The Suicide Squad is a group of five agents for the CIA.
As we first meet them, they are a tight knit group of operatives who have gotten used to working together, enough so they know each other's strengths and weaknesses intimately and would willingly gives their lives to save each other.
Carter Stephens, Reece McNair, Brian Godfrey, Amir Farajian, and Kristen Hayes were all good friends who met originally during training at the Farm and then stayed close for the next few years. Stationed together in Iraq, they did not hesitate to act when Reece is kidnapped along with another woman teaching Iraqi police. Their by-the-book Chief of Station ordered them to wait for further developments but they chose to countermand orders, break a few regulations, and generally cause a good stink in their efforts to free her and they were successful. They were also in deep, deep trouble.
It was a certainty that their employment with the Agency was over and all that remained when they came back to Langley for debrief and interrogation by the IG staff was deciding if they faced arrest in addition to firing.
That is when Marion Lee, a legendary spy hunter in the CIA, came to visit. She was head of the counter-intelligence division, work normally thought to be done by the FBI. The CIA, however, wanted to do its own sniffing out of spies especially if some of them might be inside the Agency or the other branches of American Intelligence.
The five were offered a chance to stay with the CIA and they took it. But that division of the organization was considered an advancement-ender and that meant for these five, working there was tantamount to career suicide, hence the name. The offices they work from "were nothing to write home about. Though they may report to the Director on the seventh floor, counterintelligence was on the third floor behind the Agency's in house library. It was quiet, set apart from both the analytical and operational elements of the Agency, but close enough to reach out to the Director quickly when necessary."
The five members of this team are:
Carter Stephens - a many-year veteran of the Agency. He has been married for quite some time to Connie. His time in the field has been very eventful and, as his new boss would describe it, "colorful".
Kristen Hayes - "a natural at flying the Air Force's unmanned drones. Predators, Reapers, even the tiny Air Sonics. Despite never being in the military she handily beat every opponent foolish enough to take her on in the simulator. The Air Force was desperate to get as many qualified pilots as possibly flying their drones. They knew they'd never coax her away from the Agency, so they did the next best thing. They broke their own rules and allowed a civilian to fly a military aircraft. The fact that she could do it better than any of them made it an easier to sell to the Air Force brass."
Amir Farajian - a former Irani citizen who left that country with his family when he was 13 though his parents made sure that he "understood his cultural history" that went back thousands of years. "He couldn't help but feel torn that his chosen and historic homelands were at loggerheads." His understanding of various sciences is one of his most valued assets, outside his language skills.
Reece McNair - a woman on or around 40 years old. She has been with the Agency for some time and could have a cushy desk job if she had pushed but chose to remain in field work despite being a single mom to a now teenage son. Since each other was all they had, when she had to go away on a mission, the emptiness each felt was intense.
Brian Godfrey - a veteran of the Agency, he remains unmarried and unattached and seems to enjoy it. He also seems to be the go-to guy whenever any of the team needs a ear to listen or a shoulder to lean on.