the job on the condition that he will only serve until the end of Durling's term, and sees this as a way of ending his public life. Only minutes after Congress confirms Ryan, though, a Japanese airline pilot deliberately crashes a 747 into the U.S. Capitol building during Congress's joint session, killing most of the people inside, decapitating the U.S. government, and elevating Ryan to the presidency. First Ryan administration Executive Orders (1996) The reluctant yet determined Ryan administration emerges as Ryan slowly rebuilds the government. He is faced with Kealty's political trickery, as the former vice president disputes his legitimacy as the nation's chief executive by publicly stating that he never actually resigned, when in fact a member of his staff had secretly taken the resignation letter from the office of the now-dead Secretary of State and destroyed it. Initially the lone voice of opposition to Ryan's policies on live television, he later enlists disaffected CIA intelligence officials (affected by the reduction in force at the agency in favor of more field operatives) to procure classified information on Ryan from his time in the CIA. He then suborns NBC news anchor and fellow Ryan critic Tom Donner into ambushing him with questions about his CIA career in a televised interview. Donner later realizes his mistake and publicly apologizes to President Ryan, while Kealty's challenge eventually fails in court. Along the way, Ryan also has to deal with the dictator of the new United Islamic Republic (a coalition of Iran and Iraq), the Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei. The ayatollah regards him as a weakling and seizes the opportunity to stage a multi-pronged attack on the country: a biological attack using a weaponized strain of the Ebola virus, a kidnapping attempt on his youngest daughter Katie, and an assassination attempt on himself through an Iranian sleeper agent disguised as a Secret Service bodyguard; with the U.S. overwhelmed by a multitude of crises, he believes that he can invade Saudi Arabia with little military opposition from the U.S. While the attempt on Katie was swiftly averted by the FBI and the Secret Service, the Ebola epidemic causes Ryan to declare martial law and enforce a travel ban that becomes instrumental in killing the virus, since it cannot survive in the American environment due to its fragile nature. He later deploys what is left of the American military to assist Saudi and Kuwaiti