Adrian Ross

NS Nation Name: Senkaku
Character Name: Adrian Ross
Character Gender: male
Character Age: 32
Character Role: CIA officer, currently working as an analyst in Langley
Appearance: Adrian is somewhat ethnically ambiguous, with his mother being half-Latina and his father being white, and is 5'10" with blue eyes and straight, dark brown hair cut in a subtle fade, weighing around 165 pounds.
Character State of Origin: WA
Character Affiliation (Democrat, Republican or Non-Aligned): Adrian leans Democrat, but isn't a registered member of the party, swings Republican on some issues and, officially, has to avoid politics due to his work.
Main Strengths:
Adrian is intelligent, flexible, friendly, and compassionate, and a well-regarded CIA operations officer with years of experience in some of the world's most tumultuous countries- and has a very high security clearance.
Main Weaknesses:
Adrian has a rather sordid history and shadowy connections through his time in the CIA, particularly in Pakistan, which could prove a serious liability if anyone ever dug into them significantly (though they'd have to dig very deep). His sexual orientation also can incite bigotry or discrimination, and he is an insomniac, heavy drinker, and has a serious caffeine dependency.
Short Bio:
Adrian was born in Seattle, his father working for a major law firm and his mother a Naval officer who helped oversee the base in Bremerton. His parents divorced when he was young, but Adrian grew up fairly well-off and did well in school as well as in athletics and extracurriculars. In particular, he took French, Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin, and displayed a love for and talent for learning new languages. However, his lack of interest in religion was always a point of friction with his parents (his father in particular was, and is still to a lesser extent, very religious) during his adolescence, and this was exacerbated by his father having some difficulty coming to terms with Adrian's sexuality (though he eventually did). He also narrowly escaped having a DUI put on his record during his junior year of high school thanks to the intervention of his parents and an understanding police officer.

After graduating high school, he was accepted to Tufts and completed his bachelor's degree there, double-majoring in Political Science and International Relations, and had initially planned to join the Navy like his mother or possibly the Marines. However, during college, he gradually came to realize that the military would likely be a poor fit for him, and instead began looking at civilian agencies of the government. He also managed to get several internships in DC at the State Department and at Langley with the CIA, and after graduating (in only 3 years, making him only 20 years old) applied to work as a State Department foreign service officer. The process of application and acceptance and receiving a posting took nearly a year. Initially posted to Morocco, the CIA station chief in Rabat, along with his supervisor, noticed his intelligence and quietly suggested to him he apply for a position with the CIA. He did so, and entered the Directorate of Operations.

Since then, Adrian was posted to Morocco (again, this time as a CIA officer rather than with the State Department), Venezuela, the Central African Republic, once to Egypt (just before and during the Arab Spring), once to Taiwan, and twice to Pakistan, and has picked up Arabic and Urdu along with his other languages. During his first stint in Pakistan, however, he was trapped by Inter-Services Intelligence and caught soliciting a prostitute and forced to deliver small amounts of information to them (something the CIA never discovered). He in turn found information compromising to his ISI handler and was able to extract information from ISI, and over the course of his second posting to Pakistan his connections there only have grown more sordid and shady. He also accepted a large bribe during his Venezuelan posting as part of an operation, but concealed how much money he was actually being given from the CIA and kept some of it, and accepted smaller favors and bribes in Egypt without the CIA's knowledge or consent. He also worked with the Special Activities Division in Pakistan, helping coordinate raids, assassinations, and other operations, and during his second posting there secretly conspired to blow a SAD operation that threatened a friend of his connected to ISI. Adrian has also personally been part of several assassination operations. Despite all this, Adrian has achieved a significant measure of professional success and is an effective CIA operative.

Just before his last posting began (his second time to Pakistan) he and his now-husband, Reed (who works for the State Department), decided they wanted to get married, and they both applied for transfers to get desk jobs in the Washington DC area to be more conducive to living together and seeing one another regularly. Adrian now does desk work at Langley, but is also frequently in touch with foreign contacts and with both FBI and CIA counterintelligence to work with or against foreign operatives in the DC area.

Other Info:
The recent election has re-invigorated some of the interest in politics Adrian once had more strongly, during high school and college, and also generally planted the idea in the back of his head about possibly advising or working to quietly assist a candidate- or perhaps more...