"I've had the good fortune in my life to work with some really talented and professional people." - Sam Fisher
Sam Fisher was born on 17th April, 1957, and grew up in the Baltimore suburbs of Towson, Maryland. His father was a case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who worked undercover in Moscow during the Cold War.
While not much is known of his childhood, it is known that Sam attended a military boarding school after the death of his parents when he was young and that he majored in Political Science while at the U.S Naval Academy. During the mid-1980s, Sam was working for the CIA, under the cover of being deployed as a diplomatic aide in Eastern Europe where he later met a NSA cryptanalyst named Regan Burns in the then-Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia.
They had a "stormy" affair and Regan got pregnant. After learning of the pregnancy, they had a small, quiet wedding ceremony at a U.S. military base in Frankfurt, Germany, where their only child, whom they both named Sarah, was later born on May 31, 1985. Despite it was a distant, difficult marriage, Sam and Regan did love each other but their professions kept interferring. They eventually divorced after three years of marriage. Regan went back to the United States and took Sarah with her, reclaiming her maiden name and changing Sarah's. Sam became estranged from Regan and Sarah as he dedicated himself to his work, operating extensively in "Afghanistan (during and after the Soviet invasion), East Germany, and the Soviet satellites in the years leading up to the collapse of the USSR". Regan later died from ovarian cancer when Sarah was fifteen, sometime around 1999 and 2000. After Sam gained guardianship of Sarah, he moved back to the U.S. and took a bureaucratic job with the CIA, where he worked in weapons development and studied experimental weaponry and information warfare, in order to spend more time with her as well as focusing on her upbringing.
Acknowledged as one of the finest Servicemen in his lifetime, Fisher was a highly-decorated commissioned officer of the United States Navy, where he attained the rank of Lieutenant Commander (O-4) while serving as an operator within the U.S. Navy's elite SEa-Air-Land (SEAL) Teams, where he participated and led various special operations in the Persian Gulf, Bolivia, Colombia, Senegal, Kosovo and various other hotspots around the world. At some point during his time in the Navy, Sam spent nearly three years (2 years, 11 months) as an intelligence analyst. At one point he was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal. He was honorably discharged from the Navy at some point during 1996.
Sam's direct supervisor and handler in Third Echelon was Colonel Irving Lambert, USA (Ret.) (deceased, 2008), who maintained constant radio contact with Sam during his missions, providing him with updates and support, and was even one of Fisher's oldest, if not the closest, friends. Assisting Lambert were several other Third Echelon employees who provided additional reconnaissance, logistical, and technical support to Sam while operating in the field: Vernon 'Junior' Wilkes (deceased), Anna Grímsdóttir, Frances Coen and William Redding (introduced in Chaos Theory). One of his aides, Dermot Paul ("D.P.") Brunton (introduced in Pandora Tomorrow), became the head of SHADOWNET Operations, a black-ops unit within Third Echelon which uses teams of operatives.
One of Sam Fisher's oldest friends, Major Douglas Shetland, USMC (Ret.), a former U.S. Marine Recon officer and the CEO of a PMC who plays a prominent role in the third game, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, established that Fisher had served with Shetland in Kuwait during the Gulf War (while Shetland's unit was operating alongside the Navy SEALs and became close friends while stationed aboard the USS Nimitz) shortly after Fisher rescues him from a hostage situation during the "East Timor" mission in the second game, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, when Shetland asks, "Where are the rest of the SEALs?" to which Sam replies and establishing that he left the U.S. Navy Reserve in 1996 by saying "I came alone. Haven't been Navy for a decade." Victor Coste is another one of Sam Fisher's oldest friends. The two served together in the Navy SEALs in Iraq during the Gulf War in 1991. During their time in Iraq, Coste single-handedly rescued Sam from a hostage situation after the four-man Navy SEAL foot patrol under Sam's command was ambushed on the Highway of Death and Sam was captured by the Iraqi Republican Guard.
