Jack Ryan, Sr.

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This article is currently under construction. It may contain little or inaccurate information.
This article is about the version of the character that appears in the novels and first film series. For other versions of the character, see Jack Ryan (Disambiguation).

President Jack Ryan (full name John Patrick Ryan, Sr., Ph.D., CPA, KCVO) (born May 17, 1950) is a central character featured in many Tom Clancy novels, collectively referred to as the "Ryanverse".

This version of the character has also been adapted in the film versions of The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger, Sum of All Fears, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, and in the Jack Ryan series on Amazon Prime.

Biography

Background

Ryan was born on May 17, 1950 to an Irish-Catholic family in Baltimore, Maryland. His father, Emmett Ryan, was a Baltimore Police Department homicide lieutenant and World War II veteran. His mother, Catherine Burke, was a nurse. Ryan also had a sister who was living in Seattle, Washington.

After graduating from Loyola High School in Towson, Maryland, Ryan attended Boston College and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics (strong minor in history). He later received a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps via Officer Candidate School. While waiting for the USMC to assign him to a duty station, Ryan passed the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam.

His military career was cut short at the age of 23, when as part of the Atlantic, his platoon's helicopter, a CH-46 Sea Knight, crashed during a NATO exercise over the Greek island of Crete. Ryan's back was badly injured in the crash. Surgeons at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda made inadequate repairs to his back. This led to a lengthy recovery process, during which he was nearly addicted to pain medications. After recovering, Ryan was left wearing a back brace and a permanent disability, leading him to separate from the Marine Corps.

He passed his stock broker's exam and took a position with the Baltimore office of the Wall Street investment firm Merrill Lynch. Ryan's parents later died in a plane crash at Chicago's Midway Airport only 19 months after his crash in Crete. This, along with his crash, led to him develop a fear of flying that persisted for years.

Civilian Career

While managing clients' portfolios, he began to invest his own money, banking on a tip he had received from an uncle about the workers' takeover of the Chicago and North Western Railroad, making approximately $6 million off his $100,000 initial investment. He did so well that a senior VP of Merrill Lynch, Joe Muller, came to Baltimore to have dinner with him, with the objective of inviting him to the New York City headquarters. Also present was Muller's daughter Caroline, nicknamed "Cathy", then a senior medical student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. They immediately fell in love and got engaged. One night, while having dinner with his fiancée, Ryan threw out his back and Cathy took him directly to Dr. Stanley Rabinowitz, professor of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, to be evaluated. Rabinowitz later operated on Ryan's back and cured his chronic pain in relatively short order. Ryan subsequently persuaded the government to terminate his disability checks. Cathy later became an ophthalmic surgeon at the Wilmer Eye Institute of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins.

After having his net worth assessed at $8 million, Ryan left the firm after four years and enrolled at Georgetown University for his doctorate courses in history. He did a brief stint at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, then accepts a position at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland as a civilian professor of history.

CIA Career

Following a recommendation of Father Tim O'Riley, PhD, S.J., (a Georgetown University professor) to a CIA contact, Ryan was asked to work as an outside consultant for the Agency, although officially employed by MITRE Corporation. He agreed and spent several months in Langley, Virginia, where he wrote a paper entitled "Agents and Agencies", in which he maintains that state-sponsored terrorism is an act of war. He also invented the canary trap, a method for exposing an information leak, which involves giving different versions of a sensitive document to each of a group of suspects and seeing which version gets leaked. By making sure that each copy of the document differs slightly in its wording, if any copy is leaked then it is possible to determine the identity of the informant.

Both of these accomplishments came to the attention of Admiral James Greer, the Deputy Director Intelligence at the CIA. The expertise of Ryan's report, plus the application, persuaded Admiral Greer to offer him a permanent job in the CIA, but Ryan turned it down.

