White Horse Protocol is the Bureau's operational standard for the containment of anomalies that act upon cognition, perception, information, and consciousness. It governs phenomena that alter how reality is apprehended rather than reality itself. The protocol is binding on all personnel assigned to a WHITE HORSE-classified case, and on any personnel who encounter an unclassified anomaly exhibiting the indicators set out in §2.

White Horse Protocol applies to anomalies whose primary action is upon the faculties of perception, memory, reasoning, belief, or communication. Assignment is computed from the hazard weight matrix (Compendium §8); a hazard profile weighted toward the Cognitive (C), Perceptual (P), and Metaphysical (M) categories resolves to WHITE HORSE.

An anomaly is handled under this protocol from the moment its indicators are recognized in the field, in advance of formal classification and irrespective of provisional control code. Where the computed protocol does not match operational reality, assignment may be overridden in the case header with justification recorded in the Containment Protocol section.

Under White Horse Protocol, the observer is the attack surface.

The anomaly reaches personnel through the channels by which they take the world in — looking, listening, reading, speaking, sustained attention — and not through physical force. Three assumptions govern all handling under this protocol:

1. Exposure is dose. Effect scales with duration, proximity, and repetition. No exposure is presumed safe on the grounds that it was brief.
2. The record carries the hazard. Photographs, recordings, transcripts, and spoken description may transmit the effect to personnel who never encountered the anomaly directly. A WHITE HORSE anomaly is presumed contagious through its own documentation until demonstrated otherwise.
3. Compromise is not evident to the compromised. Affected personnel commonly report no distress and pass routine evaluation. Self-assessment is not a containment control.

The following measures are to be held in memory and applied without reference to documentation. A field agent encountering an anomaly that presents WHITE HORSE indicators — effects upon perception, cognition, memory, or belief — observes them before and during first contact.

1. Assume you are within reach. Treat your own perception and judgment, and any single observer's account, as unverified.
2. Time-box and rotate. Fix an exposure limit and a relief to enforce it before you begin. Do not extend exposure to understand the anomaly better; understanding is not worth dose.
3. Assess at a remove first. Observe through instruments, remote relay, or a barrier wherever the anomaly permits indirect observation. Use analog recording where digital fails.
4. Corroborate independently. Confirm any observation against a second observer or instrument that did not share your vantage. Disagreement between two accounts, or between an account and an instrument, is a containment indicator — not a discrepancy to resolve in the field.
5. Control the information. Restrict who is exposed, what is recorded, and who receives it. Do not describe the effect to uninvolved personnel. Treat every recording as live.
6. Watch yourself and your team. Report any change in conviction, perception, memory, or suspicion — your own or a colleague's — at once. The first person to notice an effect is rarely the person experiencing it.

CRITICAL — If two personnel cannot agree on what they observed, both are to be treated as exposed.

Containment under White Horse Protocol is procedural and informational. Physical barriers are secondary; the controls that matter govern who is exposed, for how long, and what leaves the site as a record.

Exposure management. Each WHITE HORSE case defines a maximum exposure interval per person per shift and a mandatory rotation enforcing it. Cumulative exposure is tracked across the full duration of a personnel member's assignment, not per shift alone, and governs reassignment.

Mediated observation. Indirect observation — remote camera relay, optical instruments, shielded viewing — is the default. Direct, unmediated observation is conducted only under specific authorization recorded in the case file.

Information compartmentalization. Documentation of the anomaly's effect is held under restricted access on a need-to-know basis, and its reproduction is controlled. Imagery or recordings that themselves reproduce the effect are flagged as hazard-bearing, withheld from general circulation, and stored with handling warnings. Recording defaults to analog where digital capture is degraded.

Catalogued effects. Where a case manifests an effect recorded in the Anomalous Symptoms Repository (REP-600-11), the effect is referenced by its catalogue entry rather than re-described, so that response remains consistent across cases.

Civilian exposure. Civilian-facing handling is coordinated with the Department of Aberrant Incidents. Where the phenomenon has been absorbed into common civilian experience, self-normalizing classification under REG-800-12 may apply and is determined separately.

Certification. Routine access to a WHITE HORSE case requires Memetic Resistance Certification Level II; direct or sustained exposure requires Level III or higher. Certification raises the threshold of effect. It does not confer immunity, and exposure limits apply in full regardless of certification held.

Screening. Personnel are screened under the Cognitive Screening Form (SC-900-05) prior to assignment and at fixed intervals for the duration of assignment, and are evaluated after any direct exposure. Exposure is conducted in pairs or under external monitoring, so that compromise can be observed from outside the affected individual.

Withdrawal. Personnel exhibiting screening indicators, or reported to show change in conviction, perception, memory, or behavior, are withdrawn from contact immediately. Withdrawal is made without prejudice and requires no justification on the personnel record.

Treatment. Affected personnel are treated under PR-400-20 (Memory Reconfiguration Procedures) and PR-400-21 (Personality Anchoring Procedures) as indicated by exposure class.

Where standing containment is failing — the effect propagating beyond controlled exposure, spreading through documentation or between personnel, or resisting exposure controls — personnel escalate immediately through the case Handler or Site Director. Uncontrolled propagation through records or the civilian information environment is itself a containment failure under this protocol, not a security matter alone.

Attempted or imminent containment failure of a WHITE HORSE anomaly is addressed by Contingency CY-400-81 "WHITE HORSE-TERMINUS". Measures following successful containment failure are addressed by Contingency CY-400-91 "WHITE HORSE-EXCIDIUM". Contingency content is held at Site Director level and above; personnel below that level are required only to know that the contingencies exist, and that the response to attempted failure is not the same as the response to successful failure.

The following records reassessments of this protocol arising from specific cases. Routine revisions logged under the Documentation Specialist review cycle (Form REQ-000-02) are not reproduced here.

• 1988 — Self-report insufficiency. CASE-0019 established that an affected individual may experience an induced change as native to themselves and pass full evaluation without a recordable finding. The discretionary-withdrawal provision in §5 derives from this case.
• 2004 — Certification is not immunity. Following CASE-1088, the assumption that Memetic Resistance Certification confers proportional protection was withdrawn, after Level III personnel reported full effect on exposure; exposure limits were made binding irrespective of certification. The same review brought reproductions of a perceptual-class effect — photographic or recorded — within the protocol's exposure controls, on confirmation that such reproductions transmit the effect to personnel who never observed the anomaly.
• 2021 — Vector over subject. A question raised under CASE-0032 — whether a WHITE HORSE effect is a property of the anomalous subject or of the anomalous utterance or artifact itself — remains open following activation of an effect in a non-exposed individual. Pending resolution, contact restrictions are applied to the effect's vector and not solely to the designated subject.
• 2022 — Direct-engagement presumption. Following CASE-0999, the protocol established a standing presumption against direct engagement with anomalies that propagate between personnel, and required fixed-interval cognitive screening of all personnel on active WHITE HORSE field operations. The amendment followed the compromise of an entire response team within forty-seven minutes of direct contact.
• 2024 — Observation as exposure (under review). A reassessment arising from CASE-0244 — that unmediated observation be treated as an exposure hazard in itself, independent of any active or hostile effect — is under review by OPM-NCAR and DPC Inspection and has not been adopted into this protocol as of the current revision.