List of NCIS characters

NCIS is an American dramatic police procedural television series, revolving around a fictional team of special agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which investigates crimes involving the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. The series was created by Donald P. Bellisario and Don McGill as a backdoor pilot with the season eight episodes "Ice Queen" and "Meltdown" of JAG. The series premiered on September 23, 2003 featuring an ensemble cast which has included Mark Harmon, Sasha Alexander, Michael Weatherly, Cote de Pablo, Pauley Perrette, Sean Murray, Wilmer Valderrama, Jennifer Esposito, Emily Wickersham, Brian Dietzen, Duane Henry, Lauren Holly, Rocky Carroll, and David McCallum.

Overview

Actor	Character	Position	Season appearances
			Main	Recurring	Guest starring
Mark Harmon	Leroy Jethro Gibbs	Senior Special Agent	1–
Sasha Alexander	Caitlin "Kate" Todd	Special Agent	1–2		3, 8,[note 1] 9,[note 2] 12[note 3]
Michael Weatherly	Anthony "Tony" DiNozzo	Senior Special Agent	1–13
Pauley Perrette	Abby Sciuto	Forensic specialist	1–
David McCallum	Donald "Ducky" Mallard	Chief Medical Examiner
Sean Murray	Timothy "Tim" McGee	Senior Special Agent	2–	1
Cote de Pablo	Ziva David	Special Agent	3–11	3[note 4]	12[note 5]13[note 6]
Lauren Holly	Jenny Shepard	Director	3–5	3[note 7]	8, 9,[note 8] 12[note 9]
Rocky Carroll	Leon Vance	Director	6–	5
Brian Dietzen	Jimmy Palmer	Asst. Medical Examiner	10–	1–9[note 10]
Emily Wickersham	Eleanor "Ellie" Bishop	Special Agent	11–		11[note 11]
Jennifer Esposito	Alexandra Quinn	Special Agent	14–
Wilmer Valderrama	Nicholas "Nick" Torres	Special Agent	14–
Duane Henry	Clayton Reeves	SIS Agent (MI-6)	14–		13[note 12]

Notes

Main cast and characters

Leroy Jethro Gibbs

Senior Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) was born in Stillwater, Pennsylvania to Jackson and Ann Gibbs. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1976 and became a Scout Sniper. After serving tours of duty in Panama and Iraq,^[4] he retired from the Marine Corps with the rank of Gunnery Sergeant. He joined NIS, which later became NCIS, after his wife Shannon and only daughter Kelly were murdered in 1991. He later traveled to Mexico and murdered the drug dealer responsible, a crime he kept concealed for twenty years. Since then, he has been married and divorced three times, and is single, although he has had a number of romantic relationships since his last divorce.

Gibbs leads a Major Case Response Team (MCRT) consisting of field agents DiNozzo, McGee, and Bishop, supported by forensic scientist Sciuto and medical examiner Dr. Mallard and his assistant. In the episode "Bête Noire", Gibbs comes face to face with terrorist Ari Haswari and tries to kill him but fails. Finding Ari later becomes an obsession for Gibbs after Ari shoots and kills original team member Kate Todd in front of Gibbs and DiNozzo in the season two finale, "Twilight". Gibbs often shows frustration with his team (particularly DiNozzo for rambling or McGee for getting sucked into technical rambling) by slapping them over the back of the head, an action that is later shared between team members and known as a "headslap" or "Gibbs-slap".

Gibbs is often shown in his basement building boats, at least one of which he names after his daughter; another is named after one of his ex-wives. In the episode "Blowback", when confronting "Goliath" on the plane about "ARES", Gibbs reveals he is a Virgo. He is an expert sniper, as evidenced in "Hiatus" with flashbacks of him hitting a long-distance head shot of his family's murderer, who was driving a moving vehicle, at 1200 yards, in "Deliverance" by a file read by Director Leon Vance, and in "Jeopardy" when he hits a kidnapper with a very swift killshot to the forehead taken while kneeling inside a car trunk, with his left hand. In "Truth or Consequences", Gibbs saves his entire team by shooting the leader of a terrorist cell with a killshot after DiNozzo and McGee get captured looking for Ziva. In the season nine finale, "Till Death Do Us Part", a bomb blast at NCIS headquarters occurs with Gibbs tackling Abby to the floor in her lab. He and Abby both survive. In the episode "Extreme Prejudice", Gibbs goes after Harper Dearing, cornering the terrorist in a home in West Virginia, and when the man is about to use his gun, Gibbs stabs him, killing him.

Harmon is one of two actors to appear in every episode of NCIS.

Caitlin Todd

Special Agent Caitlin "Kate" Todd (Sasha Alexander) first appears in the episode "Yankee White". Todd is a former Secret Service agent, recruited by Gibbs after she successfully helped him solve a murder aboard Air Force One. She works well with everyone on the team, becoming particularly close with Ducky and Abby, who convinces her to get a tattoo.^[5] Todd's relationship with DiNozzo, however, is more adversarial and they are more like siblings than anything else. Tony frequently flirts with her and sometimes goes through her personal belongings, no matter how many times she points out that his behavior is grossly unprofessional. At the same time, Kate is willing to risk her life for DiNozzo and admits that life would be considerably less interesting without him around. Following Sasha Alexander's decision to leave the show, Todd is killed in the line of duty (at the end of the episode "Twilight") by Ari Haswari, collateral damage in the terrorist's obsession with Gibbs.^[6] She dies after being shot in the head by Ari with a lone bullet that is fired from a model of sniper rifle (Bravo 51) nicknamed "Kate".. She is replaced at NCIS by Ziva David.^[7]

Anthony DiNozzo

Senior Special Agent Anthony D. "Tony" DiNozzo, Jr. (Michael Weatherly) is a former homicide detective for the Baltimore Police Department. Prior to Baltimore, he worked for Philadelphia PD and Peoria PD. Like Gibbs, he has limited patience for the scientific method and technical terms. DiNozzo is perhaps best known for his seemingly-endless film references; Ziva insists that his dying words will be "I've seen this film". He attended Ohio State University as a physical education major and was a member of the "Alpha Chi Delta" fraternity, class of 1989. DiNozzo is said to have played college basketball, "running the point for Ohio State" according to Abby Sciuto in a discussion with her assistant, Chip. It is mentioned in the season three episode "Kill Ari (Part I)" that he comes from a wealthy family but has been cut off by his father, Anthony DiNozzo Sr (played by Robert Wagner who in turn was played by Weatherly in a TV movie). DiNozzo's mother was over-protective and she "dressed him like a sailor until he was ten". ("Frame Up")

DiNozzo is a flirt, and has his fair share of success in that department. He has a fondness for playing pranks on his co-workers and little respect for their boundaries. During the course of season four, he is on an undercover assignment that Director Jenny Shepard leads, the key mission being to find arms dealer La Grenouille by posing as La Grenouille's daughter's boyfriend, but he ends up falling in love with her. In the episode "Knockout", he reveals that he is not doing well with women and that he is still hurting from his relationship with Jeanne Benoit. There is a great deal of romantic tension between Tony and Ziva. Despite his playboy manner and lighthearted nature, DiNozzo is frequently shown to be very sharp; he is able to coax Mossad Director Eli David into admitting that he ordered Rivkin and Ziva to spy on NCIS. He is reassigned as an Agent Afloat in the season five finale "Judgment Day", and transferred back to the Major Case Response Team in the episode "Agent Afloat".^[8] In the season nine finale, "Till Death Do Us Part", a bomb blast at NCIS headquarters occurs with Tony and Ziva in the elevator. Both are rescued from the elevator and survive their ordeal.

In season thirteen, DiNozzo confesses his love for Ziva after learning of her apparent death, and it is revealed that the two have a child named Tali. He departs NCIS in order to travel to Israel and France, in order to look for answers and to bond with his daughter.

Prior to his departure in the season thirteen episode "Family First", Michael Weatherly appeared in every episode except season thirteen's "Homefront".

Abby Sciuto

Abigail "Abby" Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) is a forensic specialist with NCIS. As indicated in the episode "Seadog", she is the adopted child of deaf parents. She later learns that she has a biological brother, whom she reconnects with in season ten. She is known for her gothic style of dress and addiction to the fictional, high-caffeine beverage "Caf-Pow!" which according to former NCIS director Jenny Shepard earned her the nickname "Energizer Abby". Abby has a brief sexual relationship with Special Agent McGee, seen in the episode "Reveille" in season one, which ends with the two remaining friends. She is the most active and affectionate person of the team, often hugging everyone and talking fast, though she can be easily distracted. She is one of the few who can talk to Gibbs freely, and he often buys her Caf-Pow. She and Gibbs are both fluent in sign language. She has a stuffed farting hippopotamus named Bert that often appears in the show and provides comic relief in otherwise tense situations. Abby develops a fondness for a Navy sniffer dog in the season five episode "Dog Tags". Originally named "Butch", she renames it "Jethro" (after Gibbs) for being "handsome and quiet". The dog is framed for the murder of a petty officer, but Abby proves Jethro's innocence. Afterwards, Abby forces McGee to adopt him, much to his dismay (as Jethro had attacked him earlier in the episode). Abby would have preferred to adopt Jethro herself, but is prohibited from doing so by her landlord.

Abby's hobbies include a bowling league with nuns, helping build homes for the needy, and playing computer games. She also sleeps in a coffin and is, according to DiNozzo, "the happiest goth you will ever meet".^[9] In the season nine finale "Till Death Do Us Part", a bomb blast at NCIS headquarters occurs with Gibbs tackling Abby to the floor in her lab. In the episode "Extreme Prejudice", it is revealed that she survives and is physically unharmed.

Perrette is one of two actors to appear in every episode of NCIS.

Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard

Donald Mallard
NCIS character
First appearance	"Ice Queen" (JAG)
Created by	Donald P. Bellisario, Don McGill
Portrayed by	David McCallum Adam Campbell (young)
Information
Nickname(s)	Ducky
Occupation	Coroner
Affiliation	Naval Criminal Investigative Service
Title	Chief Medical Examiner
Family	Joseph Mallard (father) Victoria Mallard (mother, deceased) Lorraine Mallard (ex-stepmother) Nicholas Mallard (half-brother)
Nationality	Scottish

Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum) is the chief medical examiner at NCIS. His nickname "Ducky", which the NCIS team addresses him as, is a play on his last name Mallard. When he was younger he went by "Donnie".^[10] Mallard is Scottish-born,^[11] and has been long-time friends with Gibbs. He has a "second talent", as Gibbs calls it, to be able to read people, which he expands in season four by studying psychology. In cases without actual bodies, he assists by using his psychological training to decipher the clues left by the perpetrators. His skill in reading behavior proves to be crucial when establishing modus operandi and motive. Mallard is an eccentric character who often talks to the deceased ("their bodies tell me a great deal; it helps to reciprocate"^[12]) and rambles to the living with many long personal remembrances or historical accounts, but is a kind man at heart. In the episode "Truth or Consequences", Tony describes him by saying "sometimes his head is connected directly to his mouth". He also calls co-workers by their full first names, with the exceptions of Abby, Gibbs, and medical assistant Jimmy Palmer, whom he addresses as Abigail (or Ms. Sciuto), Jethro, and Mr. Palmer, respectively (although he does refer to Palmer by his first name, Jimmy, when concerned for him, as revealed in "About Face" and "Detour"). He also refers to Jenny Shepard and Leon Vance by their job title, "Director". Although most of his time is spent in autopsy and going to crime scenes to examine bodies, he is sent on a highly important undercover mission in the episode "Blowback".

Mallard attended Eton College^[13] and the University of Edinburgh Medical School and served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. While in the RAMC, he fought in the Vietnam War while on an officer-exchange program with the United States military;^[14] he also spent some time in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, and in Bosnia during the Yugoslav Wars. He then joined NCIS in 1992.^[15] During his time in Afghanistan, in the Jalozai refugee camp on the Pakistani border, Ducky stumbled on a CIA interrogation program run by Marcin Jerek, aka Mr. Pain, which tortured Afghan refugees on the suspicion of espionage and knowledge of troop movements. When Ducky found out about the program, through a young man named Javid who was being tortured by Mr. Pain, he gave Javid a lethal injection of morphine to save him from a slow and painful death at Pain's hands. Ducky also gave this way out to numerous other prisoners before the horrors of the camp led him to leave Afghanistan. When Javid's sister attacked Ducky at a crime scene, the story resurfaced and Ducky was to be investigated by the Afghan government on the charge of war crimes. However, he was found innocent when he confronted Mr. Pain himself at the Afghan embassy. It was revealed that Mr. Pain knew that Javid was innocent and that the only reason he was torturing him repeatedly was because he was trying to break Ducky so that he wouldn't take away any more prisoners with his morphine injections. Pain was then arrested for his part and turned over to the Afghan government for trial. Ducky however claimed that he would not be forgiven for the act neither by others nor by himself. Ducky and Gibbs have worked together for many years with Ducky easily identified as Gibbs' closest and best friend. When Special Agent Todd asked Gibbs "What did Ducky look like when he was younger?" he replied, "Illya Kuryakin"—the Russian U.N.C.L.E. agent played by McCallum in the 1960s television show The Man From U.N.C.L.E.^[16] Ducky drives a Morgan that he restored himself. In the episode "Hung Out to Dry", it is revealed that he has a nephew, though no further information follows.