Patriot Games

While Ryan was still teaching at the Naval Academy, he and his family (wife Cathy and daughter Sally) took a trip to London for research and vacationing. After spending the day sifting through British Navy archives doing research for a book on the British naval war in the Indian Ocean during World War II, Ryan walked to meet his family at a London park. As he joined them, members of the Ulster Liberation Army, an ultra-violent Maoist offshoot of the IRA, headed by a man named Kevin O'Donnell, attacked a car containing the Prince of Wales and his family right in front of Ryan, his wife, and his daughter. Ryan intervened in the attack and foiled their plan, wounding one gunman and killing the other, who fired simultaneously and wounded Ryan.

Sean Miller, the man he wounded, vowed revenge on Ryan and his family. But since he was going to Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight, the threat didn't seem serious. After being invested as a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by the Queen, Ryan returned to the U.S. and the Academy. When O'Donnell and the ULA sprung Miller on his way to Albany Prison (killing both police officers and civilians in the process), Ryan and his family became the target of their revenge—particularly Miller's.

Admiral James Greer came to Ryan and asked him to return to join the CIA permanently as an analyst to help track down the terrorists. He declined initially, only to accept it later after a failed attack on himself and his family by the ULA severely injured his wife and daughter when Miller fires off a full clip from a Uzi on a freeway. Later, while Ryan hosted the Prince and Princess of Wales at his home in Maryland, the ULA made a second attack on the Ryans, which was foiled by Jack, the Prince, and Commander Robert Jackson, USN who kill several of the terrorists and manage to get reinforcements. Following the incident and arrest of the ULA who are purposely not extradited by the British Government who let them get sentenced to the death penalty in Maryland (Gas Chamber), he was re-assigned to London as a member of a liaison group to the British Secret Intelligence Service.

Red Rabbit

Ryan's assignment to London focused on a daring mission to assist the defection of a KGB communications-center officer who had discovered that KGB director Yuri Andropov had ordered the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. Although Ryan and a small team of British agents helps the "Rabbit" and his family get to the West, they failed to prevent the attack on the Pope. Nevertheless, "Rabbit's" defection proved to be a major coup for both American and British intelligence. Ryan soon afterward suggested a non-military strategy to help hasten the USSR's collapse.

The Hunt for Red October

Captain First Rank Marko Ramius, the Soviet Navy's top submarine commander, took command of the Red October, the newest Typhoon Class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. Ramius's mission was to test the sub's new silent "Caterpillar" drive, but Ramius and a select group of his officers were actually planning to sail the submarine to the coast of the United States and defect. When Soviet officials in Moscow received a letter from Ramius informing them of this, they sent out most of the Soviet Northern Fleet with orders to find and destroy the Red October.

Secret photographs of the Red October were delivered to Ryan. He showed them to several naval officers familiar with missile submarines. From there he went to the Pentagon and finally to the White House. With the President's approval, a plan was created whereby, when the Red October approached the American coastline, it would be captured and hidden. At the same time, an older U.S. submarine would be intentionally destroyed and sunk in that vicinity. Then the Soviets would be informed it was the Red October. This began a week of intense search efforts, where Soviet, American, and British surface ships, submarines, and helicopters were all deployed in what became a hide-and-seek operation.

When Ryan and a Royal Marine Lieutenant, Owen Williams from the Royal Navy Aircraft Carrier Invincible finally boarded the Red October, more problems arose. Ryan heard a gunshot in another part of the Red October and he made his way to the submarine's missile room with Captain Ramius. There they encountered a GRU operative covered as a member of the ship's crew who was attempting to sink the Red October by activating one of her solid-fuel missiles with the launch tube hatch closed, which would incinerate everyone on board. The GRU agent had already killed Captain Lieutenant Gregoriy Kamarov, one of Red October's officers, and wounded Owen Williams. Ryan was forced to kill the GRU operative to prevent the destruction of the ship.

After being hit by a torpedo from an Alfa-class Soviet attack submarine, the heavily damaged Red October, having rammed and destroyed its opponent, was still able to advance unseen into the U.S. Naval Shipyard at Portsmouth, Virginia. The defectors were lodged at a CIA safe house near Charlottesville, Virginia and Ryan flew back home in time for Christmas.

