Robert Kinsey

"Will you shut the hell up?!"

- Henry Hayes

Robert Kinsey was a United States politician and an enemy of Stargate Command, particularly SG-1.

1998
Kinsey was a Senator for Indiana and the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which controlled the Stargate Program's budget. He successfully argued that the program should be shut down, citing the colossal waste of money and the threat to Earth it represented. He insisted that the U.S. military will defeat the Goa'uld and that God is with them.

However, the program was restarted after his plan to defeat Apophis's motherships threatening Earth failed, while SG-1- having disobeyed orders and left Earth to check a Gate address that Dr. Daniel Jackson had acquired during a brief visit to an alternate reality- successfully destroyed both of them.

2000
At first, Kinsey appeared to simply be a short-sighted politician pursuing his agenda. However, his interest in the Stargate went much deeper than that. In 2000, Colonel Jack O'Neill discovered that Kinsey was the politician protecting the rogue NID agents that had been causing trouble for Stargate Command, and that he was tied to various corporate and business interests hoping to use the Stargate for financial gain first, and to defend Earth as a secondary consideration. As a result of his actions, Major General George S. Hammond was briefly forced to retire and the SGC placed under the command of Major General Henry Bauer, who placed the organization in a more aggressive stance. However, O'Neill, collaborating with Harold Maybourne, managed to acquire incriminating evidence of Kinsey's ties to the NID and his off-the-books funding. He blackmailed the Senator into allowing Hammond to take control of the program once again or the evidence will go public.

2001
Despite this setback, Kinsey tried several more times to take control of the Stargate program. In 2001, he nearly succeeded in pushing Stargate Command into a dangerous alliance with the Aschen; and in an alternate timeline, where the alliance was made, Kinsey became President of the United States.

2003
Kinsey would later help Agent Malcolm Barrett take down the rogue NID elements. In an attempt to stop his cooperation, Agent Mark Devlin tried to assassinate him using the Mimetic imaging device to pose as Colonel Jack O'Neill. Kinsey survived the attempt and Devlin tried again this time impersonating Major Paul Davis but was stopped by Barrett and Major Samantha Carter. After he recovered, he gave a speech exonerating O'Neill and announcing his intention to run for the President of the United States. After the speech, he told O'Neill he just won him the election.

Later, he became chairman of the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee, which placed him in a position of direct control over the NID, then tried to place the Stargate into its hands instead of the United States Air Force. He attempted to manipulate the other nations whom The Pentagon disclosed to about the Stargate into handing control of the Stargate into NID hands, citing various dangers to Earth Stargate Command caused. However, Major General George S. Hammond countered that the SGC has made allies, such as the Asgard, going so far as to contact Thor for assistance. Thor's presence convinced the other nations to place the SGC in Hammond's hands.

2004
"I got enough on you to have you shot!"

- Henry Hayes

He traveled to Stargate Command to take part in an interview with Emmett Bregman for his Stargate documentary.

A short time later, he was inaugurated as Vice President of the United States of America, a position of power that he hoped would give him more control over the Stargate. He tried to convince President Henry Hayes to remove the current leadership at Stargate Command with the help of Richard Woolsey, who turned on him when he became aware of his connection to The Trust. Woolsey received evidence of his duplicity from Major General George S. Hammond and handed it over to the President.

His true colors showed at the beginning of Anubis's attack, when he frantically attempted to force Dr. Elizabeth Weir, the newly-appointed head of Stargate Command who Kinsey had believed would be more willing to agree with his methods and motivations, as opposed to Major General George S. Hammond's more benevolent and compassionate view regarding others in the crisis, to get rid of SG-1. When he was not allowed to escape to the Alpha Site by Anubis dialing in, he attempted to take over command of the SGC. However, he was fired by President Henry Hayes, who implied that he would have probably done far worse to Kinsey than that, as he also said that he has "enough evidence to have [him] shot.".

2005
Less than a year later, he offered to help Brigadier General Jack O'Neill take down The Trust in what he presented as a display of patriotism. O'Neill, made cynical by years of interaction with the Senator, simply commented that "They kicked you when you were down and now you want revenge". However, the Trust had already been taken over by the Goa'uld, who then captured Kinsey and turned him into a host and send him to meet with Russian General Miraslov Kiselev, supposedly to implant him with a symbiote, when in actuality, Kiselev was already compromised. This act caused the Russian government to suspect that the Goa'uld had compromised the American administration, and that nearly pushed Earth to the brink of nuclear war. Dr. Daniel Jackson deduced the Goa'uld's real motives was to take control of the Antarctic outpost. He was ordered to take Kinsey aboard the Prometheus when Russian security tried to arrest him. He was able to escape and ring on board the Trust Al'kesh that the Prometheus would destroy at the end of the crisis. Before its destruction, he was able to get his hands on a Kara kesh with Asgard beaming device, but as there has been no sign of Kinsey since these events, it is possible that he failed to use the device before his ship was destroyed. Though this has never been confirmed.

Alternate timelines

 * In an alternate timeline, Robert Kinsey was President and made a speech for the ten year anniversary of meeting the Aschen, believing himself to be personally responsible for forming the alliance in the first place.
 * In an alternate timeline, Robert Kinsey was President and was unamused upon hearing that Henry Hayes was supposed to be President in the proper timeline.

Personal life
Kinsey had a wife, three children, seven grandchildren, various nieces and nephews, as well as a dog named Oscar.

Kinsey is typically portrayed as operating on an 'Earth first' policy, believing that Hammond and SG-1's philosophy of using Earth's resources to help planets in need is foolish, preferring that the Stargate be used to acquire alien technology and secure Earth's position regardless of what fate befalls other planets; on one occasion when he briefly gained control over the program he arranged for the test of a weapon capable of destroying an entire planet simply to see if it worked, resulting in Earth being endangered when the resulting radiation threatened to return to Earth through the still-open Stargate.

He may have been a draft-dodger in some form or other; he once claimed that "illness robbed me of the chance ever to serve in this country's military." This excuse is commonly presented by contemporary politicians to explain how they avoided being drafted during the Vietnam War (in reality, their social status and parentage usually have much more to do with it, though of course this is not always the case).

Kinsey's son, Frank Kinsey, is a reporter.

Behind the scenes

 * Some of Kinsey's most prominent episodes ("Politics", "Disclosure", and "Inauguration") are clip shows.