Ducky lives with his aging mother and her corgis until season six. In the episode "Broken Bird", Ducky reveals that his mother has moved out and has Alzheimer's disease.^[15] Nina Foch, the actress who played Ducky's mother, died on December 5, 2008, necessitating the change. In the episode "Double Identity", it is revealed that Ducky's mother has died. Her headstone indicates she lived 1912–2010.^[17] The rest of the team only learns of Victoria Mallard's passing when Abby follows Ducky to her gravesite. Later, Gibbs pays him a condolence call in the autopsy room, but Ducky seems relieved at her death rather than sad (probably that she was no longer suffering from Alzheimer's), and grateful to have been her son. He expresses to Gibbs his pride at the fact that she almost lived to the age of 100. In the episode "Spinning Wheel", Ducky is revealed to have a half-brother, Nicholas, who is 20 years his junior; his father Joseph and his ex-stepmother, Lorraine, are also introduced in that episode.^[18]

Ducky owns a classic Morgan sports car. His cellphone's ringtone features bagpipes playing "Scotland the Brave". There is a running gag in which Ducky and his assistant (first Gerald and then Jimmy) frequently get lost or meet a mishap when driving to the crime scene.^[19][20][21] In the Halloween Day episode "Witch Hunt", he and Jimmy are late after their van is pelted with eggs by youths in ninja costumes. According to Jimmy, Ducky chased the teens for several blocks and apprehended them, forced them into the van and made them clean its windshield. In season nine, "Playing with Fire", it is revealed that Ducky has inherited a lot of money from his mother's estate. Gibbs is the first person he reveals this to. He asks Gibbs to be the executor of his will. While walking on a beach, Ducky suffers a heart attack in the season nine finale, "Till Death Do Us Part", after hearing about the bomb blast at NCIS headquarters and then is seen lying motionless.^[22] In "Extreme Prejudice", it is shown that he is alive and receiving treatment after being found on the beach.^[22] He recovers from his heart attack, and under reduced workload, returns to work alongside the team. From this he is seen to push Jimmy into being more confident and to be ready to take his place.

David McCallum has appeared in every episode of NCIS except "Legend Part II", from season six.

Timothy McGee

Timothy "Tim" McGee (Sean Murray) first appears in the episode "Sub Rosa" as a case agent stationed at Norfolk, and is promoted to field agent and assigned to Agent Gibbs' team at the end of the season two premiere, "See No Evil". This episode also marks his becoming a regular character on the show, a Junior Special Agent with NCIS. He serves as a field computer consultant and occasionally assists Abby Sciuto in the lab. McGee clashes with DiNozzo, though after the two became partners (following Ziva's departure from the team at the end of season six), they are frequently shown to form an effective team; however, their relationship reverts to its original state upon Ziva's return. McGee's methods are often indecipherable to the other team members, which earns him the pejorative nicknames "McGeek", "McGoo", and "Probie" from DiNozzo (along with other derisive nicknames, usually based on his surname); and "Elf Lord", used by multiple characters due to his elf character in an online role playing computer game. He was trained in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, and computer forensics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He graduated the top of his class at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

McGee is also a writer, writing mystery crime novels including a national bestseller, Deep Six: The Continuing Adventures of L.J. Tibbs, under the pseudonym Thom E. Gemcity (an anagram of his name), featuring characters based on his fellow co-workers and others from his everyday life. He drives a silver Porsche Boxster as seen in the episode "Twisted Sister". He has Apple's iPhone smartphone, and frequently uses it during investigations. He owns a dog named Jethro who was falsely accused of killing his police handler. Abby proves his innocence, names him Jethro and convinces McGee to take Jethro because her landlord won't let her keep the dog ("Dog Tags"). McGee is transferred to Cybercrimes Division in season five ("Judgment Day") and back to the Major Case Response Team in season six ("Last Man Standing").^[8] In the season nine finale, "Till Death Do Us Part", a bomb blast at NCIS headquarters occurs with McGee being thrown across the office with flying glass. He survives, but is impaled by a shard of glass, which requires a few stitches. With DiNozzo's departure in the final episode of season thirteen, McGee is permanently promoted to Senior Field Agent.

Ziva David

Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) initially holds the post of Mossad Liaison Officer to NCIS, to which she is appointed following the murder of Special Agent Caitlin Todd by a rogue Mossad operative named Ari Haswari. Ziva was Ari's control officer and half-sister. Despite initially believing that Ari is innocent, she fatally shoots him when he attempts to kill Gibbs, earning the latter's trust. Later, she requests a liaison assignment to NCIS, where she subsequently joins Gibbs' team. At the end of season six, she falls under suspicion as a spy for the Mossad. De Pablo describes the character as someone who is "completely different from anyone else on the show" and that's because "she's been around men all her life; she's used to men in authority. She's not afraid of men."^[23] The series creator Don Bellisario stated, "When the Kate [Todd] character was killed [at the end of last season], I didn't want to bring in the same character I had in Kate, someone who was very Puritan, uptight and treated Tony like a big brother. I wanted to bring in a character that causes Tony to have to sit back and not quite be able to handle her. And I wanted someone who was more international."^[24] David's specialty with Mossad was espionage, assassination and counter-terrorism and she is highly trained in the martial arts. She speaks Hebrew, English, Arabic, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian and Turkish. Despite being fluent in English, she sometimes misinterprets idioms and phrases that have different meanings in other languages if translated directly; this is a running joke within the series. Throughout the series, she is accused of driving too fast with passengers, leading to McGee and DiNozzo always wanting to drive whenever they are partnered with her. She is shown to frequently clash with DiNozzo in good-natured arguments. She is very skilled with a knife and is shown teaching her colleagues how to throw one properly. She is the one person Gibbs trusts with any type of firearm in difficult, potentially hazardous, situations. Throughout her career, she has traveled extensively to countries including Egypt (where she met Jenny Shepard), Iraq, the United Kingdom and Morocco.

Following Ziva's captivity and torture in a terrorist camp in Somalia, an ordeal that lasts for several months, she resigns from Mossad. In the season seven episode "Good Cop, Bad Cop" she becomes a probationary NCIS Special Agent. Since then, Tony refers to her (as with McGee) as "Probie". As of "Rule Fifty-One", she is a citizen of the United States and able to become a full agent which is made official in season nine's "Nature of the Beast". David rarely speaks of her personal life. As of season ten, all of her immediate family are deceased. Her father Eli David is the director of Mossad until he is shot and killed in "Shabbat Shalom". The show rarely mentions her mother, Rivka, who taught her to drive; all that is known is that her mother is deceased and that she does not have the same mother as Ari. Her younger sister, Tali David, was killed in a Hamas terrorist attack against Israel at the age of sixteen. She also has an Aunt Nettie who likes to play mahjong. Ziva is able to play the piano and is shown to enjoy cooking and reading. She enjoys the fictional drink Berry Mango Madness. She drives a red Mini Cooper but at the end of season ten, she sells the Mini and replaces it with a bigger red car. She likes listening to the Israeli band Hadag Nachash and the Latin American band Kinky. She does not own a television but her favorite film is The Sound of Music. Following Ziva's resignation from NCIS, she is replaced by former NSA analyst Eleanor "Ellie" Bishop.

In season thirteen, following Ziva's presumed death at the hands of a Trent Kort-hired assassin, it is revealed she and Tony have a child named Tali.

Jenny Shepard

Jennifer Shepard
NCIS character
First appearance	"Kill Ari, Part I"
Last appearance	"Judgment Day"
Created by	Donald P. Bellisario
Portrayed by	Lauren Holly
Information
Nickname(s)	Jenny Madam Director
Occupation	Special Agent
Affiliation	Naval Criminal Investigative Service
Title	Director
Family	Col. Jasper Shepard, US Army (father, deceased)

Jennifer "Jenny" Shepard (Lauren Holly) first appears in the episode "Kill Ari (Part I)". She replaces former NCIS director Thomas Morrow at the start of season three after Morrow takes a Deputy Director's position with the Department of Homeland Security. She was a military brat, as her father, Jasper Shepard, was a colonel in the United States Army. It is believed that this is one of the reasons why she joined a forces organization rather than working somewhere such as the FBI. She was Gibbs' former partner and lover.^[24] While she and Gibbs were stationed in Europe, Gibbs was ordered back to the States and she was offered her own section in Europe. When Gibbs asked Jenny to go with him, she refused, as she wished to advance her career in order to exact revenge on the arms dealer who killed her father. Jenny and Gibbs are reunited in "Kill Ari (Part I)", which stirs Gibbs' heart and opens a constant flirtation between her and Gibbs. Jenny is killed in the episode "Judgment Day" (Part 1).^[25] At the time of her death she is already dying from an unspecified terminal illness that only she, Ducky, and Mike Franks know about. After her death, Ducky eventually reveals the news of her illness to Gibbs. Shepard has a close relationship with Ziva David and occasionally provides her with key information on cases without going through regular channels or telling Gibbs, as in the season three episode "Head Case". They make it a point to keep these dealings confidential, arguing that "what Gibbs doesn't know can't hurt us." Later in the episode, though, Gibbs' remarks reveals that he already knows about her assistance. Shepard and Ziva have a working relationship prior to Shepard's being appointed Director of NCIS.

During season four, Director Shepard places Tony DiNozzo on an undercover assignment to get close to notorious international arms dealer René Benoit, otherwise known as La Grenouille. The sub-plot comes to a head late in the season when it is revealed that Jenny blames Benoit for her father's death and that Benoit is now central to a major CIA deep-cover operation. Gibbs confronts Jenny over the operation, suggesting that she is letting her emotions dictate her actions and that she has knowingly placed DiNozzo in danger and jeopardized a major CIA operation for the purposes of getting revenge, while hiding behind her position as NCIS director to justify her actions. During the episode "Internal Affairs", it is strongly implied that Shepard is responsible for La Grenouille's murder; this is reiterated when Gibbs looks through the FBI's file on La Grenouille's death in "Judgment Day" (Part 1). In several episodes during season five, before her death in the episode "Judgment Day" (Part 1), Jenny's failing health becomes a plot issue. For example, in "Stakeout", Ducky is shown ordering a test on a blood sample and tells Abby it is from a John Doe. However, when Abby talks to Jimmy Palmer, he says they have no John Does. Gibbs deduces, correctly, that the only person Ducky would "stick his neck out" for would be the Director. In the next episode, "Dog Tags", Gibbs questions Jenny about her illness and she lies to him, saying she is fine. Her exact illness is never revealed; however, in "Stakeout", Abby tells Ducky there is an elevated level of creatine kinase in the blood sample she runs.

Mike Franks also discovers Jenny's illness by going through her purse and finding her medication. In the episode "Judgment Day" (Part 1), Franks and Jenny are talking in an abandoned diner in the California desert when she reveals that she regrets her decision to leave Gibbs in Paris and that she is still in love with him. It is revealed that she botched an operation ten years prior, when she and Gibbs had been ordered to assassinate Russian lovers who were crime lords. Gibbs shot the man, but Jenny faced down the woman, Natasha (AKA Svetlana), and let her live. As a result, Natasha sends assassins to kill Jenny in the diner, but Jenny manages to kill all of them. However, Jenny is injured during the gunfight and succumbs to those injuries. Franks, who is outside at the time of the shooting, returns to Jenny's house where Natasha is trying to kill Gibbs, and Franks shoots her. Gibbs and Franks decide to cover Jenny's mistake and death by burning down her Georgetown mansion. Jenny's cause of death is reported as "death in home fire". Her loss breaks the crew's hearts. Abby regrets that she never told Jenny she was a snappy dresser, and says that would have made her smile. After Director Shepard's death, she is replaced by Assistant Director Leon Vance.

Leon Vance

Leon Vance
NCIS character
First appearance	"Internal Affairs"
Created by	Shane Brennan
Portrayed by	Rocky Carroll
Information
Occupation	NCIS Special Agent
Affiliation	Naval Criminal Investigative Service
Title	Assistant Director Director
Spouse(s)	Jacqueline "Jackie" Vance (née Thomas) (wife, deceased)
Children	Kayla Vance (daughter) Jared Vance (son)
Relatives	Lamar Addison (father-in-law) Michael Thomas (brother-in-law)

Leon James Vance^[26] (Rocky Carroll) first appears in the season five episode "Internal Affairs" as the Assistant Director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and is named Director after the death of Jenny Shepard. It is revealed in the episode "Knockout" that he was originally from Ohio, but grew up in Chicago where he trained to be a boxer. His wife states that Vance attended the United States Naval Academy and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps, but was forced to take a medical discharge before ever serving due to having undergone surgery to repair a detached retina suffered during his boxing career.^[27] However, Ducky later reveals to Gibbs that Vance's close childhood friend, who had died just prior to the start of the episode, also suffered a detached retina. Vance also reveals that it was this friend who decided that Vance should leave Chicago while he stayed behind. Vance says this despite his insistence to Gibbs that his friend was a Marine, though there is no record of his friend's service in the military.