The Cardinal of the Kremlin

Ryan was later reassigned to Langley. He became Greer's assistant with the official title of Special Assistant to the Deputy Director for Intelligence. Greer was grooming the rising analyst for bigger and better positions, maybe even his own job when the veteran spy finally retired. Ryan was dispatched to Moscow as part of the American strategic nuclear weapons reduction negotiation team. There he met Sergey Golovko, a rising star in the KGB hierarchy, and eventually became entangled in a complex web related to both the race to develop "Star Wars" space-based defensive technology and engineer another defection, this time compromising the KGB director to save the CIA's highest informant in the USSR, Agent CARDINAL, better known as Colonel Misha Filitov. Although they initially met as adversaries—literally at gunpoint on one of the runway of Moscow's main airport — Golovko respected him as a worthy adversary and in later novels becomes friends with Ryan, whom he calls "Ivan Emmetovich," giving him a Russian-style patronymic based on his father's name, Emmett.

Clear and Present Danger

Ryan was then promoted to acting DDI (Deputy Director of Intelligence) when Greer was hospitalized with cancer. Despite this he was kept out of the loop on a highly covert and illegal CIA operation approved by corrupt US National Security Advisor Admiral James Cutter. This operation targeted Colombian drug lords using military assets, in what was usually considered a law enforcement area. Ryan eventually worked with Jonh Clark and the FBI to rescue the groups of American soldiers that were cut off in the Colombian wilderness, which forced him to miss Greer's funeral. Around this time Ryan also ran afoul of Elizabeth Elliot, international affairs adviser to Presidential Candidate Ohio Governor J. Robert Fowler, and a former professor of Cathy Ryan's. Ryan also develope PTSD from a near during the exfiltration of the soilders from the cartel compound.

The Sum of All Fears

Ryan then reached his highest post at the CIA; Deputy Director of Central Intelligence. His career was placed in jeopardy when Fowler became President and Elizabeth Elliot became both National Security Advisor and Fowler's lover/manipulator. They not only denied Ryan any credit for an innovative Middle East Peace Plan, but also panicked when terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb in Denver during the Super Bowl and nearly plunged the world into a Soviet-American nuclear war. Ryan defused the nuclear crisis by commandeering the Washington-Moscow hot line and convinced the Soviet premier (through his friend Golovko) that the crisis was a setup. He then refused to confirm Fowler's order to launch a nuclear missile at Qom (thus preventing the attack), where the Iranian Ayatollah lived. The crisis effectively ended both Fowler's administration and Ryan's career in the governmental service.

First Ryan Administration

Debt of Honor

Ryan returned to government service, under the persualtion of president Roger Durling, to deal with a second war, conspired by a group of Japanes elites who had decided to resurrect their imperial ambitions and the United States. For a brief time Ryan was the National Security Adviser, but when Vice President Ed Kealty was forced to resign after a sex scandal, President Roger Durling taps him for the job. Ryan accepted the Office of Vice President on the condition that it was only until the end of Durling's current term. He saw this as a way of ending his public life. He was barely confirmed by Congress when a Japanese airline pilot deliberately crashed his 747 onto the Capitol during a joint session of Congress, killing most of the people inside, decapitating the U.S. government, and elevating Ryan to the Presidency.

Executive Orders

The reluctant yet determined Ryan Administration emerged as Ryan slowly rebuilt the government. He was faced with political trickery by Ed Kealty, and a deadly plague initiated by the newly formed United Islamic Republic, resulting in two major military conflicts far from American shores.

Ryan had completed Durling's term as President and had campaigned for—and won—the next Presidential election. He retained most of his emergency Cabinet and had Robby Jackson as Vice President.