Sam is 177 cm (5 ft 10 in) tall, weighs 78 kg (170 pounds),[1] has greying, dark brown (greying) hair and green eyes. He was the first person to be recruited as a field agent of the "Splinter Cell" program, Third Echelon's highly clandestine black ops project. A highly decorated veteran of JSOC's DEVGRU, and the CIA's Special Activities Division, Fisher is a master in the art of stealth, having been trained in various undercover and covert infiltration tactics. He not only specializes in night-time combat but in close-quarters combat in urban warfare and fieldcraft-related skills as well. In addition, Sam is extremely proficient in tradecraft skills such as surveillance tactics, computer hacking, handling explosives and the use of nearly any conventional firearm ambidextrously. Sam Fisher is extremely agile and athletic. He is capable of many different climbing and scaling abilities, such as step-jumping to climb raised walls, performing the infamous "Split Jump", a split leg maneuver, to keep himself supported for a long period of time, as well as being able to hold on tightly to ceiling pipes or even the undercarriage of a moving train. He is also strong enough to lift the body of a full grown man onto his back and carry it around, and can run somewhat faster than the average soldier. He is also a highly trained expert in the Israeli martial arts system of Krav Maga. In Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction, he utilized the Center Axis Relock, a modern shooting stance used in close-quarters combat. He prefers to work alone in the field. While not on assignment or stationed at Fort Meade (while he was working for Third Echelon), Fisher resided in a townhouse in Towson and a farmhouse in rural Germantown, Maryland (according to the novelizations of the series). According to the 2013 graphic novel, Splinter Cell: Echoes (which takes place during the end of Conviction and before the events that happened at the beginning of Splinter Cell: Blacklist), Sam now resides in a two-story house in Falls Church, Virginia, where his daughter, who currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia, stayed with him for a while during the book before moving to New York. Sam's signature sidearm is the FN Five-seveN, which is also his preferred weapon of choice throughout the Splinter Cell franchise. During the "Washington Monument" level in Conviction, he retrieves the Five-seveN from Victor Coste, who refers to it as Sam's "favorite pistol".
As a covert operative whose existence is completely deniable by the U.S. government, Fisher approaches his target objectives in a gruff, no-nonsense manner, but maintains a light-hearted relationship with his colleagues and even with his momentary hostages (even if he is going to kill them). Fisher has little patience for government bureaucracy or behind-the-scenes political maneuvering. A realist who is well aware of the overarching political ramifications behind his assignments and the specific manner authorized for their completion, Fisher maintains a cynical, jaded and sarcastic sense of humor about the covert, illegal, and often morally ambiguous nature of his work. In Pandora Tomorrow, when Lambert informs Fisher that "Nobody knows whether he's (Norman Soth) a US intelligence agent or a terrorist," Fisher replies that, "Those things aren't mutually exclusive."
At the same time, he is highly loyal and a staunch believer in the ideals his work ultimately protects. He is quickly angered by the casual and/or intentional slaughter of innocent civilians or unarmed military personnel by his enemies. Fisher is blunt, Frequently holding captured enemies at knife-point, his dialogue with them is creative and highly intimidating, though often morbidly humorous to the audience. Fisher often tortures his subjects of interrogation through creative use of surrounding objects such pianos, fire extinguishers or windowsills.In the novels, Fisher also mentions that he has the ability to fall asleep on command, unlike most people who can only sleep when tired. This, he says, is an asset in his line of work, which often requires him to obtain sleep in the most awkward of places.
Sam is very loving to his daughter, Sarah, who is his only child. He felt sorry for having to leave at inconvenient times whenever he was supposed to be at home spending time with her, though he would later call her during mission briefings aboard the Osprey. Sarah was supposedly killed by a drunk driver before the JBA operation. Sam's reaction was a downward spiral into depression. After the JBA operation, Sam resigned from Third Echelon and left the country. He went to Valletta, Malta, to hunt for his daughter's killer after receiving word that the hit-and-run accident was plotted. He later discovered that she was still alive while stopping the conspiracy within Third Echelon and the U.S. government.
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