More of Vance's background is revealed in the season eight episode "Enemies Domestic". To play the young Vance, Rocky Carroll underwent make-up procedures that he described as "a little instant facelift". Computer effects were used to turn back the clock 20 years.^[28] In 1991, just prior to joining NCIS, Vance is a student at the United States Naval War College in Rhode Island. His coursework includes Combat Philosophy and Advanced Cryptography. During his time at the War College, he begins to take an interest in black operations and even imagines one himself: Operation Frankenstein, which would later play a big part in the season eight finale. NIS takes an interest in him and he is hired by Special Agent Whitney Sharp for an operation in Amsterdam codenamed Trident. Vance is trained by Sharp and leaves after a six-week training course for Amsterdam where he meets his handler, Riley McAllister. McAllister tells him that the target of the operation is a Russian intelligence operative, known to Vance only as the Russian. NIS believes that he is bribing sailors in return for intelligence. Vance later meets Eli David, a promising agent of Mossad, who tells him that he knows of the operation and that the Russian will kill him. Later, Eli betrays Vance to the Russian but it is revealed that this is so he can kill him himself. Eli also tells Vance that he has been chosen because he is expendable and that he is not someone who would be missed. Eli and Vance kill the Russian's hit team but the Russian manages to escape and Eli is unable to find him or who he was. Vance is credited for the elimination of the hit team and he starts to rise swiftly through the ranks at NCIS. He keeps believing, along with Eli, that Amsterdam was not what it seemed and they come to the conclusion that there was a dirty agent in NCIS, the one who had really tipped off the Russian to Vance's mission. It is later revealed that McAllister had masterminded the entire operation: being an expert in Russia, he had seen that the Soviet Union's collapse had taken attention away from Russia and onto the Middle East. Knowing that new attention to a potential Russian threat would throw him in the spotlight for director of NIS, he planned to have Vance killed by a Russian operative to show that Russia still posed a threat and to satisfy his ambitions.^[29]

Then-Assistant Director Vance takes over for Jenny Shepard during her leave of absence between "Internal Affairs" and "Judgment Day", establishing himself as a formidable presence with Gibbs and his team. He scatters Tony, McGee, and Ziva to various departments and assigns Gibbs a new team in the Season 6 premiere "Last Man Standing" upon being named Director; however it is later revealed that he did this to flush out a mole in the agency. Vance and Gibbs clash during this span, prompting a cold war between them which ends with a détente in "Agent Afloat" at the start of season six. The two clash later on, however, as Gibbs feels he cannot fully trust Vance, though he cannot identify a specific reason why. Vance spearheads the investigation into Shepard's death, and is angered greatly when he is not kept in the loop by Gibbs and Mike Franks, who ultimately manipulate the situation to exonerate Shepard from her past failure, not what Vance had in mind. After Shepard's death, and possibly before, he lobbies the Secretary of the Navy hard to take over NCIS, as seen in "Cloak", but in "Semper Fidelis" the Secretary of the Navy informs Gibbs of a major operation which will require Vance to serve as its head, and that NCIS and the Navy will need Gibbs and Vance to get along. Things come to a head in "Aliyah", when Gibbs accuses Vance of selling out his team to Mossad Director Eli David. Vance responds that Ziva is a plant, used to get Mossad a foothold in NCIS through Gibbs. Vance also reveals that he knows about the true story of the death of Ari Haswari. After this, the two of them realize that circumstances will prove one of them right. At the start of season seven, Vance approves Ziva's transfer to NCIS, proving that Gibbs was right, and Ziva is loyal to NCIS. Despite his professional attitude towards Gibbs' team, Vance shows that he does care about them at least once when Alejandro Rivera threatens Abby in "Spider and the Fly". He tells Rivera to leave before he gets hurt and when Rivera asks by whom, he replies angrily: "By me."

Even after the events of "Aliyah", Vance is shown to still be in official contact with Eli David in his capacity as director of Mossad. This is shown when he receives a text message on his phone from Eli which says only: "I found him". Vance also refuses to discuss a phone call from Eli with Gibbs, despite knowing how dangerous Eli is, and despite his precarious relationship with Gibbs and his team. Upon being promoted to the director's position at the end of season five, Vance immediately goes to former Director Shepard's office, and is seen to shred a single mysterious document from his own personnel file. It is revealed in season six ("Semper Fidelis") that the document was written by his supervising agent at the time. The Secretary of the Navy tells Gibbs that the file is a fabrication and that he thought all copies had been destroyed. It is further revealed in the season eight episode, "Enemies Domestic",^[30] that the head of the San Diego field office, when Vance was assigned there, had begun creating a legend for Vance that incorporated fictitious information about Vance in order to backstop a deep cover assignment, including the false information that Vance had been a pilot and director of a field office.

In the season nine finale, "Till Death Do Us Part", a bomb blast occurs at NCIS headquarters with Vance's whereabouts unknown. In the season 10 premiere, "Extreme Prejudice", it is revealed that he survived relatively unscathed, along with Gibbs and Abby. In the season 10 episode "Shabbat Shalom", Vance is widowed when his wife Jackie is shot and dies in surgery. Eli David also dies in the episode. In the Season 11 episode "Homesick", Jackie's estranged biological father Lamar Addison shows up at the family home, much to Vance's displeasure. It is revealed that he walked out on Jackie and her mother and brother when she was young and that he was never married to her mother. Vance and Jackie have two children: a daughter, Kayla, and a son, Jared. Vance met his wife while attending a University of Maryland basketball game while Len Bias was playing.^[27] By season 10, Vance and Gibbs are on friendlier terms. Gibbs is particularly empathetic to Vance after his wife's murder and his recovery from a serious injury since Gibbs himself has been through a similar experience. Vance also prevents Gibbs' detention during a DOD internal investigation by allowing him to be temporarily assigned to JSOC.

In "Double Trouble", Vance is almost asked to resign after a confrontation with former NCIS Agent Kip Klugman, whom Vance arrested during his last case as a field agent in San Diego in 2005, until he and Gibbs are able to clear his name. In that episode, Secretary Porter mentions that he has been the Director of NCIS for longer than his last two predecessors combined (at that point, just over 7 years).

Jimmy Palmer

Jimmy Palmer
NCIS character
First appearance	"Split Decision"
Created by	Donald P. Bellisario
Portrayed by	Brian Dietzen
Information
Occupation	Assistant Medical Examiner
Affiliation	Naval Criminal Investigative Service
Title	Medical Examiner
Spouse(s)	Breena Palmer (née Slater)
Children	Victoria Elizabeth Palmer (daughter)
Relatives	Ed Slater (father-in-law)

James "Jimmy" Palmer (Brian Dietzen) first appears in the episode "Split Decision". After Gerald Jackson is incapacitated, Palmer becomes Mallard's medical assistant both in the field and in the morgue. In the episode "About Face", Jimmy becomes a central character of the episode who must recover his memory to find a suspect to the murder case and his attempted killer. He self-identifies as a sufferer of a "mild" case of diabetes mellitus in the episode "In The Dark". He often seems intimidated by Gibbs, especially when he goes into an explanation of something that has not been requested. Part of the reason that Dr. Mallard and he are often not at the crime scene until well after Gibbs and his team arrive is related to Dr. Mallard's emphasis on Jimmy being a horrible driver and always getting lost, although Jimmy tries to defend himself by pointing out that Ducky is the one with the map. He was named after former Baltimore Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer,^[31] but does not like baseball.

Like Ducky, Palmer speaks to the dead though he is far more irreverent, sometimes raising eyebrows in the process. Some episodes depict an ongoing illicit office romance between Jimmy and Michelle Lee. They make excuses for working late and are seen entering and exiting the underside of the autopsy table. In the episode "Last Man Standing", Palmer admits to Gibbs and Vance that he and Agent Lee had been "doing it" for a while. In the episode "The Good Wives Club" it is revealed that Jimmy is claustrophobic; when he is entering the enclosed hallway he is seen sweating profusely and when he has to go get the body bag he gets freaked out about having to go back through it. In the episode "About Face", as Jimmy is being hypnotized by Abby, it can be inferred that he has a foot/shoe fetish as he dreamily talks in great detail about Ziva and Abby's footwear, instead of recalling information about the current case. The episode also indicates that his mother's name is Eunice. In the episode "Bounce" it is shown that Palmer regularly helps Tony when he is in charge, despite the fact that Tony has frequently mocked Palmer in-person by calling him an "autopsy gremlin". Palmer is also shown to have severe tinnitus.

Season seven reveals that Jimmy is in love with a girl named Breena Slater, who appears in the episode "Mother's Day". In the season eight finale, "Pyramid", NCIS special agent E. J. Barrett congratulates Jimmy on his engagement, and in the season nine premiere "Nature of the Beast" Ziva says that they are getting married next spring. In the season nine episode "Newborn King", Palmer is accompanied to NCIS headquarters by his future father-in-law, Ed Slater. Slater alternates between grating on the nerves of the entire team and mocking Palmer's career choice. Most of the team either ignore Slater or quietly tolerate his rudeness out of respect for Palmer and his guest. Abby is the exception – when Slater makes a comment regarding the supposed promiscuity of tattooed women, she places Palmer and Slater in "time out" by locking them in her office. Palmer eventually tires of Slater's behavior, telling him to sit down and shut up. The end of the episode shows Slater accepting Palmer and expressing a desire for a grandchild. In "Till Death Do Us Part", prior to a bomb blast at the NCIS headquarters, Palmer and Breena decide to get married on the spot so he can assist the rest of the team in the Harper Dearing case. In episode "Damned If You Do", Jimmy tells Ducky that he and Breena are on a waiting list for adoption, seeing as how there are so many children without parents. In the season 11 episode, "The Admiral's Daughter" it is revealed to Jimmy through a word game that Breena is pregnant.

During his first few seasons, Jimmy is portrayed as a geek who has the tendency to ramble or speak out of turn, much to the irritation of Gibbs and even Ducky on occasions. When he first starts, as with most newbies, he is subjected to some teasing by senior agent Tony DiNozzo. By season 10, he is shown as more of a surrogate son to Ducky rather than simply his assistant. In "Extreme Prejudice", he insists on remaining at Ducky's bedside until Ducky convinces him that NCIS needs him more. In the season 12 episode, "We Build, We Fight", Jimmy becomes a father when Breena gives birth to a baby girl whom they name "Victoria Elizabeth Palmer" after Ducky's mother and Ducky will be her "Grand-Ducky".

<span id="Eleanor "Ellie" Bishop"> Ellie Bishop

Eleanor Bishop
NCIS character
First appearance	"Gut Check"
Created by	Gary Glasberg
Portrayed by	Emily Wickersham
Information
Nickname(s)	Ellie
Occupation	Special Agent
Affiliation	NCIS
Title	Probationary Field Agent
Family	Barbara Bishop (mother) George Bishop (brother) John Bishop (brother) Robert Bishop (brother)
Spouse(s)	Jake Malloy (ex-husband)

Eleanor "Ellie" Bishop (Emily Wickersham) is an NSA analyst who is introduced in the season 11 episode "Gut Check". Bishop is a "country girl" from Oklahoma and has three older brothers.^[32][33][34] Described by her boss at the NSA as a "reclusive data freak", Bishop claims that she "remembers almost everything she reads", and often thinks while sitting cross-legged on the floor. She applied to NCIS before taking the job with the NSA, and Gibbs invites her to a "joint duty assignment". Gibbs later offers her a probationary position as a Special Agent in "Monsters and Men", affectionately referring to her as "probie" for the first time. After that, DiNozzo and McGee are seen pulling the seniority card by ordering her around to do more menial tasks, such as evidence collection. Bishop is repeatedly shown as a bit of a perfectionist, sometimes asking for second tries, knowing she can do better the next time around. When first introduced, DiNozzo and McGee quickly notice her wedding band, but she remains coy when asked about her marital status. It is eventually revealed that she is married and her husband's name is Jake Malloy (Jamie Bamber), an attorney for the NSA. They met during their first week at NSA, though during season thirteen they appear to be having marital difficulties. In Season 13 episode 9, Jake reveals he is having an affair with a fellow NSA Agent. Bishop is horrified and the two separate, with Bishop going home to Oklahoma to get some distance. She later returns to DC to continue with NCIS, and tells Jake that their marriage has been deteriorating quickly since she joined NCIS. Despite him wanting to make things work, she has already decided to file for divorce. She sees Gibbs as a father figure an leans on him. After her divorce she prefers to stay single for a while. It is revealed in Enemy Combatant that Ellie is dating Qasim Naasir, last seen in season twelve.

Clayton Reeves

Clayton Reeves
NCIS character
First appearance	"Dead Letter"
Created by	Gary Glasberg
Portrayed by	Duane Henry
Information
Occupation	Agent
Affiliation	Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)
Title	SIS Agent
Nationality	British

Clayton Reeves (Duane Henry) is a British SIS Intelligence Officer who first encounters the NCIS team working abroad with Anthony DiNozzo. Upon returning to the US, Clayton is attacked by Trent Kort, whom he later shoots and kills. Glasberg describes Reeves as "edgy and fun and fast and has a real physicality to him and honestly just lights up a room. There’s this sort of simmering, bubbling danger that’s below the surface."^[35]

Alexandra Quinn

Alexandra Quinn
NCIS character
First appearance	"Rogue"
Created by	Gary Glasberg
Portrayed by	Jennifer Esposito
Information
Nickname(s)	Alex
Occupation	Special Agent
Affiliation	Naval Criminal Investigative Service
Title	Field Agent
Nationality	American

Alex Quinn (Jennifer Esposito) joins Gibbs' team after a stint assigned to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC).Before that she was a field agent, but after her partner was killed in an ambush while the two where following suspects, and her engagement to Mike fell apart, she left the field. Quinn met Gibbs when he was a part of the team investigating her partner's death. She is described as having "sharp wit, quick mind and immense talent as a federal agent".^[36]

Nick Torres

Nick Torres
NCIS character
First appearance	"Rogue"
Created by	Gary Glasberg
Portrayed by	Wilmer Valderrama
Information
Occupation	Special Agent
Affiliation	Naval Criminal Investigative Service
Title	Field Agent
Family	Lucia Campbell (sister) Amanda Campbell (niece) George Campbell (brother- in- law, deceased)
Nationality	American

Nicholas Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) is described as "an NCIS field agent who disappeared after accepting a deep cover assignment many years ago. In fact, many agents don't even know that he's still on the job—or whether he's even alive. When he resurfaces, he'll be as dedicated to his job and country as ever, but after his years-long assignment he'll become an unpredictable, charismatic loose cannon."^[37]

Recurring cast and characters

Grace Confalone

Dr Grace Confalone (Laura San Giacomo) is the therapist of both Gibbs and Dr. Cyril Taft. First appearing in "Loose Cannons", Grace builds a professional relationship and personal friendship with Gibbs, nicknaming him "Popeye", and often resorting to child psychology (including picture charts) to tap into his psyche. In "Family First", Grace befriends Emily Fornell at the request of Gibbs.