The Bear and the Dragon

Ryan had to deal with the attempted assassination of Golovko, head of the SVR (formerly the KGB) who narrowly escaped a Rocket propelled Grenade. This turned out to be an attempt to sow confusion in the Russian government because of China's designs to annex Eastern Siberia, where geologists had discovered a large amount of oil and gold. These events eventually lead to the inclusion of Russia into NATO and the assistance of U.S. Forces in the Sino-Russian War. When the Chinese began losing the war, U.S. forces began to target their strategic assets. An SSN sank a Chinese SSBN, which caused the Chinese Politburo to panic and to increase the readiness of their 12 land-based ICBMs. U.S. Forces did not have the ability to destroy the silos, as they could only use deep penetrating bombs, which had all been used to destroy Chinese bridges to disrupt the PLA's logistical support. This caused the U.S. and Russia to send a joint RAINBOW and Spetsnaz team to destroy the silos. They destroyed 11 of the 12 ICBMs but one of them managed to launch. The warhead headed towards Washington, DC; and with Ryan taking command of an Aegis missile cruiser, the ICBM was intercepted by ABM's from the USS Gettysburg. With the looming defeat of the PLA in Siberia, which they learned about via live UAV broadcasts from the CIA through the Internet, student demonstrators in Beijing raided the Politburo, which caused a conservative minister to take control and arrest the perpetrators of the war in Siberia and surrender to the U.S. and Russia.

Following this, Ryan apparently completed his term as president and refused to run for a second elected term. Robby Jackson thus campaigned to become the first African American President, but a member of the Ku Klux Klan assassinated him on a trip to the South, which enabled Ed Kealty to become the next President. Before Ryan actually left office, he created "The Campus," a secret counter-terrorism organization that fronts as Hendley Associates, a financial trading company. He also wrote Presidential pardons out to all of its members, with the assistance of his Attorney General Pat Martin.

In his retirement, Ryan was living easy with a comfortable net worth of over $80 million. He was currently working on two versions of his memoirs, one for immediate release, and another detailing his career at CIA, to be published posthumously. However, in Dead or Alive, he has decided to run for a second term as President due to the fact that Ed Kealty, has been unable to govern effectively and has undone many of the reforms the Ryan Administration put in place.

Second Ryan Administration

Dead or Alive

Well into his retirement in 2007, Ryan is working on two different memoirs while living off of his vast fortune of over $80 million. One of his memoirs is to be published once he is finished working on it, but the other one is to be published twenty years after his death. He is initially quiet about his opposition to Ed Kealty's administration, but when he learns of Kealty's plan to prosecute U.S. Army Ranger Sam Driscoll for the murders of sleeping terrorists in the Middle East, he announces that he is going to be running for a second elected term. When Kealty learns this, he drops the charges against Driscoll, but he is still honorably discharged from the Army, and John Clark recruits him into The Campus. Ryan also finds out that his son, Jack Ryan, Jr., is an analyst at The Campus, which he is reluctant to accept.

Locked On

In 2008, Ryan is ahead in the polls as he campaigns for President against his opponent and successor, Ed Kealty. Angered at the public's opinion of Kealty, Czech billionaire and Kealty supporter Paul Laska begins a vendetta to discredit Ryan six weeks before the election.

To further destroy Ryan's reputation, Laska discovers that John Clark and Ding Chavez were the men who captured The Emir. With the help of SVR officer Valentin Kovalenko, Laska discovers that Clark assassinated an East German Stasi operative in Berlin in 1981 without authorization (the events which is covered in the later book Red Winter). This doesn't fall under the pardon Ryan signed for his friend when he joined The Campus, which makes him accountable for the murder. Laska gives Kealty this information, and Kealty orders the FBI to hunt down Clark. Despite these efforts, Ryan wins the election by having a slightly greater percentage of the popular vote.

Threat Vector

Six months later in 2009, Ryan deals with a developing crisis in China, where President Wei Zhen Lin has declared his intentions to annex Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan and expand his country's territory into the South China Sea in a desperate attempt to recoup his country's economic losses. In reality, PLA Chairman Su Ke Qiang has been manipulating President Wei for his expansionist policies, secretly sanctioning cyber attacks on America's infrastructure that compromises the nation's national security apparatus. President Ryan decides to take action by supporting Taiwan, along with India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, which would also be affected by an expansion of China's territory.

