Editing Jack Ryan (character) (section)

===First CIA work and career===
Following a recommendation from Father Tim O'Riley, a [[Jesuit]] priest and professor at [[Georgetown University]] in [[Washington, D.C.]], to a Central Intelligence Agency contact, Ryan was asked to work as a consultant for the agency, although officially employed by the [[MITRE Corporation]]. He agreed and spent several months at agency headquarters in [[Langley, Virginia]], where he wrote a paper entitled "Agents and Agencies", in which he maintained that [[state-sponsored terrorism]] is an [[Casus belli|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 is leaked. By ensuring that each copy of the document differs slightly in its wording, if any copy is leaked, then it is possible to determine the informant's identity.

These accomplishments come to the attention of [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]] [[Vice Admiral (United States)|Vice Admiral]] James Greer, the CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence. The expertise of Ryan's report, plus the application, persuaded Greer to offer him a permanent job in the CIA, but Ryan declined.

====''[[Patriot Games]]'' (July 1987)====
[[File:Jack Ryan 1992.jpg|thumb|[[Harrison Ford]] portrayed Jack Ryan in [[Patriot Games (film)|the film adaptation]] of ''[[Patriot Games]]''.]]
While in [[London]] with his family in late 1981, Ryan (portrayed by [[Harrison Ford]] in the film) stumbles upon a kidnapping attempt on the [[Prince of Wales]] and his family (in the film: Lord Holmes, a cousin of the Queen), which is orchestrated by the Ulster Liberation Army, a splinter group of the [[Provisional Irish Republican Army]] and terrorist organization. He foils the attack by killing one gunman while injuring another and gets wounded in the process. Ryan is later knighted by [[Queen Elizabeth II]] as an honorary [[Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order]]; in the books, some British characters call him "Sir John" even though honorary knights are not permitted to use the style of "Sir".<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Monarchy Today > Queen and public > Honours > Knighthoods |url=http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchUK/Honours/Knighthoods.aspx |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111231155538/http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchUK/Honours/Knighthoods.aspx |archive-date=December 31, 2011 |access-date=2015-05-21 |publisher=The official website of the British Monarchy}}</ref>

Sean Miller, the Irish gunman Ryan wounded, was sentenced to life imprisonment but is freed by his ULA compatriots, embittered over the failure of the kidnapping attempt, and particularly the death of his brother at Ryan's hands in that attempt, he exacts revenge on Ryan by attacking his wife and daughter. After pleas by Greer, Ryan agrees to join the CIA in a permanent position as an analyst, originally to gather intelligence on the ULA. Later, Miller and his men stage another kidnapping attempt on the Prince and Princess of Wales, who are visiting the Ryan family in their [[Maryland]] home; however, they are overpowered by the combined efforts of Ryan, his friend Robert "Robby" Jackson, and the Prince as well as law enforcement and naval officers who are nearby. After the ordeal, Ryan's second child [[Jack Ryan Jr.]] was born.

====''[[Red Rabbit]]'' (August 05, 2002)====
Ryan's first CIA assignment is to London as a member of a liaison group to the British [[Secret Intelligence Service]]. Initially called in to assess the Soviet government and economy, Ryan is later tasked to assist in the defection of [[KGB]] communications officer Oleg Zaitzev who has discovered that his boss [[Yuri Andropov]] had ordered [[Pope John Paul II]]'s assassination. Although Ryan and a small team of British SIS agents helps the "Rabbit" and his family get to the West, they fail to prevent the attack on the Pope (which actually happened in real life in 1981). Nevertheless, the pope is only wounded and his would-be assassin captured, while the British execute his Bulgarian handler. "Rabbit's" defection proves to be a major coup for both the American and British intelligence agencies. Ryan soon afterward suggests a nonmilitary long-term strategy to help hasten the Soviet Union's collapse and the end of the [[Cold War]].

====''[[The Hunt for Red October]]'' (October 01, 1984)====
Captain First Rank Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius, the [[Soviet Navy]]'s top submarine commander, takes command of the ''Красный Октябрь'' (''Krasny Oktyabr'', or in English, ''Red October''), the newest [[Typhoon class submarine|Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine]], with which he plans to defect with his officers. Having briefly met Captain Ramius at an embassy function several years before, Ryan (portrayed by [[Alec Baldwin]] in the film) is asked by Admiral Greer to brief the President's National Security Adviser Jeffrey Pelt and his staff, in his first trip to the [[White House]], on Ramius' background and the deadly new capabilities of ''Red October''{{'s}} secret revolutionary silent jet propulsion drive system called the caterpillar drive. Ryan recognizes that the renegade ethnic [[Lithuania]]n captain may want to defect rather than attack the West. Ryan works to establish contact with him and support contingency efforts of the tailing American submarine ''USS Dallas''. Ryan seeks to get Ramius and members of his crew along with the submarine secretly into the U.S., eventually succeeding.