Emily Fornell

Emily Fornell (Juliette Angelo) is the daughter of Agent Tobias Fornell and Diane Sterling. Emily first appears during season four, played by Payton Spencer. During season eleven, "Devils Triad", Emily is kidnapped and subsequently rescued by NSA Analyst Eleanor Bishop, while in season twelve she is visibly distraught following her mother's death. In "Cabin Fever", she enlists Gibbs' assistance when Tobias is arrested for DUI. She later appears in person in the episode "Dead Letter", where she quickly learns about her father being critically wounded by an unknown assassin. Out of anger and grief (especially as it happens just a year after her mother has been murdered), she demands that Gibbs swear to her to find the one who did this and make him pay. She later calls Gibbs requesting his help, as the nurse at the hospital refuses to resuscitate Fornell due to a "do not resuscitate" clause he had written when he was still grieving for her mom's death. While waiting for him to wake up, she attempts to paint his toenails to look like watermelons, but then she notices he is waking up and tries to talk to him. He is only awake for a few moments, but he tells her to tell Gibbs some vital information relating to SISCO regarding stolen cell-phones. This information allows them to track down Jacob Scott (whom they had believed was the man who murdered Terdei and left Fornell under critical condition at the time) who, much to everyone's surprise, has surrendered to NCIS custody and arrives at the naval yard. In "Family First", she is still waiting for her dad's recovery. During this time, she also runs out of nail-polish, thus leaving her manicure on her dad incomplete. In addition, Gibbs, under the pretense of helping to catch the man who tried to kill Tobias (although it is heavily implied that it is actually to help Emily come to terms with what might happen), brings his shrink, Dr. Grace Confalone, who also proceeds to help her with the project.

Thomas Morrow

Thomas Morrow (Alan Dale) is the Director of NCIS, who later becomes employed as a Senior Section Chief at the Department of Homeland Security. Tom first appears in the NCIS two-part pilot episodes, "Ice Queen" and "Meltdown", before making his official debut in the season one episode, "Yankee White", with his final appearance as NCIS Director in the season three opener "Kill Ari (Part I)", when he leaves to accept an appointment as a Senior Division Chief in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, handing over the reins of his position to new director Jenny Shepard. He appears in several episodes during seasons one and two, but unlike his replacements, Directors Shepard and Vance, Morrow himself is not part of the main cast, and is credited as either a recurring character or a guest star. He has less direct involvement with the team's cases than either of his successors (exceptions being matters of terrorism and national security), and seems to spend much of his time in MTAC monitoring NCIS' global presence. While he seems to like Gibbs, he is less tolerant of Gibbs' personal style and methods than Jenny or Vance; he has a deeply serious, almost stern demeanor, and Gibbs only ever refers to him as "sir". This is probably due to Gibbs being a former Gunnery Sergeant / Scout-Sniper in the U.S. Marine Corps. and Morrow being a former Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy. He reappears in his Homeland Security position in the Season 10 episodes, "Chasing Ghosts" and "Berlin". He also appears in the Season 11 premiere episode, "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" where he is left badly injured in an explosion that kills current SECNAV, Clayton Jarvis. Morrow later informs Vance that a terrorist group, the Brotherhood of Doubt, are responsible for the bombing and are targeting former NCIS Special Agent Ziva David. In the season 13 episode, "Return to Sender", Morrow is found dead, having been shot in the head by a sniper the team presume is former British spy Jacob Scott, although it is later revealed that the actual killer is former CIA agent Trent Kort.

Anthony DiNozzo, Sr.

Anthony DiNozzo, Sr. (Robert Wagner) is the father of Tony DiNozzo. Described by his son as a "con man", DiNozzo prefers to refer to himself as an entrepreneur. From season seven, he attempts to rebuild his relationship with his son, from whom he had been previously estranged. The character is shown to be particularly charming.

Tobias C. Fornell

Senior FBI Special Agent Tobias C. Fornell (Joe Spano) first appears in the series premiere episode "Yankee White". He is often involved in "inter-agency turf wars" with Gibbs' NCIS team. The two frequently pretend to be furiously angry at each other in front of their agents, while privately they are on friendly terms. When their teams have to share jurisdiction on a case, Gibbs usually asks for operational control; in exchange, credit for successes is claimed by Fornell's team. Their friendship is close enough for Gibbs to delay his retirement in the episode "Escaped" to assist Fornell in recapturing a fugitive. In the episode "The Bone Yard", Fornell comes to Gibbs for help when he is accused of being a mole for the mafia. In the same episode, he reveals that Gibbs is likely his only friend. Gibbs seems to feel similarly about Fornell, going so far as to fake Fornell's death to further the investigation to clear him of guilt. It is revealed in the episode "Twilight", that Fornell was married to Gibbs' second wife (Diane) after she and Gibbs divorced, something that Gibbs warned him against. Fornell often refers to Diane as "our ex-wife" to Gibbs. Fornell and Diane have a daughter, Emily. After a period of estrangement, the two reunite and agree to marry. Diane is later murdered, and Fornell turns to alcoholism for a short time.

Tess Monroe

Tess Monroe (Sarah Clarke) is a Senior FBI Agent. After working with Tobias Fornell, Monroe joins NCIS in the hunt for British spy Jacob Scott during season thirteen. She later shoots and kills Trent Kort. Executive Producer Gary Glasberg described Monroe as "full of fire and cynicism and sarcasm and wit and energy and is extremely experienced".^[38] Tess has been divorced multiple times, but has no children. She "thinks of her team as her family. She's no-nonsense on the outside, but has a big heart underneath with a belief in honor, justice and doing what's right. She'll fight to protect the values she holds dear, and her team, with determination and a bit of sarcasm."^[39]

Delilah Fielding

Delilah Fielding (Margo Harshman) is a Department of Defense analyst and McGee's girlfriend. An agent with the Department of Defense, Fielding first appears in the Season 11 premiere episode "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" and later becomes an ally, assisting the NCIS team in their hunt for terrorist Benham Parsa. In the Season 11 episodes "Kill Chain" and "Double Back", Delilah is left badly injured in a missile attack at a black-tie event she and McGee are attending. While McGee is not seriously injured, Delilah is left permanently paralyzed due to shrapnel embedded in her spine, she thereafter uses a wheelchair. She continues to assist the NCIS team. After spending almost a year as a senior intelligence analyst in Dubai, Delilah returns in the episode, "Status Update". When she returns as team leader now based in the US, she and McGee move in together. McGee later buys an engagement ring, with the intent of proposing to Delilah.

Jake Malloy

Jake Malloy (Jamie Bamber) is NCIS Agent Ellie Bishop's ex-husband and an attorney for the National Security Agency. He becomes friends with Ellie's boss, SSA Leroy Jethro Gibbs. After her transfer from the NSA to NCIS, Jake and Ellie's marriage begins to show signs of stress, which he disingenuously attributes to the fact that they can no longer talk about their day with each other like they used to. It is revealed in season 13 episode 9 "Day In Court", however, that Jake has been dishonest, having an affair with fellow NSA employee Taylor Matthews. Following this revelation, Bishop returns home to Oklahoma for some time to herself. Then in the "Spinning Wheel" Jake comes to Bishop and makes attempts to apologize for the infidelity, but she recognizes that an affair is only a symptom of a wider pattern, and tells him that their marriage is over.

Cyril Taft

Cyril Taft (Jon Cryer) is a doctor who appears in the NCIS Season 13 premiere episode, "Stop the Bleeding" where he performs surgery on Gibbs, who has been left badly injured after being shot by Luke Harris. Taft is also a Captain in the Navy Reserves and a former surgeon at the Walter Reed Memorial Hospital. Taft's son died at a young age. Taft later begins a friendship with Gibbs, and the two are shown to mutually support each other through their respective struggles. He also convinces Gibbs to seek counseling and eventually is able to make an introduction to his therapist, Grace Confalone.

Mike Franks

Special Agent-in-Charge Mike Franks, NIS (Ret.) (Muse Watson) is introduced in episode flashbacks in the episode "Hiatus" (Part 1). He is Gibbs' former mentor and partner, still referring to Gibbs as "Probie", just as DiNozzo does with McGee. In "Hiatus" (Part 2), it is stated that he retired to Mexico in 1996, roughly five years after Gibbs joined NCIS, after being disgruntled with the government's failure to prevent the Khobar Towers bombing. Although he comes across as crass and uncaring, Franks has been known to be very devious and sneaky, even hiding the fact that he had a son, though Gibbs helps hide his granddaughter and the girl's mother. Gibbs has picked up many of his mannerisms, including the trademark head slap he gives to DiNozzo and his ability to find a way around red tape. Jenny Shepard, who was still a junior agent during Franks' time, brings him back in hopes of helping Gibbs regain his memory after suffering a concussion in part 2 of "Hiatus". He is unable to help Gibbs regain his memory although Gibbs recognizes him on sight. Franks is the only survivor of the gun battle that ends Director Shepard's life and finds some evidence that the new director was apparently looking for, even though he is outside getting himself water for tea when the shooting starts and goes back in to make sure that the other shooters are dead. He is the last person to know about then-Director Shepard's incurable illness during her lifetime, as Gibbs only has suspicions at the time as of "Judgment Day" (Part 1). In his visit to Gibbs' bedside in season four, it is revealed in flashbacks that he warned members of the intelligence community about the threat that Osama Bin Laden posed to American servicemen abroad some time before the Khobar Towers bombing. After the deaths of a number of Air Force personnel in the bombing, Franks retired to Mexico and handed control of the MCRT to Gibbs.

In season seven, Franks is seemingly ambushed by Colonel Merton Bell's henchmen and hitmen from the Reynosa drug cartel. His fate is left ambiguous and it is unknown whether he is killed or captured in the attack. However, later on, Franks appears again to assist DiNozzo in investigating Alejandro. As a result of the gunfight between Bell and the Reynosa Cartel's men, Franks loses his right index finger. In the beginning of season eight, in the episode "Spider and the Fly", he appears after four months by showing up at Gibbs' house to help him, the team, Vance, and Jackson Gibbs destroy Paloma and Alejandro once and for all. Franks is killed by Jonas Cobb, the "Port-to-Port Killer", outside of Gibbs' house in the season eight episode "Swan Song" as he attempts to apprehend Cobb. Franks, a Marine like Gibbs, is given a full military burial at the end of the season eight finale. It is also revealed in this episode that Franks was dying of cancer and Gibbs was making him a coffin. It is revealed in the episode "Newborn King" that Leyla and her daughter moved to Washington, D.C. following Franks' death. In "Outlaws and In-Laws" it is stated that Gibbs is godfather to Leyla's daughter Amira. In "Anonymous Was a Woman" Franks is shown (in flashback) as having conducted a rescue program for Afghan women. Mike continues to appear as a figment of Gibbs' imagination, often offering advice.

Orli Elbaz

Orli Elbaz (Marina Sirtis) is the Director of Mossad, protege of Eli David, and a close friend to Ziva. Prior to her appointment to Mossad, Orli had an affair with Eli David that led to the dissolution of his marriage to Rivka David. In the aftermath of Eli's murder, with Ilan Bodnar going on the run until killed at the hands of Eli's daughter (former Mossad Officer-turned-NCIS Special Agent Ziva David), Orli becomes the new and permanent Director of Mossad. Though she and Ziva are initially resentful of one another, they reconcile following Ziva's departure from NCIS, and Elbaz is one of the only people she confides in about the paternity of Tali. Orli is last seen transporting the child to NCIS, and relinquishing custody to DiNozzo.

Jerome Craig

Jerome Craig (Greg Germann) is the Deputy Director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Craig is promoted to Acting Director following the drive-by shooting of Jackie Vance. It is in this capacity that he helps investigate Ajay Khan ("Canary"), though he later steps down from his position in "Hereafter". Craig is a bureaucrat, with little-to-no field experience.

Adam Eshel

Adam Eshel (Damon Dayoub) works at Mossad's Shin Bet and is also Ziva David's Mossad contact. During Eshel's first appearance, he assists in the investigation into Ilan Bodnar, working with Tony and Ziva. In "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot", Eshel lends his expertise in order to give DiNozzo an insight into Ziva's personal life and current whereabouts. He is mentioned in "Family First", with DiNozzo stating he has asked Eshel about Ziva's current location, but he has not had contact with her in over a year.

Stan Burley

Stan Burley (Joel Gretsch) first appears in the first-season episode "High Seas". Prior to the series' start, he was Gibbs' partner and subordinate, but eventually was transferred out as an Agent Afloat, when he was replaced by DiNozzo. He looks up to Gibbs, and enlists his and his teams' help in tracking down a drug dealer on board the USS Enterprise. Burley knew (or at least knew of) Mike Franks, and calls Gibbs following his death to express his condolences. Over eight years after his first appearance, Burley returns in the season nine episode "Playing with Fire", where he leads DiNozzo and David in tracking down and thwarting a terrorist who tries to destroy the carrier USS Benjamin Franklin in Naples, Italy, under the orders of businessman Harper Dearing. Burley is injured by the terrorist in the process. He returns with DiNozzo and David to the Navy Yard, and is part of the crowd which sees Gibbs place Dearing's photo on the wall of NCIS Most Wanted.

