Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is a series of award-winning and critically acclaimed stealth video games created and published by Ubisoft and endorsed by American author Tom Clancy. The series centers around Splinter Cell agent Sam Fisher, a highly-trained field operative of Third Echelon, a top-secret NSA initiative. Sam Fisher is in the Splinter Cell Program, a covert operations program created a black-ops project and training program created by Third Echelon. The Splinter Cell Program produced and deployed units of highly-trained forward operators as the ultimate intelligence gathering force, with the support of a cutting edge technological team to retrieve information through traditional espionage techniques, but with 21st century military technology.