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Name: unknown Known Aliases: Raul Bloodworth Rank: unknown; second-level member of the Conspiracy, below the Well-Manicured Man Background: US Army Special Forces Specialty: Erasing evidence, assassinating inconvenient people, working the shadows |
The Cigarette-Smoking Man, played by William B. Davis, was a Green Beret in the early 1960s. His father had been a dedicated Communist and Soviet agent; he was electrocuted under the Espionage Act of 1917, before his son could walk. His mother, a cigarette smoker, died of lung cancer before her son uttered his first word. He became a ward of the state, living in orphanages until he joined the Army.
As a Green Beret in the early 1960s, one of his buddies was Bill Mulder, father of Fox. The young captain who would become the Cigarette-Smoking Man assassinated Patrice Lumumba, the Marxist president of the Congo,took part in the Bay of Pigs operation and assassinated Trujillo, the Dominican dictator, in 1962. At that time, he hated cigarettes as much as he hated Communism. He was assigned by a cabal including an Army general, a man who seems like a Mafia don, and some Madison Avenue types to assassinate JFK, which he did, setting up Lee Harvey Oswald as a patsy. As his friend Lee was taken away, later to be killed by Jack Ruby, the young man lit up his first cigarette.
Later, he turned to writing spy fiction under the name Raul Bloodworth. His hero, Jack Colquitt, was a reflection of himself, mirroring his moods. By 1968, the Cigarette-Smoking Man was powerful enough to give orders to J. Edgar Hoover. He recommended that Martin Luther King be killed; although he admired Dr. King and sympathized with the struggle of black men in America, he couldn't stand it when King started speaking of Communism in a seemingly approving light. He set up James Earl Ray as a patsy and shot King himself.
In 1991, the Cigarette-Smoking Man was evidently trying to reform, wearing a nicotine patch instead of smoking. He got word on Christmas Eve that Gorbachev had resigned; the long war against Communism was over. There were no more enemies.
Back in his apartment, he started another Jack Colquitt adventure, after getting a rejection slip from another publisher.
But later on Christmas Eve, he got a call from Deep Throat. An alien ship had crashed in West Virginia. According to Security Council 1013, whichever nation captures a living EBE has the responsibility to immediately destroy it. It seems the nation, or at least the shadow army operated by the Cigarette-Smoking Man, has acquired a new enemy. And as Deep Throat pumped two .45 slugs into the dying alien, the CS Man lit up his first cigarette in a long time.
Finally, a publisher accepted a Jack Colquitt novel for publication in the magazine "Roman a Clef." The Cigarette-Smoking Man was thrilled, excited, to the point of writing out his resignation from his "day job" and hurrying down to see the magazine when it appeared. He didn't know what sort of magazine it was; even the cover, showing a leggy blonde straddling a mountain, didn't tip him off. But when he read it, he saw his story had been cut to shreds. The ending had been changed. He sat at a bus stop, lamenting the desperate unfairness of life, and tore up his resignation. ("Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man")
He was present in the very first scene in which Dana Scully is assigned to the X-Files, saying nothing, watching, smoking. At the end of the episode, however, he is the one who puts the alien nasal implant into a drawer with many others just like it, somewhere in the E Ring of the Pentagon.("Pilot")
He speaks in "Tooms" to say that he believes Mulder's report. In "Sleepless", the double agent Alex Krycek reports to him. He seems not to be worried about Scully, saying, "Every problem has a solution" and stubbing out a cigarette. But in "Ascension" he tells Krycek they aren't going to kill Mulder, because "that would risk turning one man's religion into a crusade."
Mulder finally locates the Cigarette-Smoking Man and forces him to tell him he has "no wife, no children, some power." He tells Mulder "I've watched presidents die" and says "I have more respect for you, Mulder. You're becoming a player." Mulder nicknames him Cancer Man and spreads this name over the Internet with the help of the Lone Gunmen. ("One Breath")
When the Cigarette-Smoking man gets a call about a hacker accessing the MJ (Majestic) documents, he says "Gentlemen, that is the phone call I never wanted to get." He reveals that he was very close to Bill Mulder, Fox Mulder's father; when Bill Mulder asks him to protect Fox, the Cigarette-Smoking Man says, "I've protected him this long, haven't I?" Later in that episode he phones Fox Mulder, telling him his father authorized the project Mulder is investigating, in which a boxcar full of alien corpses is ignited in the New Mexico desert. Although the Cigarette-Smoking Man ordered the boxcar set ablaze, he probably didn't know Mulder was inside. ("Anasazi")
When Skinner offers him the digital tape of the MJ documents, which the Cigarette-Smoking Man wants desperately, he still says "Do you want to work a deal? Is that what this is? I don't work deals." He is not accustomed to negotiating, but to giving orders; in the Cigarette-Smoking Man's world, there is no accommodation, only power and dominance ("Paper Clip")
The Cigarette-Smoking Man was a partner of Bill Mulder when they investigated the radiation incident in 1953, involving black oil that invaded men's bodies ("Apocrypha"). In the third season, he takes a lot of orders from a shadowy syndicate which includes the Well-Manicured Man.
Text by Steve Johnson
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