Jeanne Benoit

Jeanne Benoit (later Jeanne Woods) (Scottie Thompson) first appears in the episode "Sandblast" as Tony DiNozzo's new girlfriend. She is an ER resident in Washington, D.C. In the episode "Angel of Death", it is revealed that her father is the arms dealer "La Grenouille". It is also revealed that Director Shepard, during Gibbs' absence (following his retirement at the end of season 3), assigned Tony to an undercover mission to get close to her, so that Shepard could get closer to finding Jeanne's father. After "La Grenouille" is found dead, an FBI team led by Agent Tobias Fornell investigates Gibbs' team and interrogates Tony based on testimony from Jeanne that he killed her father. She later admits to Shepard that she lied out of anger toward Tony for breaking her heart by lying about his identity and his intentions. She leaves the Squad Room after telling Tony (who lied about his feelings) that she wished she had never met him. In the episode "Bounce", she is mentioned as someone who could possibly have a grudge against Tony and be willing to frame him. Jeanne returns in the episode "Saviors" when NCIS investigate an attack on volunteer doctors in South Sudan. Two doctors go missing, one of whom is Jeanne's husband. She joins Tony and Tim on their mission, where Tony promises that they won't rest until they locate her husband. On their return flight, Jeanne thanks Tony and tells him that she owes him. He responds "No, you don't... we're good". leaving the pair to part amicably after eight years. Months later, in "Loose Cannons", Tony encounters Jeanne and her husband while investigating a case; she worries about it being connected with her father, which Tony assures her it isn't. However, when NCIS finds out that the case is connected with her father, Jeanne accuses Tony of lying to her. He tries to apologize, as he didn't know, but she says she was beginning to feel whole again until encountering him. Later, after the case is closed, Tony returns to Jeanne's office to find her alone after a fight with her husband regarding her unresolved feelings for Tony. Tony fully apologizes to her and sits down with her, admitting he isn't feeling whole either. They then have an amicable conversation about both of them wanting to go back in time to fix their relationship, in the hope of a happier ending. However, as they part, they both stand up and have a tense moment where they nearly kiss, but both agree it should not go any further.

Sarah Porter

Sarah Porter (Leslie Hope) is the incumbent Secretary of the Navy. Recruited without any military background, she is the first female to hold the position. She attended Harvard and attained a business degree, before becoming a career politician. She has one daughter who is revealed to be a teenager. Gibbs is later tasked with locating her daughter after she is kidnapped, an event which leads Porter to question her future as the Secretary of the Navy.

Zoe Keates

Special Agent Zoe Keates (Marisol Nichols) is employed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Prior to 2001, Zoe worked for the Philadelphia Police Department alongside Anthony DiNozzo, where they were both rookie patrol officers at the same time. They were partners until DiNozzo transferred to Baltimore. In season twelve, Zoe and Tony meet during an investigation into a jihadist group. Sometime later, they begin a relationship, and DiNozzo introduces her to his father. In "Sister City", DiNozzo informs McGee and Bishop that he and Zoe have split up.

Abigail Borin

Special Agent in Charge Abigail "Abby" Borin (Diane Neal) is a Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) agent. Originally from a small town in Ohio and an only child, Borin served a tour of duty in Iraq as a Sergeant before presumably retiring from the Marines and joining CGIS where she later rose through the ranks, eventually getting the opportunity to lead her own team. Her most recent appearance was in the season twelve episode, "The San Dominick". She is similar to Gibbs; both are coffee-drinkers and workaholics with a strong sense of duty to their jobs. In "Safe Harbor", Tony attempts to match-make the two of them, to no avail, although Borin continues to humor him by returning his wisecracks. The character is also a recurring special guest on the spin-off NCIS: New Orleans, first appearing when she and Special Agent Dwayne Pride's team conduct a joint investigation. It is revealed that she took Advanced Placement Spanish at Chaminade-Julienne High School in Dayton, Ohio and is fluent in the language. She previously worked with Pride on a joint undercover operation.

Diane Sterling

Diane Sterling (formerly Gibbs, Fornell) (Melinda McGraw) is the first ex-wife of NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, the ex-wife of FBI Special Agent Tobias Fornell and DHS Special Agent Victor Sterling, and the mother of Emily Fornell. She makes her first full appearance in "Devil's Triangle" in 2011, but appears in a brief cameo (portrayed by an uncredited actress, Heather Scobie) in "Angel of Death" in 2007. When she divorced Gibbs, Diane took his money, including his grandfather's watch. Similarly, after her divorce from Fornell, she got his money as well, in addition to joint custody of their daughter. Before Emily was born, Diane worked for the IRS as a tax auditor; in 2012, she returns to the IRS and is made a special agent / criminal investigator with the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations Division (IRS-CID), much to the shock of her federal agent ex-husbands. In "Check", Diane is murdered by Sergei Mishnev in a re-creation of Special Agent Caitlin Todd's death at the hands of Ari Haswari in "Twilight" with Diane dying after being shot in the head by Sergei who uses a sniper rifle. In "Cabin Fever", Diane is avenged when Fornell finally kills Sergei Mishnev.

Ned Dorneget

Special Agent Ned Dorneget (Matt L. Jones) is a probationary agent first introduced in the Season 9 episode "Sins of the Father". Usually known as "Dorney" to the rest of the team, he is often assigned to the evidence locker against his wishes and desires to become a full field agent. In "Need to Know", Gibbs decides that he is ready and hands him his first field assignment. Like McGee during his days as a probie, Dorneget is often the butt of Tony's hazing pranks in Season 10, most notably in the episode "Prime Suspect". Tony initially sees him as a rival for the affection of female colleagues, until Dorneget reveals that he is gay. The character does not return for Season 11 but is briefly mentioned in the Season 12 episode "The San Dominick", when he calls McGee for updates regarding Gibbs and the hostage situation. Two years later, Dorneget returns in the Season 12 episode, "Troll" where it is revealed that he has become a fully-fledged NCIS Special Agent and that he also works for NCIS Cyber Operations. In "The Lost Boys", Dorneget is killed in Cairo in a terrorist bomb attack after saving dozens of people at a hotel. His remains are brought back to the United States with Dorneget's mother, Joanna Teague, (Mimi Rogers) who is a CIA officer volunteering to work with NCIS for the sake of finding the terrorist group responsible for her son's murder.

Trent Kort

Trent Kort (David Dayan Fisher) first appears in the episode "Smoked". He works for the CIA; while he has not done anything illegal, he almost always has his own agenda. He also has a tendency to lie to peoples' faces, even Gibbs'. (In the episode "Dead Reckoning", he tells Gibbs that trust is elusive at best; Gibbs responds that, between them, it is not elusive but impossible). He manages to keep a neutral relationship with everyone on Gibbs' team except DiNozzo, as he blows up Tony's car in the episode "Bury Your Dead" and keeps La Grenouille informed about Tony's relationship with his daughter, even though it is an undercover mission. However, Kort is shown to have some strong ties within the CIA, as he is able to get files for Gibbs on Ducky and Director Vance. It is also speculated that Kort killed La Grenouille, though it is implied Jenny Shepard may have been also responsible, as her Glock 19 magazine is found to have left the same imprints on a 9mm bullet as the one that killed "The Frog". Following the La Grenouille incident, Kort is assigned to a desk. He approaches Gibbs for help in tracking down one of NCIS' most-wanted criminals and seizes $300 million in illegal assets for the CIA's use, attempting to get his old job back. Gibbs believes that Kort may be more dangerous behind a desk than when he is in the field.

Kort returns in season eight, tracking down Lt. Jonas Cobb—also known as the Port-to-Port Killer—at the behest of the CIA. Aware of Cobb's identity from the beginning of the investigation, Kort tries to save one of Cobb's victims; but the effort costs him his left eye, which he sends to the NCIS team. Kort is later revealed to have been the training officer for Operation Frankenstein, the program in which Cobb participated. Cobb wants revenge on all those who made him a killer and that includes Kort, whom he kidnaps along with Jimmy Palmer and E.J. Barrett in the season finale. His real goal, however, is to have revenge on the man who authorized the operation: SecNav Phillip Davenport. As he is waiting for Davenport to arrive, Cobb tortures Kort, Palmer, and E.J. with a water hose as a reminder of what he was put through during his training. Cobb is killed before he can kill any of the hostages. CIA agent Ray Cruz later receives a text message saying that Kort is in Tel Aviv and that he has to go there straight away. Kort also makes an appearance in NCIS: Los Angeles, revealing that he has worked with Agent G Callen in the past.

Kort returns in Season 13 "Dead Letter", with a glass eye replacing his lost one. He is found assaulting a MI6 agent, Clayton Reeves. Later in the season, it is revealed that Kort is the man responsible for framing British agent Jacob Scott, with Kort being revealed as the person who sold nuclear secrets to the Russians, therefore being as a main antagonist of that season. Eventually, he attempts to shoot Reeves again, only to be shot dead himself, when the NCIS team and FBI agent Tess Monroe arrive on the scene. He's also responsible for Ziva David's death.

Richard Parsons

Richard Parsons (Colin Hanks) is an investigator who works for the Department of Defense Inspector General. He also bears some resemblance to Timothy McGee, causing Anthony DiNozzo and Abby Sciuto to refer to him as McGee's "evil doppelgänger". He first appears in Double Blind, the penultimate episode of season 10, in which he is investigating the aftermath of the NCIS team's handling of the Ilan Bodnar case. Initially believed to be pursuing Ziva David, and then Director Vance, the team soon learn his target is Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Parsons goes to great lengths to take Gibbs to court for all of his "wrongdoings", but after a bombing that results in the death of SECNAV Clayton Jarvis in the season 11 premiere episode "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot", Parsons' perspective on Gibbs' team changes after Gibbs defends him during an ambush in Iran. Parsons repays the debt by saving Gibbs' life during a gunfight. Later, back in Washington D.C., Parsons drops his investigation into NCIS and also grants McGee, David, and DiNozzo permission to get their badges back and become agents again.

Leyla Shakarji

Leyla Shakarji (Tehmina Sunny) is the daughter-in-law of Mike Franks. She was disowned by her family and then smuggled out of Iraq after becoming pregnant with the child of Franks's biological son, Lance Corporal Liam O'Neill, USMC. O'Neill was murdered and Leroy Jethro Gibbs finds out about Leyla from Franks as he was the lead agent assigned to the case. She and her daughter, Amira, lived with Mike in Mexico until his death in 2011. Gibbs, as Amira's godfather, asks Leyla to move to Washington DC to be nearer to him as he is their closest thing to family. Leyla's mother, Shada Shakarji (Diane Venora), is the tough-as-nails matriarch of one of the most prominent tribes in Iraq, due to the fact that most of her male relatives are now deceased.

Alejandro Rivera

Alejandro Rivera (Marco Sanchez) is a high-ranking official of the Mexican Justice Department and, secretly, the son of drug dealer Pedro Hernandez and the brother of Paloma Reynosa who is the head of the Reynosa drug cartel. Rivera is assigned by his government to be a liaison with American law enforcement agencies on a special anti-drug project of forming a Mexican-American task force to strike against the drug cartels, notably against Reynosa. Secretly, Rivera's objective is to have revenge for his father's death by using Abby Sciuto's forensic skills to investigate the cold case while training a class of task force forensic specialists in Mexico. It is later revealed that Gibbs killed Hernandez and Rivera was counting on Abby's report to bring Gibbs down but it never reaches Mexico having been intercepted by Margaret Allison Hart, who is working on the task force project. Alejandro, however, makes one huge mistake when he arrives at NCIS and later threatens Abby, prompting the entire team, including Leon Vance, to have him removed. He is duped into thinking that his sister, Paloma, had been killed, and goes to the safe house she was at, thinking that he can kill Gibbs and his father. However, he ends up killing Paloma and is then arrested for her death. He reappears in season 11's finale "Honor Thy Father" when it is revealed that he used his cartel to fund operations for the Brotherhood of Doubt after Parsa's death, as a result of the two sharing a common enemy—NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

E. J. Barrett

Erica Jane "E. J." Barrett (Sarah Jane Morris) is an NCIS agent reassigned to Washington in the season eight episode "One Last Score". She was originally a Major Case Response Team leader stationed in Rota, Spain, which attracts DiNozzo's attention as he had previously been offered the same position in the season four episode "Singled Out", though he does not resent her position as he turned the offer down in order to stay in Washington. Barrett's presence in the Navy Yard is a source of tension between Gibbs and Director Vance, as Gibbs initially believes Barrett was reassigned to Washington because of budget cuts. However, in the episode "Two-Faced", it is revealed that Barrett is stationed in Washington to track a serial killer known as the "Port-to-Port Killer". When one of the killer's victims is found within the MCRT's jurisdiction, Vance puts together a task force to capture the killer, appointing Barrett as lead investigator. This leads to further conflict when Gibbs begins to suspect Barrett and DiNozzo are in a relationship and dividing the loyalties of the team. Gibbs is so distrusting of her that he questions her very motivations for being an NCIS agent, opposing her in everything from interrogating a suspect to profiling the killer. In the season eight finale, "Pyramid", it is revealed that E.J. is the former SECNAV Philip Davenport's niece.

E.J. and her team are ambushed by the "Port-to-Port Killer" at the end of "Swan Song". Her team member Gayne Levin is shot dead and Simon Cade, her other team member, is also shot. E.J. survives, but is left in the trunk of a car. After being rescued by Gibbs, she is taken hostage by the Port-to-Port Killer but is again rescued by Gibbs. E.J. then gives up her post at NCIS, but not before removing a little microchip from Levin's arm. Gibbs leaves the door open for her, having finally warmed to her. At the end of season eight, DiNozzo is tasked with dealing with an agent who is selling top-secret information. In the season nine premiere, "Nature of the Beast", Tony stops E.J. from running away with the microchip. E.J. then reveals that Levin asked her to bring the microchip to Navy Captain Felix Wright if anything happened to him. However, the captain was murdered and E.J. and Tony are targeted by an unknown killer. They turn to Gibbs for help and E.J. says that she does not know what is on the microchip. She meets with her team member Simon Cade in an alley. DiNozzo steps in and wants to arrest Cade, and reveals that he was the agent selling top-secret information. However, Cade knows nothing about it and all three realize that they have been used. They then get shot, Cade fatally, E.J. in the stomach and Tony in his shoulder (but he is wearing a vest). Their shooter appears to be Casey Stratton, who is said to be an FBI agent, but is not known by the FBI itself. E.J. goes missing after the shooting, leaving both NCIS and Stratton looking for her. In the episode, "Housekeeping", E.J. finally emerges, having gone into hiding to escape Stratton's attention. A petty officer whom she had called for help later dies at the hands of an unknown assassin which in turn leads Gibbs and his team to investigate the officer's murder, thus reuniting them with E.J. After they apprehend the assassin who had been tracking E.J. for the past year, she and Tony reconcile, and she returns to her home, on vacation.

