[Scooter]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]I've always believed that "Q Who" marking the Federation's first exposure to the Borg is an [iost_uid0]incorrect assumption[/iost_uid0] made by Picard and the others during that episode, later corrected after they regained contact with Starfleet.

The destruction of the outposts along the Neutral Zone and of the El-Aurian homeworld indicate that the Borg certainly entered the Alpha Quadrant prior to "Q Who." The Federation intelligence-gathering apparatus would have absolutely debriefed the El-Aurians after the events depicted in "Generations," regardless of their world's relationship with the Federation. In the final episode of "Voyager" Janeway discovered that the Borg had built a network of conduits leading directly into the Alpha Quadrant (and elsewhere in the galaxy). Since the Borg destroyed the outposts along the Neutral Zone prior to the events in "Q Who", and it is unreasonable to suppose that they traveled the collosal distance from the Delta Quadrant into Romulan/Federation space using standard warp drive (an issue not clearly addressed in TNG discussion of the outposts), we must assume that the Borg had at least some of these conduits in place at this time. It is also reasonable to suppose that the activity along the outposts were not the only actions of the Borg in the Alpha Quadrant at this time, though other actions seem not to have involved the Federation but rather other powers in the Quadrant (given the location of the outposts along the Neutral Zone, the secretive Romulans are an obvious candidate, though--who knows?--the Borg may have plated a role in destabilizing the Klingon Empire). The Borg, in any event, were clearly active in the Alpha Quadrant before "Q Who."

The conclusion I draw is that [iost_uid0]Federation intelligence[/iost_uid0] knew of the Borg to some extent--perhaps only as a vague menace, with bits and pieces of knowledge gathered from Cochrane's records, the El-Aurians, and so on--but that this information was kept confidential to avoid panic until a clear picture of the Borg, and contingency plans for fighting them, could be developed (and/or they showed up in Federation space, which is what happened in "Best of Both Worlds").

Keep in mind that during the events in "Q Who" the Enterprise was on the other side of the galaxy, so Picard was in no position to phone up the admiralty and ask them what was in the need-to-know Federation intelligence database. We've seen enough top-secret ops in Star Trek (e.g., "Chain of Command") to know that Starship captains were not always briefed on every operation undertaken by Starfleet, much less other arms of the Federation government. It follows from this notion that Picard was debriefed on the Borg after "Q Who", and that conversely his report would have blown the Borg project wide open.

It also follows that [iost_uid0]if[/iost_uid0] the information on the Borg was kept top secret, the Federation intelligence agency would necessarily have had covert operatives whose portfolio was to gather as much information about the Borg as possible. It is reasonable to assume that the Hansens were among these operatives. Naturally the information they gathered would have stayed within the intelligence community as long as the program remained top secret, so their knowledge would not become known to Picard or anyone else until the Borg materialized as an imminent threat.

After Starfleet encountered the Borg and the evidence of the Neutral Zone outposts was correllated with Picard's report, some sort of Borg office was created at Starfleet with a liaison to, or combined with, the confidential ops already in place. Shelby inherits the lead on this and (hopefully) everything the Federation knows. (How much the Federation knows is not made clear in "Best of Both Worlds.")

The only remaining problem is the dialog at the end of "Q Who": The Borg now know about the Federation and will be coming for them. But there is not a serious problem with this, because "Q Who" may well have been the first time that the Borg have the opportunity to download the Starfleet/Federation [iost_uid0]database[/iost_uid0] (part of their activities in Engineering). (For this to be true, though, the would have had to have disregarded or ignored any information they gleaned from the Hansens upon their assimilation.) According to this assumption, from the Enterprise database they learned a great deal they did not previously know about the details of Federation technology and exactly where it could be located--specifically, sector 001.

Take all of this in the spirit in which it is intended: a mental exercise to answer the question, How do the disparate pieces we have about the Federation's relationship with the Borg fit together in a way that offers the fewest contradictions? Given the discrepancy between "Q Who" and "The Neutral Zone," one obvious answer to Why Didn't the Federation Know About the Borg in "Q Who"? is, "They did."[/colorost_uid0]