Fred Duncan was an FBI agent. After an incident in Manhattan involving a man reputedly capable of firing beams of force from his eyes, Duncan was assigned to locate the individual responsible. Charles Xavier also became aware of the incident, and met with Fred Duncan. Fred allowed Xavier to pursue the matter on his own. Xavier ultimately found and rescued Scott Summers, and started his School for Gifted Youngsters shortly thereafter.^[1]

After the X-Men became active, Fred Duncan became the team's FBI liaison. He alerted Xavier when the X-Men were needed by the government, as was the case when dealing with the threat of the Vanisher^[2]. Later, it was Agent Duncan who brought the X-Men the news that the FBI had ordered the team to break up following the apparent death of Professor X.^[3]

When mutant hysteria began running rampant and Project Wideawake was being developed, Fred Duncan was brought in because of his knowledge of mutant activities. When the government's computer records of the X-Men were wiped out, Duncan informed Henry Gyrich that the originals had long been shredded and claimed that his own memory was too unreliable to be used to rebuild the files. As Gyrich grew enraged, Duncan handed in his resignation.

Duncan later took up a career as a security consultant and began working on a novel that would expose the government's mishandling of the anti-mutant hysteria.