Eric Ritter is an agent with the CIA.
When we initially meet him in the first recorded adventure, he is a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army undergoing Military Intelligence training at Four Huachuca when he is approached by a major and told his training had been curtailed and he was being reassigned. A white van was waiting to take him, after he had changed into civvies and removed all identifications and electronics, to a plane which would for all intents and purposes shanghai him off to a whole new world.
Ritter did not need to be in the military at all. He had a father who was one of the world's most successful, and thus sought after, oil exploration engineer and he could have gone into that field but instead he wanted something different and he wanted to serve his country. He did not expect to be 'volunteered' as he was to the Caliban Program.
As a briefing about Ritter (oddly enough given to Ritter) tells us, Ritter was an "age 23 graduate of the American University of Beirut with a dual degree in physics and history, odd combination. You speak near-native Arabic, French and Spanish. You enlisted last year. Completed basic training, officer's candidate school and were commissioned into military intelligence. You were all of two weeks in to your basic course before we procured your services." The 'we' was the Caliban Program.
That program was a department in the CIA made up of men and women who were, to be honest, killers. Specifically, people trained to eliminate threats to the United States. But Ritter was not chosen to be 'invited' into the program because of his skills in that regard but rather because of his knowing in college a man who would later join al Qaeda and thus be someone they wanted to get close to so they could eliminate him.
Now as the adventures continue, Ritter will sever ties with the Caliban Program but, unfortunately for him, they do not sever ties with him.
Good Line:
- Said to Ritter by an old friend and current sitting Congressman re politics, "It's cattier than a Baptist bake sale and not nearly as interesting."