Conrad Strughold

Xfiles character


name=Conrad Strughold
affiliation= Syndicate
first=The X-Files Movie
last=
portrayer=Armin Mueller-Stahl

Conrad Strughold is a fictional character played by Armin Mueller-Stahl in the 1998 motion picture "".

Strughold is a German aristocrat and scientist, who is the leader of the Syndicate. The Strughold mine in remote West Virginia, where the Syndicate secretly kept files on and tissue samples of abductees, is named after him. In the film, he authorizes Scully's abduction, seeing it as a way to effectively break Fox Mulder's spirit, and as a more profitable alternative to outright killing Mulder. He lives in Tunisia. It is believed that he has Nazi ties and is unable to enter the United States because it would draw too much attention to the Syndicate. Strughold survived the demise of the Syndicate in season 6, though as of the end of the series, he is probably either dead, in hiding, or working with the New Syndicate (though the last option is unlikely).

He is possibly the only member of the Syndicate to like or trust the Cigarette Smoking Man, as they are shown as having a slightly more cordial and far less adversarial relationship than with the other members.

The episode "One Son" features a scene where Scully recounts the activities of Diana Fowley in the early 1990s, in which she monitored MUFON groups in Europe and took weekly trips to Tunisia, the implication being that she was reporting to Strughold during her time on this assignment.

He is almost certainly named after Hubertus Strughold, a Nazi scientist who came to the US during Operation Paperclip after the end of World War II (the original episode to show the mine in West Virginia was season 3's "Paper Clip", which dealt with Nazi scientists working for the US government, although Strughold himself did not appear in this episode, or in any television episodes of the show).