Sydney Bristow (Reimagined)

Sydney Anne Bristow was born in Los Angeles, the only child of Jack and Laura Bristow. Her mother died in a car accident when Sydney was seven years old. Her father was an airplane parts exporter for an aerospace engineering company. Because of his work, he was frequently on business trips and therefore left Sydney to be primarily raised by Emily Sloane, the wife of Jack's best friend, Arvin Sloane. At 17 years old Sydney graduated high school and with her father's legal permission enlisted in the United States Army.

She enlisted for Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) Psychological Operations Specialist, 37F. After basic, advanced individual, and airborne training, Sydney was enrolled in Language School, where she learned Arabic. Upon graduating, she was assigned to the 4th Psychological Operations Group. She served as a PSYOP specialist in the 9th Psychological Operations Battalion.

After four distinguished years in the Army, Sydney was honorably discharged and went on to attend UCLA, where she majored in Business Economics and minored in English. Upon graduating from UCLA summa cum laude, she immediately sought employment with the Central Intelligence Agency. Unknown to Sydney, Arvin Sloane was actually a CIA officer and had recently been picked to head-up a newly-established and highly unconventional black ops division of the Agency named Special Directorate 6 (SD-6).

He believed Sydney would be perfect for SD-6. The best spies have certain traits: proficiency with numbers, three dimensional thinking, creative problem solving. Sydney's military and academic exams and psychological evaluations showed that she fits the profile perfectly.

After signing numerous non-disclosure agreements, Sydney was initially only told that she would be tasked with handling covert missions either too sensitive or too risky for traditional CIA entities. However, she still exuberantly accepted the position. She then went through an intensive eight month operational training course to train her in so-called "operational intelligence" or "tradecraft" skills. Sydney did not go through the standard CIA training program at "The Farm," outside Williamsburg, Virginia. Instead, she stayed in Los Angeles where she was hired as an investment analyst for a corporate bank named Credit Dauphine while she simultaneously underwent training.

After the training phase ended, Sloane revealed himself to Sydney as a CIA official and fully informed her about SD-6. He then took her to its headquarters, which is located on sublevel six of the Credit Dauphine building. Sydney then began her career as a field operations officer for Special Directorate 6.

Mandated to retrieve and study military and industrial intelligence critical to U.S. superiority and survival, SD-6 marks a return to classical methods of espionage. Funded by the CIA's black budget, it is enhanced with leading-edge surveillance and combat technology for the aggressive collection of stored data in hostile territories. SD-6 field officers physically infiltrate dangerous and sensitive enemy locations to gather the required intelligence by whatever means necessary. In other words, they go back to the nitty-gritty world of human spies out there in the field, risking their lives for the sake of taking a photograph or recording a conversation or copying a computer hard drive. They're authorized to work outside the boundaries of international treaties, but the U.S. government will neither acknowledge nor support their operations.

As a field officer, Sydney's job is to infiltrate secure installations, seize critical intelligence, destroy dangerous data or equipment, and neutralize an enemy if need be, without leaving a trace. The doctrine of SD-6 is that although killing may compromise secrecy, the choice between leaving either a witness or a corpse is no choice at all. This unconventional status allows Sydney to disregard any law, agreement, or framework of ethical behavior in order to accomplish a mission. However, if she were to ever be captured or killed, the U.S. government would completely disavow her and deny she was affiliated with the CIA at all.

Sydney Bristow's exemplary work has proven her to be one of the most capable officers in the CIA's employ.