Scott Roarke is an agent for the President of the United States.
Officially he is a senior agent for the Secret Service, possessing all the requisite credentials and even having the power to arrest if necessary. Unofficially, he is an agent with a recently formed task group named PD16, a title coming from the Presidential Directive #16 which created this amalgam of agents from various government agencies to be a first line of attack against the tremendous terrorist threat plaguing the nation.
Roarke is in his mid 30s at the start of the series. Standing just around 6' and in terrific physical shape, he is the perfect kind of agent for this covert line of work. He is the product of inner city life who found escape in the military.
The Army drill instructor saw something in Roarke from the beginning. Nothing he threw at Roarke stopped the recruit which only made the Sargeant throw more at him. This more Roarke took without complaint (well, maybe some but not out load). When Basic Training was done, Roarke's name was passed along to someone in Special Forces and Roarke was invited to try out. He was a natural.
The fairly secretive clandestine Intelligence branch of the Pentagon, the Defense Intelligence Agency, would soon become the home for Roarke and for the next decade he was one of their best agents. He became an officer and eventually a Lieutenant but rank was not what he was about. Whether he admitted it to anyone including himself, it was the action and he was very good at it.
One of his early missions had been to go into Libyan territory during a period of hostilities between that country and the US. A Navy pilot had gotten shot down during a mission and Roarke's job was to get him out. The pilot was named Taylor and he and Roarke became friends. Over the next few years as Taylor moved into politics and rose in power, they found numerous occasions to help each other out and the friendship became solid.
When Taylor became President and established PD16, Roarke was the first to be asked to join. Now after three years working for this organization, he jokes with himself that perhaps he is too old for this young-guy's work but he knows he would not want to do anything else.