John Clooney is an agent with the CIA.
He has been one for just over two decades by the time we meet him in the first recorded adventure. His tenure almost comes to an end in the first few pages when his partner of just a few months is murdered and he almost buys it himself, all thanks to having been sold out. To say that Clooney's attitude, which had been quite upbeat prior to the betrayal, takes a decidedly different tone is mild. Since it turns out that the traitor had given more names than just those two and six other operatives working on different parts of the overall mission were also dead, Clooney is forced to work without Agency help and support - totally on his own which he observes, "I like it that way".
Clooney would some time later begin to ponder whether he wanted to stay in the shadowy business he had been in for so long. It had cost him his marriage years before and taken the life of several friends and left him with just one or two close to him. Was it worth it, he would ask himself. Then admitted that for the most part, his handler "gave him plenty of leeway" and that "most of the time he was half a world away from the politics at Langley". He definitely preferred it that way. After a tad more soul-searching, he would decide to continue on as before but "no more heroics, though. The so-called new leadership [at the Agency] wasn't work risking his life for".
An understandable sentiment considering what Clooney has been through but one that he would not exactly follow through with. He definitely continued to handle a lot more heroics and would risk his life several more times. I'll concede he did it because that was the job, not for the bigwigs back home.
In addition to his handler, William Tate, with whom Clooney has an interesting relationship - quite friendly but still rooted in the handler-agent dynamic - Clooney has one close friend, Anton Gruber. Gruber is a very successful private investigator who is domiciled in Germany but who is more than capable of operating anywhere in Europe when called for and Clooney calls upon him a lot. These are two long-time friends who have saved each other's bacon and helped each other home after too much partying quite a few times.
Good Lines:
- When asked rhetorically where he was when sensitivity training was being given, Clooney responded, "Kosovo, I think".