James Fletcher

"In order to ensure our survival, the human individual must be sacrificed for the good of the human race."

- Excerpt from "Humanity's Rise", believed to have been authored by James Fletcher

Dr. James "Ugly Jim" Fletcher was a scientist specializing in the study of "coercive neurology". He is best known as the architect behind the top-secret Alliance program called "Operation Janissary" during the First Contact War. Fletcher disappeared after the war ended in order to escape potential war-crime accusations, and evidence suggests that he may have been working for the controversial "human development" firm Snovaco during the 2160s, which would suggest that he was part of the mysterious "Segonia Project" that was carried out from 2156 CE until 2170 CE. According to the rogue Sentinel James Skinner, the doctor also performed experiments on children in the 2170s in order to study biotics.

History
The few records that have been found pertaining to James Fletcher's early life offer very little insight into his later actions. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland around 2136 CE. In primary and elementary school, he got unremarkable grades, but when he joined the nascent Alliance Navy at age 18, he excelled in his studies to become a medical officer. Upon completing his training, he was assigned to the SSV Pitgaveny, then under the command of Cmdr. Henry Stratford.

By the time that the First Contact War broke out, Fletcher had demonstrated a remarkable understanding of neuroanatomy, and he was approached by someone from the Alliance's covert operations branch with a proposal for a special project. The Alliance had captured several turians during the war, and they wanted Fletcher to brainwash these POWs to turn them into possible assassins.

The subsequent project, called "Operation Janissary", was a failure; no one in the Alliance knew that the turians had a left-handed chirality (whereas humans have a right-handed chirality), and thus the turians died as soon as they were injected with anaesthetics. Fletcher was subsequently charged with war crimes, and disappeared.