No Place For Me There.)