Ryan's son and The Campus later track down the nerve center of China's cyberattacks on the U.S. to an office building in Guangzhou. President Ryan orders the destruction of the building, decapitating China's cyberwarfare abilities. He makes contact with Wei and warns him that the cyber attacks are considered an act of war on China's part. After realizing that he has been used by Su for his own gain, Wei intentionally divulges information on Chairman Su's whereabouts, which Ryan interprets as a request from the Chinese president to assassinate the military leader. The Campus, with aid from a local rebel force and the FSB, later carry out a false flag attack on Chairman Su's motorcade outside Beijing. Ryan announces a blockade of China's oil supplies until the war effort is abandoned, calling upon Wei and the Politburo to accept defeat. A cornered Wei later commits suicide, eventually ending the conflict between the United States and China.

Command Authority

Five months later in 2010, The Ryan Administration contends with newly-elected Russian president Valeri Volodin, who is a dedicated communist seeking to restore Russia to its former glory. Volodin had merged the SVR and the FSB into one entity to be led by enigmatic FSB head Roman Talanov. While Sergey Golovko is giving a speech to students at the University of Kansas, he falls ill to polonium poisoning, and Ryan is accused of orchestrating it, as well as a bomb that detonated in Russia that killed former SVR head Stanislav Biryukov. When pro-Russia protesters in Sevastopol assault a covert CIA compound with the help of FSB agents, Russia uses it as an excuse to invade Ukraine. Ryan sends military troops to assist Ukraine, as well as prevent Russian troops from marching into Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.

Ryan tasks his son with finding information on the code name "Bedrock" and how it related to a Cold War KGB assassin code named Zenith, after rumors that Roman Talanov, the head of the FSB, is the same man. Jack manages to find out that Bedrock is former MI5 agent Victor Oxley, who was tasked with finding and killing Zenith, who was in fact Talanov. Volodin had been his control officer, and together they had been employed by rogue elements within the KGB, who had an exit strategy in mind with the imminent fall of communism in the late 1980s by siphoning off billions of dollars from Soviet programs. Volodin then double-crossed his co-conspirators by ordering Talanov as Zenith to kill them all, as well as the bankers involved in order to prevent exposure to the rest of the KGB. In addition, Talanov was planted by his boss into Russian crime organization Seven Strong Men, rising in ranks to become its eventual leader and turning it into a tool for Volodin's policies.

After being briefed by his son, Ryan uses this information to blackmail Volodin. Ryan demands Volodin to halt his invasion of Ukraine, and in return, Ryan would not leak that Volodin was linked to the Seven Strong Men, a Russian crime organization. Russia immediately pulls out of Ukraine, and Talonov resigns two days later. Talonov is later murdered by one of his guards.

Full Force and Effect

President Ryan deals with North Korean dictator Choi Ji-hoon, who attempts to start production at a rare earth mineral deposit found in their territory and then use the resulting billions of dollars in profit to purchase nuclear weapons technology. Navy SEALs later capture a cargo ship that was bringing parts for an ICBM to North Korea, angering the Supreme Leader and the Foreign Intelligence Chief General Ri Tae-jin. They then arrange to have Ryan assassinated while he visited Mexico City, using an Iranian bombmaker named Adel Zarif and the Maldonado cartel in order to stop his persistent interference. Ryan arrives in Mexico City, and is injured, but ultimately survives the attempt on his life. The Campus later uncovers Choi's involvement in the incident, which leads to the dictator being deposed from power and later executed.

Commander in Chief

In 2011, Europe begins to be plagued by various attacks on a Lithuanian oil tanker, a Russian military train, and the retaliation for these attacks. Ryan notices that Russia's oil profit is going nowhere but up. He deduces that Valeri Volodin is behind all of the attacks in the first place, and tries to enlist NATO's help. NATO declines however, fearing the consequences of an all-out war and disputes the theory. Nevertheless, Ryan sends the United States Navy to dispatch its Russian counterpart in the Baltic Sea. Volodin is later assassinated by the Siloviki after his gambit of a covert violent offensive in an effort to recoup Russia's economic losses fails.

