The Cigarette-Smoking Man (CSM) is another mysterious individual who, like Deep Throat, appears to be a higher-up government official with some power, though not the person calling the shots -- he seems to be answering to Well Manicured Man. Assistant Director Skinner seemed to be deferring to his opinion early in our notice of him but Skinner ordered him out of his office during a discussion with Mulder after the agent had abandoned his assignment to investigate possible alien contact in Puerto Rico. CSM appeared to be back in control, but ended up making a deal with Skinner in order to keep the information from a confidential document from becoming public. He now has the disk in his possession. He also possesses secret files of Japanese war experiments. CSM has also kept a silent watch on the proceedings in Skinner's office and buried vital evidence in a secret Pentagon storage room. He has tried to get Skinner removed from his position by framing him for murder (‘Zero Sum’). He also used Special Agent Alex Krycek to keep an eye on Mulder and any of Mulder's investigations. Mulder pulled a gun on him and threatened him in his studio apartment (at 900 W. Georgia St.) in ‘One Breath’. He seems to be an acquaintance of Mulder's father and perhaps a more intimate acquaintance of Mulder's mother. He is also the killer of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King (‘Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man'), if the episode is to be taken at face value. Rumor has it that he is the 'real' father of Agent Fox Mulder. In ‘Redux’ he offered a deal to Mulder. He helped him to get what he told Mulder was a cure for Scully's disease and arranged a meeting with Samantha. During the meeting with Samantha she called the CSM her 'Dad'. But was it the 'real' Samantha? In return he wanted Mulder to quit the FBI and work for him, but Mulder rejected this deal. CSM is shot at the end of ‘Redux II’ and presumed to be dead, since no body is found. But as we find out in 'The Red & the Black' he is not dead, but only in hiding, using the time to write cryptic letters to Agent Spender, who is, as we learn in ‘The End’, his son. Alex Krycek is sent to bring him back in ‘The End’, since the Consortium requires his services again. He agrees to work for them and plays a vital role in the abduction of Gibson Praise. He also declares his intention of granting Agent Spender ‘access’, making him his protegé. He suddenly seems to have great power again, since he is able to walk in and out of the FBI building unhindered and to assign agents to cases from outside the Bureau. After taking Samantha’s file from the cabinet, he lets Mulder’s office and the X-Files go up in flames. In ‘Fight the Future’ he executes Scully’s abduction and oversees the work on the captured alien lifeforms in Texas as well as later the work in the lab above the spaceship in the Antarctic. In ‘Triangle’ we see him in A.D. Kersh’s office. In 'Two Fathers / One Son' we finally learn more about his involvement in the syndicate and the 'project', a programm to secretely develop an alien-human hybrid, devised by the syndicate to postpone the inevitable holocaust of colonization by an alien race which would not begin unless the program was successful. He sacrificed his own wife, Cassandra Spender as a research subject for this program. Ironcially, it is his wife who is the first 'success' in 1999, but despite all the horrible deeds he has done, he can not bring himself to kill her, which would be the only way to prevent a start of the colonization now. Neither does he allow the syndicate to side with the rebel aliens. He uses the help of Agent Fowley, who has become his intimate ally, and his son, Agent Spender, who turn against him later in this episode. He determines that Cassandra is to be handed over to the alien colonists. Only the fact that instead the faceless rebels appear at the handover place prevents this. When the rebels surround and burn the assembled syndicate members, CSM and Fowley manage to escape, thus being the only surviving members together with Krycek. Having realised that his son has betrayed him, he apparently kills him at the end of the episode.