Michael Coldsmith Briggs is 6’ tall, gray blond hair, blue eyes. He is blind in the left eye due to an injury received years before during the theft of an ultra top-secret aircraft that had been developed by his department.  His leg was also injured, causing him to walk with a slight limp.  The equipment was ultimately recovered, but never fully returned.  After recovering from his injuries, he permanently left the field and started to rise through the ranks to eventually become head of the CIA (aka the Firm).  During his early years with the agency, he was instrumental in quietly providing the remainder of the necessary funding for the SSRN Seaview to be built, when Admiral Harriman Nelson (USN, ret.) faced a financial shortfall.  In doing so, he secured certain ‘promises’ from Nelson for the occasional use of the boat for Firm purposes. It was a promise that Nelson would regret for the rest of his life.

He is a member of the FFVs (First Families of Virginia) and primarily lives in his family's ancestral home on the Potomac River in Prince William County, Virginia.  His father was a 'quiet' member of the OSS (the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency) and a member of the diplomatic corps.  His mother was an accomplished painter.  His older brother, Thomas, followed their father into the 'Firm' after it became the CIA.  Thomas was subsequently killed during an assignment overseas.

Michael eventually followed into the family 'business' not long after his mother died from complications of a cardiac viral infection.  He turned his family home, a 17th Century Georgian mansion that sat on over 500 acres, into his own private compound and retreat.  He raises horses, primarily for polo, both for his own personal pleasure as well as for business.  For all outward appearances, he is a member of the landed gentry set, a true Virginia Gentleman, with the money and prestige necessary for the part.  Inwardly, he is an accomplished former agent and co-director of the CIA.  He would later go on to head the agency and retire from it.

Briggs had a one-year liaison with Captain Karen Davis, USN, prior to her meeting with Harriman Nelson, after meeting her accidentally through a mutual friend.  He was in love with Karen, but could not, or would not, commit because of the nature of his work.  Karen, in return, could not deal with the grays of the Intelligence world and she was the one who terminated the relationship.

In the passage of time, Briggs became, and remained, a 'guardian angel' to the Davis women and later to the members of the Institute family as well.  Unbeknownst to the entire Institute family, he had maintained and encouraged another connection through one of the many women he had known in his career.  Bedouin Princess Aliysha el-Fayad was an agent in the underground of her country, and had conceived a child by a wounded Lee Crane, when he had been sent there on a mission.  Crane did not know of the child but Briggs did, and he would keep the secret until he could use Rose’s existence to his own advantage.