True Faith and Allegiance

President Ryan faces a crisis where American military and intelligence personnel are being targeted by ISIS. The specificity of the target packages make it clear that a massive intelligence breach has occurred. President Ryan finds himself pressured by the media and some of his government advisers to send troops into the Middle East to fight the Islamic State terrorists, but he resists and gathers more intelligence. The culprit was later revealed to be a Romanian hacker named Alexandru Dalca, who had obtained an old copy of a database containing personal information on military and intelligence personnel. After footage of terrorist attacks released by ISIS inspires a wave of copycat attacks in the United States, President Ryan orders the bombing of the headquarters of Islamic State's propaganda wing.

Point of Contact

Ryan attends the funeral for Jack Jr.'s colleague at The Campus, Paul Brown, who helped avert a North Korean plan to crash the Asian stock market.

Power and Empire

In a plot to rid Chinese President Zhao Chengzhi for his moderate stance on several issues of importance, Foreign Minister Li Zhengsheng arranges for a Chinese commercial ship to explode off of the West Coast of the United States. Ryan is urged to use the Ryan Doctrine, but he advises caution. Minister Li then orders a series of attacks in Asia, Europe, and Africa led by terrorist groups in Africa, which leads to the deaths of several American soldiers that were running a military exercise nearby. As a result, Zhao is made to look reckless. Ryan learns of China's connection to the attacks, but he still remains cautious to use the Ryan Doctrine.

When a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) ship begins to experience engine failure and begins to drift towards Chinese waters. Ryan calls Zhao to alert him of what is going on, and the Chinese President agrees to hold off on intercepting the ship as long as it does not reach Chinese waters. The crew of the DIA ship is later rescued by a Taiwanese patrol vessel and the ship is scuttled, preventing the crew and ship from being captured by a Chinese destroyer, despite what Zhao told Ryan. Due to this, Ryan's trust in the Chinese President drops and he invokes the Ryan Doctrine.

Jack Ryan Jr. later prevents an assassination attempt on his father and President Zhao in the G20 summit in Tokyo. Jack Jr. alerts his father, who in turn tells Zhao and his security detail. Zhao's detail kills the assassin, and the leaders are brought away to safety. Minister Li and those he conspired with are later arrested for treason.

Line of Sight

Ryan orders the the destruction of a building in Bosnia that contained stolen thermobaric warheads. The warheads would have later been used to destroy a Serbian Orthodox Church in a false flag operation intended to start a war between NATO and Russia.

Oath of Office

While protests break out in Iran, Ryan deals with crises at home in the U.S., with a deadly strain of flu, and flooding occurring in the Southeast. On top of that, his political rival, Senator Michelle Chadwick, criticizes Ryan and plants fake news stories about him. While the rest of the world is in support for the Persian Spring, the dissenting group of protesters in Iran, Ryan is still skeptical of them, due to their leader Reza Kazem.

The U.S. embassy in Cameroon is overrun when General Mbida, an opposition leader, takes shelter there. After Ryan blackmails the President of Cameroon and defuses the situation there, he sends the Secret Service to follow Chadwick, due an assassination plot coming to light after the fake news stories that she put out. The Secret Service manages to saver her from being killed by Russian SVR officer Elizaveta Bobkova.

After rescuing an arms dealer working with Kazem, John Clark alerts Ryan that nuclear weapons are in play, information he later relays to Jack. After malware is planted in a nuclear defense facility in Mashhad, Iran, Ryan orders the destruction of the facility, destroying all but one of Iran's nukes. They track the missile to a cave, where they kill Kazem, but they are unable to stop the missile from launching. With Kazem's plan to destroy satellites in low orbit in motion, Ryan orders American satellites out of the way, avoiding a collision with the missile.

