Jack Ryan (character)

Patriot Games (1981)

While on a work trip in London with his family, Ryan (played by Harrison Ford in the film adaptation) thwarts a kidnapping attempt on the Prince and Princess of Wales by the Ulster Liberation Army, a splinter group of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. For his bravery, he is granted the honorary Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by the Queen Elizabeth II. One of the ULA attackers, Sean Miller, was captured and sentenced to life imprisonment, but is freed by his compatriots. Embittered over the failure of the kidnapping attempt, he exacts revenge by attacking Ryan's wife and daughter. After pleas by Greer, Ryan agrees to join the CIA 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 Jefferson "Robby" Jackson, and the Prince as well as law enforcement and naval officers. Shortly after, Ryan's second child Jack Ryan Jr. was born.

Red Rabbit (1982)

Ryan's first CIA assignment is in 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 had discovered that his boss Yuri Andropov had ordered the assassination of Pope John Paul II. Although Ryan and a small team of British SIS agents helps Zaitzev and his family get to the West, they fail to prevent the attack on the Pope (which happened in real life). Nevertheless, the pope is wounded and his would-be assassin captured, while the British execute his Bulgarian handler. Zaitzev's defection proves to be a major coup for both the American and British intelligence agencies.

The Hunt for Red October (1984)

Marko 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 ballistic missile submarine, with which he plans to defect with his officers. Having briefly met Ramius at an embassy function several years before, Ryan (portrayed by Alec Baldwin in the film adaptation) is asked by Admiral Greer to brief National Security Advisor Jeffrey Pelt and his staff 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 Lithuanian captain may want to defect rather than attack the West. Ryan works to establish contact with Ramius and get him and his crew along with the submarine secretly into the U.S., eventually succeeding.

The prequel novel Red Winter (2022), written by Marc Cameron and set after the events of Red October, focuses on Ryan and CIA officer Mary Pat Foley as they are tasked with investigating a possible East German defector.

The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1986)

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) team, and later engineers the extraction of CARDINAL, the CIA's highest agent-in-place, from the country. Ryan 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.

Clear and Present Danger (1988)

Ryan (portrayed by Harrison Ford in the film adaptation) is promoted to acting deputy director of Intelligence when Greer is hospitalized with cancer. He realizes he is being kept in the dark about covert CIA operations to disrupt the illegal drug trade in Colombia, which involves inserting light infantry troops of Hispanic descent, intercepting drug flights, and surveillance of drug cartel management. When the American troops are later betrayed to avoid the political fallout, Ryan works with the FBI to rescue them. He also meets CIA operative John Clark, with whom he would become friends.

The Sum of All Fears (1991)

Ryan (portrayed by Ben Affleck in the film adaptation) becomes Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. His career is jeopardized when J. Robert Fowler becomes President and his lover Elizabeth Elliott becomes National Security Advisor. They not only deny Ryan any credit for an innovative Middle East peace plan, 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 war. Ryan defuses the nuclear crisis by commandeering the Moscow-Washington hotline and convincing the Soviet leader that the crisis is a setup. He then refuses to confirm Fowler's order to launch a nuclear missile at Qom, where the Iranian Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei lives. After Fowler resigns, Ryan retires from the CIA.

Debt of Honor (1994)

Two years later, Ryan returns to government service as National Security Advisor under President Roger Durling. They deal with war against Japan, which includes 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. President Durling taps Ryan for the job, which he accepts on the condition that he will only serve until the end of Durling's term. However, a Japanese airline pilot crashes a 747 into the U.S. Capitol building during Congress's joint session, killing most of the people inside, decapitating the U.S. government, and elevating Ryan to the presidency.

Executive Orders (1996)

As President Ryan slowly rebuilds the government, he deals with Kealty's challenge to his legitimacy. Initially the lone voice of opposition to President Ryan's policies that cut through bureaucracy and political infighting, Kealty later gathers classified information on Ryan from his time in the CIA and enlists NBC news anchor Tom Donner to ambush President Ryan with questions about his CIA career in a televised interview. Donner's colleague John Plumber later realizes his mistake and publicly apologizes to President Ryan, while Kealty's challenge ultimately fails in court.

President Ryan also deals with Daryaei, who had taken over Iraq and combined it with Iran to form the United Islamic Republic. Taking advantage of his inexperience, the Ayatollah stages a multi-pronged attack on the United States: a biological attack using a weaponized strain of the Ebola virus, a kidnapping attempt on his youngest daughter Katie, and an assassination attempt through an Iranian sleeper agent disguised as a Secret Service bodyguard; with the U.S. overwhelmed by a multitude of crises, he believes that he can invade Saudi Arabia with little military opposition from the U.S. While the attempt on Katie was swiftly averted by the FBI and the Secret Service, the Ebola epidemic causes President Ryan to declare martial law and enforce a travel ban that becomes instrumental in killing the virus, since it cannot survive in the American environment due to its fragile nature; the would-be assassin is lured to the Oval Office and arrested by the FBI.

President Ryan deploys what is left of the American military to assist Saudi and Kuwaiti forces in repelling the UIR military, which also becomes successful. He orders Daryaei killed in a surgical airstrike in Tehran as he announces the Ryan Doctrine, which states that the U.S. will no longer tolerate attacks on "our territory, our possessions, or our citizens," and will hold whoever orders such attacks accountable.

The Bear and the Dragon (2000)

President Ryan completes Durling's term as president and is reelected as an Independent. He retains most of his emergency Cabinet and has appointed Robby Jackson as his vice president. Along the way, President Ryan deals with the attempted assassination of his former KGB counterpart Sergey Golovko, now the head of Russian foreign intelligence (SVR). This turns out to be an attempt by the China to sow confusion in the Russian government due to their plan to annex Eastern Siberia, where geologists had recently discovered oil and gold reserves. President Ryan persuades Russia to join NATO in a futile attempt to deter China, and in the subsequent war that follows, he deploys U.S. forces to assist the Russian military and target Chinese strategic assets.

Ryan does not appear in The Teeth of the Tiger (2003), but is said to have completed his presidential term. Jackson campaigns to become his successor but is assassinated by a Ku Klux Klan member in Mississippi, enabling Kealty to become the next president by default. Before Ryan leaves office, he creates The Campus, a covert counter-terrorism and intelligence organization that fronts as Hendley Associates, a financial trading firm, and also writes 100 preemptive presidential pardons for its members.