Carol Wilson

Carol Wilson (Meredith Eaton) is an immunologist who works for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She first appears in the season 7 episode "Faith" when she visits her good friend Abby Sciuto at NCIS headquarters to ask for a favor. The character also makes a guest appearance in the spin-off NCIS: New Orleans, in the episode "Carrier", when she is consulted after the New Orleans agents find a Navy officer dead from a strain of bubonic plague.

Paula Cassidy

Supervisory Special Agent Paula Cassidy (Jessica Steen) first appears in the episode "Minimum Security". She is a criminal profiler for NCIS. An expert on Middle Eastern terrorists, she works as an interrogator at Guantanamo Bay. During "Minimum Security", she is viewed with suspicion by Gibbs as the deceased victim in the episode had letters containing her name. She develops a romantic relationship with Tony DiNozzo and the two seemingly stay in contact with each other but after hearing nothing from Tony or possibly due to her anger at Gibbs giving her grief, she breaks it off at the end of "Heart Break" and despite Tony's efforts, doesn't answer any of his messages. Following the aftermath of Kate Todd's death, Cassidy temporarily joins Gibbs' team during "Mind Games" and helps in the case of a serial killer as well as tracking down a copycat who is carrying out similar killings.

After becoming a team leader and being assigned to the Pentagon, Cassidy's team is killed while investigating a suspected terrorist, and she later joins the team to find out who arranged the phone call and the trap that sent her team to their deaths. She also has a hostile relationship with Ziva David, pronouncing Ziva's surname wrong to antagonize her, a trait that Abby repeats upon meeting Ziva for the first time. It is later revealed that Ziva has been allowing herself to be the target of Cassidy's anger in order to help her through the ordeal of losing her team. Furthermore, as a result of the bombing, Cassidy is left with psychological scars and begins developing survivor's guilt, believing herself to be the one responsible for unknowingly sending her team into the trap. She later sacrifices herself to stop a suicide bomber in the episode "Grace Period", thus saving Gibbs, DiNozzo, Ziva, and three Muslim clerics, who were signing fatwās to promote peace in the Middle East. Her death leaves Tony grief-stricken and finally gives him the courage he needs to tell Jeanne that he loves her. Her portrait is later seen in a bar wall honoring officers who have been killed in the line of duty.

Dr. Rachel Cranston

Dr. Rachel Cranston (née Todd) (Wendy Makkena) is a psychologist and the older sister of Caitlin Todd. She has made four appearances to date, the first being in the season eight episode "A Man Walks Into a Bar...". In the season nine premiere "Nature of the Beast", she helps the team piece together the events of Tony's undercover assignment. Her most recent appearance is in the season eleven "Double Back", when she psychologically evaluates McGee after a bombing leaves his girlfriend Delilah paralyzed.

Ari Haswari

Ari Haswari (portrayed by Rudolf Martin) is a terrorist who attacks and wounds both Gibbs and Gerald Jackson when he infiltrates the NCIS morgue during the episode "Bête Noire". NCIS initially identifies him as an undercover Mossad agent in the episode "Reveille", but he is really a rogue agent working for Hamas and he is later found to be the leader of an Al-Qaeda cell in Washington, D.C., the latter info a correct summation made by Gibbs in "Twilight". Ari is an early arch-enemy of Agent Gibbs, as well as Eli David's first-born child. Both of his parents were medical doctors; Ari's mother, Hasmia Haswari, was Palestinian and his father, Dr. Benjamin Weinstein (actually Eli David using an alias), was Israeli. He underwent medical training in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, in order to serve undercover inside the Gaza Strip, where his mother was killed during a retaliatory bombardment by Israel. The event prompted Ari to join the radical Islamic cause. It is shown that he hates his Israeli father as Eli David arranged for the attack on Gaza on a day when Ari was in the city. He preferred to be referred to as Haswari in school instead of Ari. Ari's motivation for his actions is his hatred of his father, who groomed him from birth to be a spy within Al-Qaeda, and was very likely the reason why Gibbs later suspects him in "Twilight" to be the head of an Al-Qaeda cell in Washington, D.C.

After murdering Special Agent Kate Todd in the episode "Twilight", and mounting several further attacks on NCIS members (including Gibbs) in the two part episodes "Kill Ari (Part I)" and "Kill Ari (Part 2)", his reign of terror finally comes to an end when Ari is killed by his half-sister, Mossad officer Ziva David, who is later offered and accepts a position at NCIS as Mossad liaison officer. It is revealed in the episode "Aliyah" by Director Vance that Ziva had been under orders to kill Ari, as he was out of control and planning a massive terrorist attack, and to gain Gibbs' trust in the process, which ended whatever secret Gibbs and Ziva could keep from the rest of NCIS. Ziva initially does not believe that Ari was an enemy agent and becomes his control officer in hopes of protecting him, until he nearly kills Gibbs, when she hears the truth from his own lips. Ziva does not fully come to terms with killing her brother, and experiences moments of guilt and hurt, even with her departure from Mossad (after the beginning of season 7) and her new American citizenship coming through (in that season's finale episode "Rule Fifty-One"). Haswari is mentioned various times even after the character's death and Ziva's departure from NCIS. In the season 12 premiere he is mentioned by his half-brother terrorist Sergei Mishnev, the main antagonist of the season (Alex Veadov), who attempts to kill Gibbs in revenge.

Brent Langer

Special Agent Brent Langer (Jonathan LaPaglia) first appears in the episode "Tribes". He is killed in the episode "Last Man Standing" by Agent Michelle Lee, and initially suspected of being a mole. Lee is, in fact, the mole, as Langer learns, and she kills him to preserve her cover. He was mentored by Gibbs at NCIS before joining the FBI and is transferred back to NCIS at Gibbs' recommendation. He works with Gibbs' team in the episode "Tribes", where he assists the team in tracking down a terrorist recruiter. Gibbs places his voided FBI agent ID card on a wall commemorating fallen personnel in the episode, "Collateral Damage",^[40] just as Gibbs is turning his suspicion back to Agent Lee.

Michelle Lee

Special Agent Michelle Lee (Liza Lapira) first appears in the episode "Shalom". She is brought in between season three and four to bring the team back up to full strength following the departure of Supervisory Special Agent Gibbs. Following Gibbs' return early on in the season she is transferred to the legal department and is frequently seen delivering warrants to the team, also having a covertly intimate affair with the Medical Examiner's assistant, Jimmy Palmer. She returns to the series in season six as part of Gibbs' new team, but is reassigned after the first episode. It is revealed that she is a mole in NCIS who accesses Joint Chiefs' strategic battle plan in the Middle East. She is caught in the episode "Cloak"; however she claims that she was forced to trade government secrets because her daughter Amanda has been kidnapped. However, it is revealed that Amanda is actually her sister; the deaths of their parents prompted Lee to raise Amanda as her child. In the episode "Dagger", after she learns that Amanda is safe, she gives Gibbs silent permission to kill the Weatherman, the person responsible for the crimes. The Weatherman uses her as a human shield until Gibbs fires into Lee's abdomen, the bullets passing through her body and killing both of them. In the course of her espionage, Lee kills Special Agent Brent Langer and Petty Officer Steve Vargo, whom she was blackmailing for the aforementioned classified information. Director Vance hints that she may have been headed for a death sentence had she survived in "Dagger". When asked by Vance if Lee should be called a hero or a villain, Gibbs responds simply, "Both".

Samantha Ryan

Dr. Samantha Ryan (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a psychologist, criminal profiler and Director of PsyOps. She is introduced in the episode "Psych Out" when a patient, a Navy warfare psychologist, of her colleague is found dead and Gibbs and his team are called in to investigate. She begins a romantic relationship with Gibbs and frequents his house, even causing him to be uncharacteristically late for work once. Like Gibbs, she has a young child, a son, and is either divorced or separated from her partner/husband. While Gibbs and Ryan try to keep their relationship strictly professional when at the office, Gibbs' agents and Ryan's co-workers frequently speculate on their relationship, as seen in "The Tell". Her last appearance is in "Till Death Do Us Part" when she is threatened by terrorist Harper Dearing, who is seeking revenge on everything and anyone connected with the Navy for the death of his son.

René Benoit

René Benoit, alias La Grenouille ("The Frog") (portrayed by Armand Assante) is the primary antagonist of seasons 4 and 5, a French arms dealer. He is always referred to by his sobriquet, an ethnic slur for the French. He is introduced in the episode "Blowback". Director Shepard has been obsessed with bringing him to justice for over ten years because she believes he killed her father and made it look like a suicide. Although he has connections to Iran, the CIA appears to tolerate him as a method of funneling disinformation to Iran as well as maintaining him as a prominent arms dealer so as to keep a degree of control over the arms trade. According to a psychological profile by Dr. Mallard, even though La Grenouille is a "merchant of death", he is not a violent man by nature, a viewpoint Gibbs later embraces, as he, too, learns the fact that the arms dealer isn't really dangerous anyway. Director Shepard's investigation of La Grenouille almost ruins a sting operation the CIA is running to get a faulty weapon system into Iranian hands. Subsequently, the CIA do their best to protect their asset. In the episode "Bury Your Dead", La Grenouille asks Director Shepard for protection, claiming someone is trying to kill him and take over his arms business, added to the fact that he no longer trusts the CIA. Shepard tells him "protect yourself" in true devotion to her father and hands him her gun, although it is later shown that he doesn't take it, as Gibbs is there in the same room to see what really happened that night. At the end of the episode, he is seen floating in the Washington Channel with a single gunshot to his head (from Director Shepard's gun). In the episode "Angel of Death", it is revealed that La Grenouille is the father of Jeanne Benoit, the woman that DiNozzo falls in love with after seducing her in the course of Director Shepard's undercover investigation, which Shepard later reveals in an apology to the young woman for "crossing the line" in "Internal Affairs". It is implied that both Trent Kort and NCIS Director Jenny Shepard kill him in the episode "Internal Affairs", and in "Judgment Day" (Part 1) Gibbs, reviewing the FBI file, finds evidence that further implicates her while looking at a familiarly marked bullet.

Michael Rivkin

Michael Rivkin (Merik Tadros) first appears in the episode "Last Man Standing" as a Mossad officer. He is working with Ziva David when she is on an undercover mission for the Mossad in Morocco (Ziva having been dismissed from NCIS in the previous episode). Later on in the episode, he is seen in the office of the head of Mossad, Eli David, Ziva's father, as Ziva talks on the phone to Gibbs. Tony becomes suspicious of the man that Ziva appears to be dating, and keeps trying to find out who he is. For example, in the episode "Legend (Part 1)", Tony asks Abby to check the records on Rivkin. In the episode "Legend (Part 2)", Michael appears as an undercover Mossad agent who is investigating the same terrorists that NCIS is investigating, killing them off one by one before NCIS can apprehend them. He is asked to leave the U.S. by NCIS agent in charge in Los Angeles, Lara Macy and later by DiNozzo, both of them citing laws that prohibit foreign intelligence operatives from working in the United States. In the episode "Semper Fidelis", what appears to be an open and shut case of an Immigrations, Customs and Enforcement agent killed by a terrorist is complicated by the presence of Rivkin, who is still in the US visiting Ziva. Tony traces communication with the terrorist's computer to Ziva's apartment, where he finds Rivkin. After attempting to arrest an intoxicated Rivkin for the murders of the ICE agent and the terrorist handler NCIS was tracking, a struggle ensues and Tony shoots Rivkin in self-defense. Ziva later enters her apartment and attempts to help Rivkin but he succumbs to his injuries and dies in hospital. Finally, in the episode "Aliyah", the relationship between Rivkin and Ziva comes out and this leads Gibbs, Leon Vance, and Tony to Israel. There Eli David accuses Tony of killing Rivkin out of jealousy and Ziva, no longer able to trust Tony, stays in Israel.

Merton Bell

Colonel Merton Bell (Robert Patrick) is a former Army tank unit commander and the President and Chief Operations Officer of the First Defense PMC, the largest security and bounty hunting firm in the U.S and the main antagonist of season seven. He is hired by an Iraqi tribal leader to capture her daughter and granddaughter from Mike Franks' home in Mexico. Bell sends two of his men to accomplish the mission, but they are killed by Franks' daughter-in-law, Leyla. Franks and his family run away to Gibbs' home in Washington, D.C. where they can be protected, but Bell finds out they are there and sends a squad to capture them. With the help of Damon Werth, a former Marine under Bell's employ, Gibbs traps and arrests Bell before turning them over to the Mexicans for trial. Bell is released with the help of American lawyer Margaret Allison Hart. He then sends Hart to Washington in a bid to have his revenge against Gibbs. In "Patriot Down", Hart reveals to Vance that since he got out of prison, Bell had been gathering information on Gibbs and is responsible for uncovering evidence that almost twenty years earlier, Gibbs killed Pedro Hernandez, the drug dealer who murdered Gibbs' wife and daughter in 1991. Bell orders his right-hand man, Jason Paul Dean, to kill Special Agent Lara Macy, who has discovered this evidence but subsequently buried it according to "Legend, Part 2". Bell and his men then set out for Mexico to murder Mike Franks and his family, but they are all killed by Dean who is revealed to be working for an unknown party. Gibbs initially believes Bell's body is actually Franks, but Dean confesses to the murder, leaving the fate of Franks and his family unknown until "Rule Fifty-One". In the same episode, it is revealed that Bell was working for the Reynosa drug cartel. Paloma Reynosa, daughter of Pedro Hernandez and head of the cartel, plans to use his vendetta against Gibbs to have her revenge for her father's death. She orders Dean to kill him as she no longer needs him.

