While on a government mission in Maracaibo, Venezuela (Alpha Flight #16-17), Logan finds himself in indirect conflict with adventurer Eugene Judd (aka Puck), who, like Logan, was involved in the Spanish Civil War.

Judd is a man born around the turn of the century and lived as a soldier of fortune until he was commissioned to steal the Black Blade of Baghdad. The Blade was actually a prison for an ancient sorceror called Raazer, and Judd accidentally freed him. He was able to trap Raazer more using some ancient mysticism and the light from his own life force. However, this caused him to shrink to about 3 feet in height and to this day causes him constant pain. It has also granted him immortality.

Judd has a reputation as a deadly freelance operative during this period, and although the two, on opposite sides during this occasion, do not actually meet, Logan deduces his adversary's identity and confirms it years later, when the two meet on friendly terms; Judd will later feel flattered that Logan "could recognize [his] signature in the midst of all that mess."

It is also during these years that Logan first meets Carol Danvers (Logan: Shadow Society), a young American operative (Uncanny X-Men #133), who, although still in her teens, serves in Air Force Intelligence; inexperienced when she and Logan first meet in the field, she quickly becomes an expert agent, working with both Logan and his partner Langram on a number of occasions, and Logan will count her as one of his closest friends for the rest of his life. Carol Danvers and Michael Rossi were working together with Logan. Logan risked his life to rescue Danvers from captivity in the Lubyanka prison in Moscow (KGB HQ's). Immediately after regaining her freedom, Danvers left the Intelligence service and became head of security at the NASA base at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Langram (Logan: Shadow Society) is approached by representatives of the Hellfire Club (Classic X-Men #47). In the 1760's, the Hellfire Club, a social organization for the elite of British society, was founded in England. It was a pleasure club that offered its members indulgences that would have violated the moral standards of society, but it also served as a means for its members to combine their influence over England's political and economical matters. By the 1770's A number of Hellfire Club members immigrated to America where they set up the American headquarters of the Hellfire Club on Manhattan Island, New York.

The organization's highest ranking membership, the Inner Circle, had recently been infiltrated by mutants. Under the leadership of Sebastian Shaw, Shaw intend to purge the Circle of non-superhuman members and form a mutant army to achieve further power, goals whose realization he will not approach until years later. Although superhuman beings, including mutants, have existed for millennia and been periodically active in the public eye throughout the world since at least World War I, the general public still has little understanding of the true nature of mutantkind. Shaw intends to prevent the spread of such knowledge to the public until his plans are fully formulated.

Langram turns down the Hellfire Club's offer and ultimately decides to publicly reveal their activities, but is subsequently slain by Sabretooth, who, apparently having become a freelance agent following the disbandment of Team X, is on this occasion working for the Hellfire Club. Prior to his death, Langram had been slated to assist Danvers in a Canada-based operation, and Logan is dispatched to replace him in this assignment. Learning of Langram's death, and dissatisfied with the Canadian government's procedures in the matter, Logan and Danvers launch their own investigation.

Seeking information, they break into a Defense Ministry facility known as Department H, a special government branch that, at this stage of its development, Logan knows nothing about. Among Department H's operations is the "Mutant Agenda," apparently a multi-national project in which Canada, the U.S., and perhaps other nations are cooperating with the Hellfire Club to form teams of mutant operatives, although Logan does not realize any of this at the time. Department H's information leads Logan and Danvers to Dr. Perry Edwards, an American author who has published a book, "The Shadow Society," correctly theorizing that the U.S. government is concealing the existence of superhuman mutants "in order to exploit them for their own purposes."

Edwards's information leads the two to the Hellfire Club, where Logan in turn receives a lead to the club's Canadian installation. Although this installation, apparently a holding facility for uncooperative mutants, is presumed to be a part of Shaw's operation, it may in fact be managed, covertly or otherwise, by Shaw's fellow Inner Circle member Edward Buckman, an anti-mutant fanatic who will later cooperate with Steven Lang in the construction of the third known series of anti-mutant robots known as the Sentinels.

Edwards, whose information, although incomplete, has led him to also be targeted by the Hellfire Club, is slain shortly afterward by Sabretooth, who then proceeds to Canada himself, where, under Shaw's orders, he slays two of Logan's fellow Canadian operatives - Sidney Hallorman and a man known only as Malcolm, both of whom were apparently involved in the Mutant Agenda - as well as three unidentified American operatives, apparently due to Shaw's concern that the activities of Logan and Danvers would otherwise expose the Hellfire Club's activities.

Confronting Logan in battle, Sabretooth reveals some of the details of the operation which Logan and Danvers have become involved in, noting that both Logan and Langram had been selected for contact by yet another party, "some farm team down in the states," seeking to form a team of mutants; this may be a reference to Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, whose founder, Professor Charles Xavier, will organize the team of mutant heroes known as the X-Men within less than five years.

Following Shaw's orders to "clean up" the operation, Sabretooth detonates a bomb which destroys the Canadian installation, although he, Logan, and Danvers all survive; it is not known if the unseen mutants presumed to be held at the installation were evacuated prior to its destruction, nor, if not, whether any of them survived the explosion. In the aftermath of these events, Danvers, hoping to expose the mutant conspiracy, prepares to bring the matter to the attention of Senator Robert Kelly, who will years later become a noted anti-mutant legislator, motivated by his fear of the damage that mutants can inflict upon society; the outcome of Danvers's plans has never been revealed.

Following these events, Logan becomes obsessed with his own mutant nature (Marvel Comics Presents #72), which he comes to realize has played a far more important role in his past successes than he had previously believed. He turns to drugs and alcohol (Comics Scene #18, Wolverine #66). Sabretooth's prediction of a war between mutant factions preys upon his mind, but Logan's reports of the alleged mutant conspiracy are dismissed by his superiors (Logan: Shadow Society), who apparently begin to distrust him as a paranoid; it is not clear if any of Logan's superiors were in fact involved in the Mutant Agenda themselves.

Ultimately, Logan is dismissed from the unnamed agency for accidentally shooting a fellow agent at the firing range. Disgusted, Logan "ties some loose ends" in his civilian life and prepares to travel to the Yukon (Logan: Shadow Society) in an effort to "get away ... from ... what's comin'," presumably the predicted mutant strife.

In the mid 1970's, Graydon Creed reached puberty. His mother, Raven Darkholme, realized that he wasn't a mutant. On one of his rare visits to his mother from boarding school she discovered him spying upon her. She revealed her mutant powers to him and showed him the appearance of his father, Victor Creed. Horrified, Graydon fled from her and Darkholme decided to let him go. Graydon spent the next few years abandoned in Europe, crawling his way out of poverty. Hatred began building within Graydon towards his parents for being unnatural freaks and for abandoning him. (Sabretooth #4, X-Men Unlimited #4)