The Einsatzgruppen tasks were established by oral Führer order and a written directive from Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) Chief Reinhard Heydrich on 2 July 1941, to secure areas to the advancing army's rear and the performance of standard police tasks until the establishment of a civil administration in the conquered eastern areas, and the "special handling of potential opponents", i.e. their elimination. Heydrich identified these in order: "all Comintern functionaries (all professional Communist politicians), the higher, middle and radical lower functionaries of the Party, the Central Committee and the regional and area committees, people's commissars, Jews in Party and state posts, various radical elements (saboteurs, propagandists, snipers, assassins, agitators, and so on)". This circle of persons was later expanded to all "politically intolerable elements" among prisoners of war and eventually all "racial inferiors" such as Jews, Gypsies, and "Asiatic elements".