Jonathan Cole

Jonathan Cole (Scott Wolf), alias FBI Agent Casey Stratton, is one of the primary antagonists of season nine. He was formerly a member of "Phantom Eight", a clandestine team of operatives assigned to the Watcher Fleet tasked with protecting the United States Navy. Cole goes rogue some time after the Phantom Eight are disbanded and begins working with Sean Latham, the corrupt Director of Special Operations for the Office of Naval Intelligence and a former member of Phantom Eight himself. Cole and Latham conspire to sell a series of microchips belonging to Phantom Eight members, which give their owners unrivalled access to the Navy mainframe. Cole makes his first appearance in "Nature of the Beast", where he adopts the alias of Casey Stratton, an FBI Agent assigned to investigate a shooting involving Tony DiNozzo. DiNozzo, having forgotten the events that led up to the trauma of the shooting, attempts to reconstruct his memories, recounting his investigation of NCIS Agents Simon Cade and E.J. Barrett. His investigation centers on a microchip Barrett extracted from the body of Gayne Levin, who also served in Phantom Eight, but wound up the last murder victim of Lt. Jonas Cobb, alias the Port-to-Port Killer. Cole manipulates DiNozzo, Barrett, and Cade into first distrusting one another and then meeting, where he attempts to kill all three before fleeing with the microchip. Cole kills Cade, wounds DiNozzo, and misses Barrett, who flees. He later approaches DiNozzo in the hospital under the Casey Stratton alias, but is unable to kill him as DiNozzo is under guard. Cole reappears in "Housekeeping", where he attempts to kill E.J. Barrett, who has since resurfaced. After the first failed attempt, Latham advises Cole to abandon his mission, but Cole refuses, claiming that he has to see it through, and he murders Latham. Now aware of his role in Phantom Eight and his actual name, NCIS trick Cole into attacking a safehouse under the pretense that Barrett and DiNozzo are hiding there. The safehouse is empty, and Cole is apprehended. His final appearance comes in "Till Death Do Us Part" when Gibbs feels he would be an ideal operative to get close to the terrorist Harper Dearing. Cole agrees in exchange for a (slightly) reduced sentence, but Dearing is already aware of his role and rejects his offer of help. Cole is killed when attempting to defuse a bomb left by Dearing outside NCIS headquarters. Although Cole never offers a reason for his crimes, and the circumstances that led to his becoming a traitor are never detailed, he does admit that he thought he had good reasons for doing what he did; he was soon proven wrong.

Harper Dearing

Harper Dearing (Richard Schiff) is the primary antagonist during the last episodes of the ninth season. Initially described as "an eccentric businessman whose son was killed in a terrorist bombing",^[41] he appears as a domestic terrorist, out for revenge against the Navy due to the death of his son, Evan, which is revealed in "Up in Smoke". Dr. Samatha Ryan describes Dearing as "a sociopathic, paranoid narcissist". After a series of attacks on Navy ships, Dearing plants a bomb at the NCIS Headquarters in the season finale, "Till Death Do Us Part".^[42] The resulting cliffhanger leaves most of the main characters' fates unclear.^[43] These events spur Gibbs to seek personal revenge against Dearing, culminating in a confrontation in which Gibbs fatally stabs Dearing in self-defense.^[22]

Paloma Reynosa

Paloma Reynosa (Jacqueline Obradors) is the head of the Reynosa drug cartel, the most powerful cartel in Mexico, the daughter of drug dealer Pedro Hernandez and the elder sister of Mexican Justice Department official Alejandro Rivera. Paloma took over control of the cartel when her husband died. During her years in charge, the cartel grew to be powerful enough to infiltrate the US Navy. As a way to try to end the drug war in Mexico, the Mexican government launches a task force project with American law enforcement agencies to strike against the cartels. Paloma is contacted by Colonel Merton Bell, who is seeking revenge against the man who had sent him into a Mexican prison: NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Bell has uncovered evidence that Gibbs killed Paloma's father with a sniper rifle in 1991. They form a partnership and elaborate a scheme to have revenge on Gibbs. Paloma's brother, Alejandro, uses his position in the task force to get the forensic evidence linking Gibbs to the murder using Abby Sciuto's skills. When the evidence is uncovered, Bell sends Lieutenant Jason Paul Dean to kill Special Agent Lara Macy, who knew about Hernandez' murder but covered up the evidence while still an MP officer, believing it to be a just killing. Later, Bell tries to kill Mike Franks but Paloma needs him alive as leverage so she orders Dean to kill Bell and bring back Franks' severed finger. He also returns with Gibbs taken prisoner. Paloma tells him of her true intention: she doesn't want his death, she wants his life. She wants Gibbs to work for her or she will kill his friends and family, starting with his coworkers and finishing with his father.

Four months later, Paloma is lured to a safe house where she believes Gibbs, Jackson, and Mike Franks have taken refuge. Alejandro arrives separately, having been tricked into believing Paloma is dead through a note purposely left behind by Director Vance and Agent DiNozzo as bait for a trap. He then opens fire on the safe house with a submachine gun, believing Gibbs and his father to be in it. After being arrested, Alejandro soon learns that Paloma was actually in the safe house all along, resulting in Alejandro accidentally killing his sister. Paloma then recites the poem of the spider and the fly as her last words before dying. Paloma has a fascination for the work of Tennessee Williams, citing him on three occasions: twice in "Rule Fifty-One" ("We are all sentenced to solitary confinement within our own skins for life" and "Cruel men consider themselves paragons of frankness") and in "Spider and the Fly" ("Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering for when it comes you'll know you're dead.").

Jonas Cobb

Lieutenant Jonas Cobb (Kerr Smith) is the real name used by the "Port-to-Port Killer", or 'P2P' for short, the primary antagonist of season eight. Originally recruited into a CIA assassination team code-named Frankenstein, Cobb cracked under intense and inhumane training before escaping. He re-surfaced in Rota, Spain, where he began his pattern of killing Navy personnel when they made landfall. He has also killed victims in Guam, Japan, Norfolk, Washington, D.C and was in the process of killing another victim in Hawaii before being interrupted by CIA operative Trent Kort. A ruthless serial killer, he is responsible for the deaths of Mike Franks and NCIS Agent Gaven Levin (the latter one he fatally shoots with Franks's own gun instead of using a knife), and takes NCIS agent E.J. Barrett hostage. One body in the episode "Baltimore" resembles P2P's work, but is later found to be a copycat by Dr. Mallard because of the way the knot is tied. The killer is revealed to be Agent DiNozzo's former superior at Baltimore Police, and the victim is DiNozzo's former partner there, with whom he never got to reconcile. The real P2P, though not known to be Cobb at the time, makes the deception final through a fake Abby Scuito email. Cobb's modus operandi involves luring his victims into a trap before slashing their throats from behind. He then scrubs the body down with a hospital-grade cleanser before wrapping the bodies in plastic and dumping them in isolated areas. He has been known to dress seamen in the uniforms of officers, and often leaves personal effects of his victims behind frozen in ice that foreshadow his next kill, though his m.o. changes forever in "Swan Song". Psychological profiling of Cobb depicts him as methodical, intelligent, and opposed to authority, but not easily distracted by law enforcement. The threat posed by Cobb is deemed so great by NCIS Director Vance, that he deliberately changes NCIS policy to antagonize Gibbs in the hopes of setting Gibbs up as a figure Cobb will identify with, in an attempt to lure Cobb into a trap. Cobb, after abducting Ziva David, gives himself up to NCIS in order to start the next phase of his plan. While Gibbs interrogates him with Agent Barrett watching, he tells a story about the son of a Marine who was told that he had to have his horse put to sleep, which turns out to be a deadly seed planted into Cobb as a child, since the story was about him anyway. Cobb is killed in the season eight finale, "Pyramid", where it is revealed that everything he had done since his first kill in Rota has been a part of a larger plan to get revenge on those he holds responsible for Operation Frankenstein—Leon Vance, Trent Kort and the Secretary of the Navy. He is aware that what he does is evil, but maintains that his actions have been for the greater good. He is shot and killed by Gibbs and Vance when he refuses to surrender. In death, he is said to have had a smile on his face while his corpse lay on a wrecked car.

Margaret Allison Hart

M. Allison Hart (Rena Sofer) is an attorney. She is contacted by Colonel Merton Bell while heias being tried by the Mexican authorities for bounty hunting in their country. Hart successfully gets Bell released from prison on the condition that he not leave Mexico. Vengeful against the man who sent him to prison, Bell sends Hart to Washington to defend any accused who are involved in Gibbs' investigations. Hart starts to take up every case that involves Gibbs. Hart's skills as a lawyer are a match for Gibbs' skills as an investigator. Despite their animosity, they appear to be attracted to one another. It is implied that they share a kiss at the end of one episode. In the episode "Mother's Day", when Gibbs' former mother-in-law (Shannon's mother) becomes a suspect in a murder investigation in which the victim was linked to the cartel responsible for the deaths of Shannon and Kelly, Gibbs covertly hires Hart to defend her. He then deliberately makes procedural errors to prevent her arrest and prosecution, permitting Hart to get her out of NCIS' custody. In the episode "Patriot Down", Abby writes a report on the murder of Mexican drug dealer Pedro Hernandez, a crime committed by Gibbs in 1991 in retaliation for Hernandez' murder of Gibbs' wife and daughter. The report never makes it to Mexico as it is intercepted by Hart, indicating that she has switched her allegiances. Her last appearance is "Rule Fifty-One", in which she confronts Gibbs over the report, and though she states that the report will end his career, she offers to defend him in court if it comes to that.

Clayton Jarvis

Clayton Jarvis (Matt Craven) is the Secretary of the Navy appointed after the events of the season eight finale, "Pyramid", which led to the resignation of Secretary Davenport. Jarvis is an old friend of Director Leon Vance and it seems that he comes highly recommended in D.C. Jarvis is introduced in the final scene in a meeting between himself, Director Vance and Anthony DiNozzo. In the meeting, Jarvis appoints DiNozzo to NCIS' black operations program and orders him to investigate an NCIS agent suspected of leaking information. When Jarvis hands DiNozzo the file with the agent's name, he recognizes the name but it remains unknown to viewers. In season nine's "Nature of the Beast", it is revealed that the mole is none other than Simon Cade, a member of E.J. Barrett's team. However, it is also revealed that Cade was framed earlier, and that Jarvis was supplied with misinformation by Sean Latham. Nevertheless, Jarvis proves to be an asset to the team such as when E.J. Barrett reappears. Jarvis lies to Sean Latham, knowing that he will leak the information to E.J.'s tracker, so that they can lead him into a trap. He later also helps a joint NCIS/PsychOps operation to apprehend the person who is blackmailing him with a copy of a top secret file. The blackmailer is believed to be Jarvis's childhood friend, Philip Wickes, whose company is about to lose its contracts with the Navy. The operation involves a faked assassination attempt on Jarvis to destabilize Wickes. Jarvis later dies in the Season 11 premiere episode, "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" where he is the victim of a bombing; his death leaves Vance devastated. Following Jarvis's death, he is replaced by Sarah Porter (Leslie Hope).

Jackson Gibbs

Jackson Gibbs (Ralph Waite) is the father of Leroy Jethro Gibbs. After his son left to join the Marines, Jackson Gibbs continued to live in the town of Stillwater, Pennsylvania. He was widowed some years before the events in the season six episode "Heartland". During the episode "Frame Up", Gibbs mentions that his father painted pin-up girl Betty Grable on the nose of his P-51 Mustang. Jackson served as a pilot in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. Disoriented once while returning from a mission, Jackson was saved by an enemy German pilot. The pilots' reunion is the subject of the eleventh season's episode Better Angels.^[44] In the season seven finale, "Rule Fifty-One", Paloma Reynosa of the Reynosa cartel enters Gibbs' store and turns the sign on the door from open to closed.^[45] This is following Reynosa's warning to Gibbs that if he does not do exactly as she says she will kill everyone he ever met and is all part of Paloma's plan to get revenge on Gibbs who killed her father twenty years previously.^[46] However, in the season eight opening, "Spider and the Fly", it is revealed that Gibbs managed to warn his father about the approaching danger just in time and Jackson is able to fight back against Paloma's men and escape before they could manage to kill him.

In "Heartland", it is revealed that Jackson and his son have an estranged relationship, but in later appearances, they reconcile and become close. In "The Namesake", it is revealed that Jackson named his son after LJ. According to Jethro, it was LJ who inspired him to join the Marine Corps as a teenager. LJ revealed to Gibbs that he, Jackson and the latter's wife Ann were friends growing up and both men fell in love with Ann. Due to segregation, Jackson married Ann as LJ was African-American and an inter-racial marriage was a social taboo during that time. The strained relationship between Gibbs and Jackson starts to mend after they bond during the case and they get an insight into what the other is feeling. Gibbs finally starts to forgive his father when he learns that he has finished the car that had been Gibbs' only dream during his teenage years. Jackson later tells Gibbs to take the car and they promise to keep in touch. Gibbs also starts to call his father "Dad" instead of "Jack". It is eventually revealed that Gibbs' resentment for his father came from the difficult relationship between his parents. Gibbs' mother, Ann, was a hard woman to live with and they mutually had affairs despite their strong feelings for one another. Gibbs blamed his father's affairs for his mother leaving. The only thing that kept Gibbs and his father in contact after that was Gibbs' wife, Shannon. In the season 11 finale, "Honor Thy Father" (which aired exactly three months after Waite's death in February 2014), Vance tells Gibbs that Jackson suffered a fatal stroke. Jackson is buried with full military honors. LJ and Gibbs' team are present at the funeral.

