Rollie Waters is an agent with SHADE.
That acronym, used by an government that so dearly loves acronyms, stands for the Shared Defense Executive. It is run by Major Hansel and is a subset of the much larger Defense Intelligence Agency. It was formed from personnel of all the services to "deal with national security issues that involve the military" which, according to Hansel, means that Hansel was empowered to "stick my nose in where I want to".
Waters had no knowledge of this new department and would not have thought about it at all if he had until one of the first matters Hansel chose to investigate brought him and his people up close and personal with Waters and that made Waters quite aware. Before the awareness, though, Waters had to survive a fair number of people wanting him very dead.
When the trouble began, Waters was a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps and he enjoyed a specialty, besides being frequently insubordinate, that made him unique and quite valuable. He could go undercover almost anywhere and blend in. Most of the jobs he was given as such were ferreting out hidden enemies, both foreign and domestic, which made him something like a cop, an irony that would have amused Waters if he had an opportunity to consider it.
Anything close to law enforcement was something Waters was trained from his cradle to avoid. Waters' dubious upbringing, training that would make him so good at playing any role he needed, is best summed up by the opening passage from the first recorded adventure:
"My father didn't teach me much except how to lie, cheat, and steal, and then lie, lie, lie some more."
His father was Dan Waters, a gifted and rather twisted con man who might have ranked among the best in the business if such rankings existed and those involved did not far prefer to not get noticed. Dan did not want recognition. He wanted to steal whatever you had. He took immense pride in the fact that everything he had, he stole.
Over the years of Rollie Waters' early life, Dan would haul the young boy to various parts of the country, pull off a scam of some sort, and then hightail it out of the area. Sometimes he had time to take the boy with him. Often he did not. Dan was seldom apologetic about the abandoning and always triumphant when months later he showed up again to collect his son. In his way, he had to feel he was helping the boy become self-sufficient.
That "training" molded Rollie Waters in many ways. The first is that he is not at all like his father - he is basically honest and a good man. The second is that he is terrific at sniffing out the con wherever it is being played and as Waters is constantly finding, just about everybody is pulling their own con here and there. Most the time it is innocuous and would make Waters smile. Sometimes not so much.
Still, the lessons that Dan imparted, either through direct instruction or personal example or abandonment were vital to making the now grown and very self-sufficient Waters able to take care of himself and would make him a very good agent.