Enemy Contact

Ryan attempts to pass a new foreign policy initiative, including the construction of a U.S. military base in Poland, countering Russian aggression to the east. Senator Deborah Dixon blocks the bill from passing, stonewalling Ryan. When it was revealed that Senator Dixon's son has unsavory connections to the Chinese, President Ryan blackmails her into voteing in favor of Ryan's foreign policy initiative and an anti-corruption bill.

Code of Honor

President Ryan receives a cryptic text message from his friend and former CIA colleague Father Pat West. He warns him of a next-generation AI program named Calliope, which could be used by the Chinese military to start a conflict with the United States. The Jesuit priest had been imprisoned by Indonesian police for trumped-up charges of blasphemy against Islam, when in fact he had earlier witnessed the murder of an American software engineer named Geoff Noonan who first told him about Calliope.

Ryan discreetly orders the Campus to investigate Father West's text. He then calls on the Indonesian president to release his friend, to no avail. Undeterred, he makes a state visit to Indonesia, eventually informing the Indonesian president of China's sinister plans. Father West is eventually released from prison.

Firing Point

President Ryan receives reports of commercial vessels disappearing under mysterious circumstances across the Pacific Ocean. They are leased by civilian defense contractor Buck Logan, one of Ryan’s biggest supporters. The incidents are accompanied by a threat from an unknown party demanding ransom. President Ryan suspects Russian involvement, especially in light of the country gearing up for a military exercise with China called Snow Dragon in the Bering Sea.

President Ryan pinpoints a Russian submarine to be the source of the disappearances in the Pacific Ocean. He tasks the United States Navy with sniffing the boat into the surface and then escorting it back to Russia. However, another incident occurs in the Indian Ocean, sending the United States government into a state of alert.

After a terrorist known as "Sammler" succeeds in stealing five trillion dollars from major banking companies through a computer program known as TRIBULATION, he threatens Ryan with covering the losses to prevent another massive theft. President Ryan responds by not publicly revealing the financial losses as they try to figure out solutions. Jack Jr. and The Campus later discover Sammler's true identity is Buck Logan and race to inform Ryan. Jack Jr. later tracks down TRIBULATION’s location to a distribution center in Tennessee and destroys its power source. Logan escapes to Mexico but is tracked down and captured by The Campus who turn him over to USSOCOM.

Shadow of the Dragon

This Section is currently under construction. It may contain little or inaccurate information.

The Ryan Doctrine

Ryan, in the tradition of Presidents Monroe, Truman, Carter, Reagan, and Bush, issued a foreign policy doctrine which largely defined his administration's international perspective. The Ryan Doctrine stated that the United States will no longer tolerate attacks on "our territory, our possessions, or our citizens," and added that whoever orders such an attack will be held accountable by the United States.

This statement came soon after the Ebola attack on the United States ordered by Mahmoud Haji Daryaei, the dictator of the new United Islamic Republic. Ryan announced the new doctrine on the same day that Daryaei was killed by two stealth bombers, on Ryan's orders. Therefore, the Ryan Doctrine apparently superseded the executive order put in place by President Ford, which forbid the assassination of foreign heads of state. Ryan, however, believed it was a more ethical alternative than all-out war, since it punished the person responsible for the attack instead of the people he ruled.

The Ryan Doctrine was not officially invoked after Daryaei's death (although Ryan threatens to use it on the Chinese leadership in The Bear and the Dragon, should anything happen to American citizens living in the People's Republic of China as a consequence of the Siberian War).

Trivia

  • The Hunt for Red October film changed Ryan's educational background to being a 1972 graduate of the United States Naval Academy. As Red October is sailing into the Penobscot River in Maine, Ryan says he grew up in that area. In the film it is also said the helicopter crash happened in his third year at the Academy and he finished his senior year from his hospital bed. The film version of Patriot Games also implies that he is a graduate of Annapolis by briefly showing a certificate on the wall of their home.