Special Provision for Kira

The Special Provision for Kira, or SPK, is a group of "elite" anti-Kira FBI and CIA members headed by Near. Membership of the group remains small to preserve secrecy, and the group works separately from the Japanese Task Force.

Overview
A little over four years after L dies, in March 2009 (2012 in the anime), Near meets with the President of the United States (David Hoope in the manga and George Sairas in the anime) to discuss Kyosuke Higuchi and the Death Note. Near tells him about the existence of the notebook, that the Japanese police have it in their possession, and that the real L is dead. With the support of the President, Near creates the Special Provision for Kira.

Plot
After the mid-series timeskip, Soichiro Yagami learns that the director of the police, Kanichi Takimura, has been kidnapped and is being ransomed for the Death Note being kept under secrecy in Task Force possession. Soon after, Soichiro is visited by John McEnroe, an FBI agent who asks for the notebook to be released to the United States, and therefore, the SPK. Soichiro jumps to the conclusion that the FBI is behind the director's abduction, and McEnroe convinces them to work together to rescue to the director.

Near quickly infers that Mello, the older of L's two successors raised at Wammy's House, is behind the kidnapping. Working with the Mafia and with information gathered by the spy he placed inside the SPK, he obtains the Task Force's Death Note after his plan involving the kidnapping of Sayu Yagami works flawlessly. After the Mafia writes the names of most of the SPK members in the notebook, only Halle Lidner, Anthony Rester, Stephen Gevanni, and Near are left alive. In the Death Note Relight 2: L's Successors version of events, the Mafia plot is excised, and Light instead has Kiyomi Takada and Teru Mikami kill the SPK members.

Once the SPK decides to stop cooperating with L, they narrow down the Mafia's potential hideouts. However, Mello, who has access to information involving the SPK from the president, counters this easily by moving to another hideout.

After the Mafia is killed and Mello is alone, Near suspects he will come into contact with one of the few remaining SPK members to use as a new information source, and Near suspects Lidner will be the one who Mello will contact. He places bugs on her, but Lidner, already in contact with Mello and not wanting Near to know this, passes information along to Mello in the shower, where she has an excuse to take off the bugs. Once Lidner tells Mello that the second L is Kira, Mello forces his way into SPK headquarters and retrieves his photograph, passing crucial information along to Near in exchange.

When the SPK's base is surrounded by Kira followers led by Hitoshi Demegawa, the SPK members escape by distracting the crowd with money and disguising themselves as the police officers who are attempting to suppress the chaos caused by the excited crowd.

Needing to be closer to the case, the SPK arrives in Japan. Near determines that "L Number Two" and the leader of the Japanese Task Force are one and the same: Light Yagami. Understanding that a second Kira, X-Kira, is at play, Near narrows suspects down to Teru Mikami and tasks Gevanni with determining the location of the notebook. Lidner is assigned to the bodyguard detail of Kiyomi Takada, who has been named Kira's spokesperson and is the one truly behind the killings of X-Kira, unbeknownst to Near. Not knowing that the notebook carried and used by Mikami is a fake, Near has Gevanni replace pages of his notebook for the final confrontation with the Task Force. Thinking that he has now safely enacted his plan, Near asks the Task Force to meet the SPK at the Yellow Box Warehouse.

The big break in the Kira case is made by Mello, acting with information leaked to him by Lidner, when he kidnaps Takada. Unaware that Light has taken care of Takada and all evidence left by her, Mikami breaks his normal routine by going to the bank to write Takada's name in the real notebook. Gevanni, still on Mikami's tail, is able to confiscate the real notebook and replace it with a forged duplicate. At the final confrontation between the Task Force and the SPK, Near uses the forged notebook to unmask Light as Kira.

Notable Members

 * Near (real name: Nate River) - The first in line to succeed L and the mastermind behind the group
 * Anthony Rester (real name: Anthony Carter) – The second-in-command of the SPK and former special ops squad captain
 * Stephen Gevanni (real name: Stephen Loud) – A skilled lock-picker, forger, and investigator, he is described in Death Note 13: How to Read as a "good-looking hotshot" who received an invitation to the SPK for his skills. He is tasked with following Teru Mikami and replacing the real notebook with a fake.
 * Halle Lidner (real name: Halle Bullook) – A former Secret Service and CIA agent who states she is on neither Mello nor Near's side and only wants to capture Kira, though she often leaks the SPK's gathered information to Mello. She was assigned to infiltrate the bodyguard unit that protects Kiyomi Takada. In order to gain her trust, Lidner acted out the role of a diligent handler while covertly trying to uncover the connection between Takada and Kira. Her motivation in wanting to catch Kira is due to the death of a loved one of hers at the hands of the Yotsuba Kira, Higuchi, as Death Note 13: How To Read revealed.

Conception
Tsugumi Ohba said that, in terms of visual character design, he wrote descriptions such as "Commander" and "Spy" in rough drafts. He let Obata create the rest of the details.

Takeshi Obata said that he drew the SPK "without thinking too much" when the group first appeared in chapter 60. He heard that Mello had sent a spy, so he tried to make a character appear "suspicious looking." Obata said that he had to "work hard" on all of the characters since he did not know which ones would survive, and he believes that his drawing skills relating to "foreign characters" are poor; he stated that he imagined the characters being "from so far away" and that he forgot how to draw them.

SPK