JAMES PHELPS (Peter Graves, Jon Voight), in Mission: Impossible, led the Impossible Missions Force for nearly thirty years. Then at last he went rogue and died at the hands of his eventual successor.James Phelps was born in ca. 1925 in Norville, California. The Phelps family owned some property near the lake that was the centerpiece of the town. A. Phelps & Son rented boats, sold bait and tackle, and even issued fishing licenses. Toward the year 1970, Jim's father died. Jim gave the lakeside property to Norville County as a park. In that year, sadly, one of his childhood friends started murdering other female friends Jim had known, out of jealousy over yet another mutual friend, one Joe Keith.But much happened in-between. Sometime in 1967, Phelps became the head of the United States government's covert Impossible Missions Force, taking over for the IMF's former head Daniel Briggs. Phelps duties included deciding which missions the IMF would handle as well as the choosing of various agents who he needed to pull off a particular mission. Jim mentions that his hand to hand combat skills were a hang over from my old Navy days. Like Daniel Briggs before him, Jim Phelps could count on his Force to help him if he had something personal, off the books, to deal with. The serial murders in Norville, when Jim came to donate the lakeside property to the county, made one such case. Another such case came about when he drove into a town full of Eastern agents planning an assassination in Los Angeles. And sometimes he had to return the favor. He had to do one such favor for Paris, after the latter fell in with enemy agents experimenting with a brainwashing treatment. In another case, Lawrence Collier, the brother of Barney Collier, lost his life when someone planted a bomb in his office. Jim, with the rest of the Force to help him, ran down the racketeers who did this.Sadly, Jim Phelps died in 1996. Even the staunchest patriot, after turning away one fat purse after another that he could have seized on the sly, no questions asked, will eventually yield to temptation. In twenty-nine years of service, Jim learned all the tricks. So finally he went rogue on a mission and literally murdered every member of his team. Except one: Ethan Hunt, who assembled another Impossible Missions Force, entirely on his own, tracked Jim down, and killed him in an ultra-high-speed chase involving a TGV train, a helicopter, and the Channel Tunnel. Show less «