Charles Sterling

Chip Sterling (Michael Bellisario) first appears in the episode "The Voyeur's Web", as a new lab assistant working alongside Abby Sciuto, whom new NCIS Director Jenny Shepard has hired for her much to the displeasure of Abby, who continues to insist she prefers to work alone. As with most newbies, Chip ends up being the butt of Tony's jokes and is told off by Gibbs for lack of concentration on several occasions. Chip, having sinister motives, after being fired from his last job, attempts to frame Tony for murder (in which he almost succeeds) in the episode "Frame Up". In a last-ditch effort, he also attempts to attack Abby with a knife after being discovered, but she quickly subdues and hog-ties him with duct tape before asking Gibbs if she can now work alone.

Hollis Mann

Hollis Mann (Susanna Thompson) first appears in the episode "Sandblast". Lt. Col. Mann is a unit commander in the United States Army's Criminal Investigative Command, more commonly known as U.S. Army CID. CID is NCIS's counterpart in the U.S. Army. Mann is assigned by her superiors at the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command – CID to help in a co-operative investigation with NCIS involving a bombing at the Army-Navy Golf Club. She and Gibbs have a serious relationship, even earning the nickname "future ex-wife number four" from Tony DiNozzo. Their attraction becomes overt in the episode "Sharif Returns", as they discuss their possible relationship but refuse to act on it until Sharif is caught. At the end of the episode, they kiss. Although she and Gibbs clearly have serious feelings for each other, she is often frustrated by his reluctance to express his emotions. In the episode "In the Dark", she returns from choosing her successor and is upset to find that Gibbs has worked through the night to fix her home's plumbing, seeing it as a sign that he does not want to stick around. She confronts him, saying, "I'm aware there are three billion men in the world, and not all of them have to want me, but you should want me, and the fact that you don't makes me wonder why I ever wanted you." He calmly informs her that he worked on the plumbing through the night because he wanted to surprise her, but that "it's gonna be a bigger job than [he] thought...it's gonna take a while." She realizes that this is his oblique way of committing to their relationship for the long haul and kisses him fiercely.

In the episode "Ex-File" the relationship with Gibbs ends when she discovers the truth about Shannon and Kelly from Ducky and realizes that Gibbs is still silently mourning their deaths. She is offered a position at NCIS by Director Jenny Shepard, but instead chooses retirement from the Army, in the episode "In the Dark". In the episode "Lost and Found", the Stars and Stripes military newspaper Shepard is reading reveals that Mann has relocated to the Hawaiian island of Lanai. Mann reappears in the eleventh-season episode "Kill Chain", as a Special Agent for the Department of Defense's Office of the Inspector General and she later returns in the NCIS Season 12 episode, "We Build, We Fight".

Eli David

Eli David (played by Michael Nouri) has a recurring role, starting in "Last Man Standing", as the head of the Israeli Mossad. He is also Ziva David's father. In addition to Ziva, he has a son, Ari Haswari (Ziva's half-brother, whom she shoots and kills in order to save Gibbs), and a younger daughter, Tali, also deceased. Though appearing to be uncaring about his children, Eli has his reasons for his inability to care for their well being: he claims to have to hide his heart because of the difficult job he has to do and because the survival of not just a few people but an entire nation with all its neighbors desiring its destruction lies on his shoulders. He and Director Vance share a history since Amsterdam when Eli saved his life from a Russian hit squad.

Towards the end of season six, Eli sends Michael Rivkin to Washington in what Vance describes as a not-so-subtle message that he does not think NCIS are doing their jobs. During "Semper Fidelis", Eli is suspected of using Michael Rivkin to spy on the Americans and using the intelligence to locate a terrorist handler and find a training camp located in Somalia. Vance claims that Eli ordered Ziva to kill Ari and gain Gibbs' trust. In "Aliyah", when Ziva, Gibbs, Vance, and Tony travel to Israel, Eli David accuses Tony of killing Michael Rivkin out of jealousy; Tony accuses him of sending every corrupt Mossad officer to Washington for NCIS to deal with. Later, Eli demands that Ziva return full-time to Mossad and complete Rivkin's assignment, sending her and a team to assassinate Saleem Ulman, the leader of the Somali terrorist camp and ordering them to continue even after one member of the team is killed and the other two are wounded. This ultimately leads to her being taken captive and tortured by Saleem. During the episode "Good Cop, Bad Cop", Eli sends Malachi to Washington to discredit Ziva and her account of events that led to her capture prior to "Truth or Consequences", which finally prompts her to admit that her father is corrupt. However, during the events of "Enemies Foreign"/"Enemies Domestic" (season eight), she managed to reconcile with her father after understanding his reasoning, despite the fact the she wants to live her life on her own terms instead of her father's. In the 11th episode of Season 10, "Shabbat Shalom", Eli comes to America without any type of protection in hopes of making peace with Ziva and bonding with her. However, he is shot and killed in Vance's home during dinner. In this episode, Leon's wife is also shot, and dies due to her injuries. Eli is last seen with Ziva holding his body while sobbing and praying in Hebrew.^[47]

Minor cast and characters

Joanna Teague

Joanna Teague (Mimi Rogers) is a senior CIA officer. The mother of Ned Dorneget, Teague works with both DiNozzo and Gibbs in the aftermath of his death.

Maureen Cabot

Maureen Cabot (Kelli Williams) is an NCIS Special Agent assigned to the Sex Crimes Unit. Nicknamed "Mo", she assisted Gibbs in the episodes "Alleged" and "Viral".

Agah Bayar

Agah Bayar (Tamer Hassan) is an international Turkish arms dealer. He first appeared in the season eight episode "Broken Arrow". He had a brief appearance in the episode "Kill Screen" and returned in the season nine episode "Need to Know" and the season 12 episode Lost Boys. Gibbs does not like Bayar, as he seems to avoid trouble with federal agencies too easily.

Jerome Craig

Jerome Craig (Greg Germann) is the current NCIS deputy director. He first appears in the episode "Shiva". He is brought in when Director Vance is put on temporary leave and describes himself as "soft" and appears to be a bit confused at times. While Vance was away he complained to Gibbs in "Hereafter" about not being "cut out for this office thing". He is generally on friendly terms with the team, although DiNozzo dislikes his tendency to ramble and finds his love of black coffee and taste in women somewhat eccentric. (Germann has not been added to the main cast and the character has not appeared in every episode since his debut.)

Simon Cade

Special Agent Simon Cade (Matthew Willig) was an NCIS special agent on the team of E. J. Barrett who appears in three episodes in season eight and the season nine premiere. Prior to being a NCIS agent, Cade attended Yale, where he played football. In the episode "Swan Song", he is wounded in a shootout with Jonas Cobb, but recovers. Following his recovery, he drops off the grid and is suspected of being a mole. Cade was shot and killed by Jonathan Cole in the season nine premiere "Nature of the Beast".

Nikki Jardine

NCIS Intelligence Analyst Nikki Jardine (Susan Kelechi Watson) first appears in the episode "Leap of Faith". She assists Gibbs' team in keeping watch on communications, and speaks fluent Arabic and Kurdish. When she is first introduced, Tony and the rest of the team are turned off by her reluctance to shake hands and unusual habits (e.g. wiping down a phone with wet wipes before using it). In the episode "In the Zone", despite being a germaphobe, revolted at the idea of field work, Jardine asks to go to Baghdad with Tony. She ostensibly goes there on a case, but she also has her own reasons. Her brother had been injured while serving there, and a local villager, mistaken by Marines as an insurgent, was killed while attempting to help him, prompting Jardine to help the villager's children. Her last appearance is "In the Zone".

Chad Dunham

Special Agent Chad Dunham (Todd Lowe) first appears in the episode "Truth or Consequences". Chad Dunham is a recurring NCIS Special Agent who was stationed in the Horn of Africa when Ziva was being held captive by a group of terrorists in the beginning of season seven. He returned in episode four, "Good Cop, Bad Cop". His third appearance (and the last to date) is in season seven, episode seven, "Endgame", although this time it was in person in DC, when Ziva notices that he "cleans up nice".

Gerald Jackson

Gerald Jackson (Pancho Demmings) first appears in the episode "Yankee White". Gerald Jackson is Dr. Mallard's original assistant until being incapacitated by Ari Haswari after being held hostage in the morgue^[48] While recuperating from the gunshot wound to his shoulder, his position is filled by Jimmy Palmer. Approximately a year and a half later, a week before he was scheduled to return to work, Gerald is again captured by Ari Haswari in an effort to secure Dr. Mallard's attention.^[49] After Ari released him, Gerald was not been seen again "Kill Ari (Part 2)" and was replaced by Jimmy Palmer.

Cassie Yates

Cassie Yates (Tamara Taylor), an NCIS special agent, first appears in the episode "SWAK" and again in the episode "Jeopardy".

Dr. Jordan Hampton

Dr. Jordan Hampton (Torri Higginson) first appears in the episode "Identity Crisis". When a "John Doe" is donated to science and Ducky finds mercury in his brain, he is outraged that the medical examiner who performed the autopsy did not think to check his brain before donating him. As he and Gibbs go to confront "him" (Ducky mistakenly assumed that Dr. Hampton was male), he asks Gibbs to think no less of him for giving the M.E. a piece of his mind. After finding out that Dr. Hampton was not male, Ducky was visibly placated. Jordan came back to Ducky's autopsy room to help him find anything else she might have missed, and decodes the tattoo on his arm, helping Gibbs and his team eventually solve the case. She also reveals in this episode that she likes things neat and clean. She made a reappearance in the episode "Broken Bird" to help Ducky overcome grief and guilt for euthanizing a tortured Afghan when he was a doctor in the military. The two show some romantic interest in both episodes. Also, although she did not appear in the episode, she gave Ducky the autopsy report for La Grenouille in the episode "Internal Affairs".

Stephanie Flynn

Stephanie Bronwyn Flynn (Kathleen York) is the third ex-wife of Leroy Jethro Gibbs. She first appears in "Ex-File".

Crossover cast and characters

JAG

Vivian Blackadder

Vivian Blackadder appeared in the JAG episodes "Ice Queen" and "Meltdown".

Special Agent Vivian Blackadder (Robyn Lively) is a former FBI agent who joins NCIS after the attack on the USS Cole, in which her brother, Rex, was killed. Despite being a special agent, she seemed to be more focused on avenging her brother's death by any means possible rather than attempting to work with the rest of the team. Her obsession with getting revenge often drew Gibbs' ire—Gibbs told her to stay focused on their case or he would send her back to the FBI. Later, in the JAG episode "Meltdown", she blew an NCIS operation to capture a terrorist planning another attack. Although it is not shown, it is implied that she either returned to the FBI or was fired from NCIS for good because of her mistakes. She is the only major character who appeared in the pilot episodes from JAG, and not in the series NCIS.

Faith Coleman

Faith Coleman recurred on NCIS, following several guest appearances on JAG.

Lieutenant Commander Faith Coleman (Alicia Coppola) is a prosecutor for the Judge Advocate General's office. Coleman first appeared in the JAG episode "Ice Queen" and went on to make several appearances on NCIS, assisting Gibbs and his team. She successfully defended Commander Harmon Rabb when he was accused of the murder of fellow JAG lawyer Lieutenant Loren Singer. Her last appearance to date was in the episode "Hometown Hero", although she was mentioned in the episode "Head Case".

Other appearances

• Adam Baldwin as Commander Michael Rainer
• Patrick Labyorteaux as Lieutenant Bud Roberts
• John M. Jackson as Admiral A.J. Chegwidden

NCIS: Los Angeles

Lara Macy

Lara Macy appeared in the NCIS episodes "Legend (Part I)" and "Legend (Part II)".

Lara Macy (Louise Lombard) was a former USMC Lieutenant working as a military police officer, and almost two decades earlier had investigated then-USMC Gunnery Sergeant Leroy Jethro Gibbs' role in the murder of Mexican drug lord Pedro Hernandez. Due to the past investigation, their relationship was volatile until the OSP's operational psychologist Nate Getz revealed to Gibbs that Macy had been protecting him for eighteen years by covering up the evidence. Since Hernandez was responsible for the slaying of Gibbs' wife and daughter, Macy felt that his actions against Hernandez were justified, a move that would end up costing Macy her own life years later. In the NCIS: Los Angeles episode "Ambush", Hetty remarks to Director Vance that the last she'd heard, as the result of a political "witch-hunt", Macy was "working out of a quonset hut in Djibouti".^[50] This was contradicted on a subsequent episode of NCIS, where Macy's personnel file states that she never worked in Djibouti but was instead reassigned to Marseille, to head up an NCIS undercover team there. It is likely that the Los Angeles branch had been fed misinformation due to the covert nature of Macy's new assignment.

While in Marseille, Macy began working on a rape case involving a Petty Officer Second Class before later returning to the United States. In "Patriot Down", badly burnt remains were discovered in Annapolis with NCIS Special Agent Timothy McGee confirming that the remains were those of Macy, leaving the NCIS team and agency itself devastated. It was later revealed that Macy had been brutally murdered and her body set alight with her killer being revealed as Jason Paul Dean, a mercenary and former U.S. Army Ranger, as part of a plot to get to Gibbs in relation to the Hernandez case.^[51]

Other appearances

• Chris O'Donnell as G. Callen
• LL Cool J as Sam Hanna
• Daniela Ruah as Kensi Blye
• Barrett Foa as Eric Beale
• Peter Cambor as Nate Getz
• Brian Avers as Mike Renko
• Kelly Hu as Lee Wuan Kai

NCIS: New Orleans

• Scott Bakula as Dwayne Pride
• Lucas Black as Chris LaSalle
• Zoe McLellan as Meredith Brody
• CCH Pounder as Loretta Wade
• Shalita Grant as Sonja Percy

References