Shadowy Syndicate - Sinister conspiratorial cabal of anonymous businessmen "representing secret global interests" on the sci-fi series THE X-FILES/FOX/1993-2002.

Well Manicured Man

The Shadowy Syndicate (a bunch of old white guys) ran their dirty deeds workshop from the comfort of their headquarters on West 46th Street in New York City. Its member included:

• Armin Mueller-Stahl as Conrad Strughold, a German aristocrat,  scientist and leader of the Syndicate.
• John Neville as a distinguished-looking older man referred to as the Well-Manicured Man. ("I'm a member of a kind of consortium. We represent certain global interests.") He once informed FBI Agent Dr. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) on their mission: "We predict the future, and the best way to predict the future is to invent it" (Episode No. 49 "The Blessing Way") After the Well-Manicured Man's death (car bomb), the First Elder ran the group.
• Don S. Williams as The First Elder
• Stanley Walsh/George Murdock  as The Second Elder
• John Moore as The Third Elder, nicknamed The Fat Man
• Al Ruscio as The Fourth Elder
• Frank Ertl as The Fifth Elder
• William B. Davis as The Cigarette Smoking Man
• Jerry Hardin as Deep Throat
• Nicholas Lea as Alex Krycek
• Victor Klemper
• Peter Donas as William Mulder

To this end, the Syndicate has had its fingers in malevolent deeds since World War II (illegal human testing, cloning), including an unholy alliance with an alien group of outer space aliens.

Founding Members of
 The Shadowy Syndicate

One of their nastiest operatives CGB Sender, a.k.a. "The Cigarette Smoking Man" once explained to FBI agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) that the Syndicate formed in 1973 to forestall an alien invasion of earth:

"We had agreed to cooperate with the alien colonists. By a majority vote taken by the group that your father (Bill Mulder) and I worked for. A group that came together at the State Department on a project dating back to 1947 to Roswell. The vote changed that though. It changed everything. We no longer cling to any government agency. We now operate privately on our own projects."

In a show of good faith, each group member gave up one family member to the aliens for testing and experimentation, in exchange for an alien fetus that hopefully would give the humans the alien genome, the DNA to create a human hybrid who could survive the holocaust to come.

In the meantime, a vaccine was created that would save everyone. But according to the CSM "It's too late now. Colonization will soon begin. There will be a sequence of events. A state of emergency will be declared. A massive outbreak of virus by bees. And the takeover will begin."

The CSM's henchmen included:

• Lindsey Ginter as The Crew-Cut Man
• Morris Panych/Alan Robertson as The Gray-Haired Man
• Stephen McHattie as The Red-Haired Man
• Willy Ross as Quiet Willy
• Lenno Britos as Luis Cardinal
• Scott Ostlehoff
• Michael Shamus Wiles as The Black-Haired Man
• Steven Williams as Mr. X

On the February 14, 1999 episode of THE X-FILES most of the Syndicate members (except CSM) were burned to death by faceless rebel aliens. Mulder eulogized them, saying:

"They burned themselves. With a choice made long ago by a conspiracy of men who thought they could sleep with the enemy...only to awaken another enemy."

See also - CHEMICALS, DRUGS & POTIONS: "Black Oil"