====''[[The Cardinal of the Kremlin]]'' (May 20, 1988)====
Ryan is reassigned to the CIA headquarters at Langley and becomes Admiral Greer's special assistant. He is sent to [[Moscow]] as part of the American nuclear weapons reduction ([[START I|START]]) team, and later engineers the extraction of CARDINAL, the CIA's highest agent-in-place, from the country. Along the way, he also forces KGB chairman Nikolay Gerasimov to defect due to his anti-American nature, which could jeopardize the arms reduction talks once he becomes [[General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|General Secretary]]. His plan involves a disinformation campaign that shows himself under [[Securities and Exchange Commission|SEC]] investigation for insider trading, which provides an opening for Gerasimov to help Ryan defect to the Soviet Union and work for the KGB.

====''[[Clear and Present Danger]]'' (August 17, 1989)====
Ryan (portrayed by [[Harrison Ford]] in the film) is promoted to acting Deputy Director of Intelligence when Greer is hospitalized with [[cancer]]. Despite this, he is not made aware of a highly covert and illegal CIA operation, encouraged by the president, which claimed that domestic drug abuse was a "clear and present danger" to American security, and approved by corrupt [[National Security Advisor (United States)|National Security Advisor]] Admiral James Cutter. This operation targets [[Colombia]]n drug lords in [[South America]] using light infantry troops of Hispanic descent and occasional precision air strikes with sophisticated "smartbombs", in what is usually considered a law enforcement area. Ryan works with the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] (FBI) to rescue a small group of American soldiers cut off in Colombia, forcing him to miss Greer's funeral. Also in this operation, he first met the U.S. government operative [[John Clark (Tom Clancy character)|John Clark]], with whom he would become friends. Around this time, Ryan also runs afoul of Elizabeth Elliot, international affairs advisor to then-presidential candidate [[Governor of Ohio]] J. Robert Fowler, and one of Cathy Ryan's former professors.

====''[[The Sum of All Fears]]'' (August 14, 1991)====
Ryan (portrayed by [[Ben Affleck]] in the film) reaches his highest post at the CIA, [[Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency|Deputy Director of Central Intelligence]]. His career is jeopardized when Fowler becomes [[President of the United States|President]] and Elizabeth Elliott, Fowler's lover/manipulator, becomes National Security Advisor. They not only deny Ryan any credit for an innovative [[Middle East]] peace plan (basically turning [[Jerusalem]] into a [[Vatican City|Vatican]]-like city co-ruled by three Christian, Jewish, and Arab/Muslim mayors), but also panic when Palestinian and former East German terrorists detonate a nuclear bomb in [[Denver]] during the [[Super Bowl]] and nearly plunge the world into a Soviet-American [[Nuclear warfare|nuclear war]]. Ryan defuses the nuclear crisis by commandeering the Washington-Moscow hot line and convincing the Soviet Premier (through his friend Golovko) that the crisis is a setup. He then refuses to confirm Fowler's order to launch a nuclear missile at [[Qom]] (thus preventing the attack), where the [[Iran]]ian [[ayatollah]] lives. The crisis and Elliot scandal drives Fowler to resign. On this note, Ryan retires from the CIA and flies to [[Riyadh]] in [[Saudi Arabia]] to witness the execution of the surviving terrorists, and is then honored by the U.S.'s Middle Eastern allies by being presented with the sword used to execute the terrorists.

The film again departs from the novel, by presenting a younger, unmarried Ryan, an intelligent mistress-free Fowler, a Greer-like Cabot, and the nuclear bomb is detonated over the city of [[Baltimore]] instead of Denver. The film also changes the identity of the terrorists from Arabs to [[neo-Nazis]].

====''[[Debt of Honor]]'' (August 17, 1994)====
After a brief stint as a stockbroker, Ryan returns to government service as the National Security Advisor, restoring honor to the job that Cutter and Elliot disgraced. It has been two and a half years since Fowler resigned and his vice president, Roger Durling, is now well into his own term. Jack and the administration must deal with a second war between the U.S. and [[Japan]], as well as an attack on America's economic infrastructure. After a clean sweep of Japan's forces in the South Pacific, Vice President [[Ed Kealty]] is forced to resign after a sex scandal and President Durling taps Ryan for the job. Ryan accepts the job on the condition that he will only serve until the end of Durling's term, and sees this as a way of ending his public life. Only minutes after [[United States Congress|Congress]] confirms Ryan, though, a Japanese airline pilot deliberately crashes a [[Boeing 747|747]] into the [[United States Capitol|U.S. Capitol building]] during [[Joint session of the United States Congress|Congress's joint session]] out of revenge for the death of his son and brother during the conflict, killing most of the people inside, decapitating the U.S. government, and elevating Ryan to the presidency.