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 to stay in Washington. Barrett's presence 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" (or P2P for short). 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. Gibbs begins to suspect Barrett and DiNozzo are in a relationship and dividing the loyalties of the team, and 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 Navy Secretary Philip Davenport's niece. E.J. and her team are ambushed by the P2P at the end of "
Swan Song". Her team members Gayne Levin and Simon Cade are shot and Levin is killed. E.J. survives, but is left in the trunk of a car. After being rescued by Gibbs, she is taken hostage by the P2P 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. Their shooter appears to be Casey Stratton, seemingly an FBI agent, but not known by the FBI itself. E.J. then goes into hiding to escape Stratton's attention, leaving both NCIS and Stratton looking for her. A petty officer she had called for help dies at the hands of an unknown assassin. Gibbs and his team investigate the murder, reuniting them with E.J. in "
Housekeeping". 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.
Agah Bayar Agah Bayar (
Tamer Hassan) is an international Turkish arms dealer, who 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.
Merton Bell Colonel Merton Bell (
Robert Patrick) is a former Army tank unit commander and the President of 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's home in Mexico. Bell sends two of his men to accomplish the mission, but they are killed by Franks's daughter-in-law,
Leyla Shakarji. Franks and his family run away to Gibbs's 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 Mexico for trial. (Bounty hunting is illegal in Mexico.) 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's 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 Bell's vendetta against Gibbs to have her revenge for her father's death. She orders Dean to kill Bell as she no longer needs him.
Jeanne Benoit Jeanne Benoit (later Jeanne Woods; played by
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 she is the daughter of arms dealer René Benoit and that Director Shepard, during Gibbs' absence at the end of season 3, assigned Tony to an undercover mission to get close to her. After her father 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 him. She later admits to Shepard that she lied out of anger at Tony for breaking her heart by lying about his identity and his intentions. She leaves the squad room after telling Tony (who did not lie about his feelings, despite his undercover deceptions) 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 will not 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 is not. 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 did not 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 is not 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.
René Benoit René Benoit, alias La Grenouille ("The Frog") (
Armand Assante) is a
French arms dealer and the primary antagonist of seasons 4 and 5. He is always referred to by his
sobriquet, an
ethnic slur for the French. He is introduced in the episode "
Singled Out", first appearing in "
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 CIA sting operation to get a faulty weapon system into Iranian hands. Subsequently, the CIA do their best to protect their asset. In "
Bury Your Dead", Benoit 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 seduces 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.
Abigail Borin Supervisory Special Agent Abigail "Abby" Borin (
Diane Neal) is a
Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) Special 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, liking it the same way, and
workaholics with a strong sense of duty to their jobs. In "
Safe Harbor", Tony attempts to matchmake 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.
Stan Burley Stan Burley (
Joel Gretsch) is an NCIS agent who 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.
Maureen Cabot Maureen Cabot (
Kelli Williams) is an NCIS Special Agent assigned to the Family & Sexual Violence Program. Nicknamed "Mo", she assisted Gibbs in the episodes "Alleged" and "Viral".
Simon Cade Special Agent Simon Cade (
Matthew Willig) was an NCIS special agent on E. J. Barrett's team 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".
Paula Cassidy Supervisory Special Agent Paula Cassidy (
Jessica Steen) is a
criminal profiler for NCIS, who first appears in the episode "
Minimum Security". 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 DiNozzo and the two seemingly stay in contact, but she breaks it off at the end of "
Heart Break" after hearing nothing from him (or possibly due to her anger at Gibbs giving her grief). 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. 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.
Rebecca Chase Rebecca Chase (
Jeri Ryan) is the second ex-wife of
Leroy Jethro Gibbs. She first appears in "
Check". She appears alongside Gibbs' first ex-wife Diane Sterling coincidentally at a crime scene he is investigating; she and Diane explain that they met at a support group. After a day of trying to avoid her, Rebecca then arrives at Gibbs' house, apologizing for cheating on him during their marriage. Gibbs later interrogates her and her fiancé, who is revealed to be the man she cheated on Gibbs with; and later when it is revealed that her cell phone has been bugged, Gibbs discovers that Sergei Mishnev has been stalking her and has her and her fiancé put into the witness protection programme. In the episode "
Off The Grid", after Gibbs goes undercover, McGee and Torres discover that he and Rebecca had a phone conversation the night before. Torres calls Rebecca to find out if she knows any information about Gibbs' undercover operations; though she denies knowing anything and reveals that the two were only making plans for dinner; whether this is supposed to be romantic or not is left unknown.
Carrie Clark Carrie Clark (
Salli Richardson-Whitfield) is a lawyer and a former Special Agent with the FBI. She worked on FBI Special Agent
Tobias Fornell's team, now a criminal attorney. She appears in season 11 episode 8 "
Alibi", season 12 episode 8 "Semper Fortis" and season 13 episode 9 "A Day in Court". She has worked with Gibbs and his team on a case, while working for the FBI (off screen). She first appears in episode Alibi, after Marine Staff Sergeant Justin Dunne, is arrested, Dunne requests an attorney, and hires former FBI agent Carrie Clark, who also happens to be an old acquaintance of the team. Dunne tells Carrie that he has an alibi, in that he was involved in a murder outside of the base at the time of the hit and run, and that somebody else must have stolen his truck. Due to attorney-client privilege, Carrie cannot tell Gibbs and the team anything about Dunne's crime other than he has a solid alibi. However, she manages to leave small, subtle clues for the team to follow.
Jonas Cobb Lieutenant Jonas Cobb (
Kerr Smith) is the real name of 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, and takes NCIS agent E.J. Barrett hostage. One body in the episode "
Baltimore" resembles P2P's work, but is later found by Dr. Mallard to be a copycat because of the way the knot is tied. The killer is revealed to be Agent DiNozzo's former superior at Baltimore PD, and the victim is DiNozzo's former partner there, with whom he reconciled. 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 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.
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, 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.
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 Tobias Fornell's daughter Emily at the request of Gibbs while Fornell is in a coma after having been shot. Grace returns in "Privileged Information", as Gibbs investigates a patient of hers, a Marine Sergeant, after she ends up in a coma, and tells Gibbs he should treat it as a murder investigation, but cannot divulge further due to doctor-patient confidentiality. When the patient dies, Grace tells Gibbs that the patient was involved in covering up a murder, but that she didn't tell her any details. In "Twofer", following Gibbs' and McGee's return to the US after a failed mission in Paraguay, Grace is appointed to conduct psychiatric evaluations on them to determine whether they are fit to return to NCIS. Gibbs surprisingly is able to open up to her about his troubles more than she's already known, but McGee skips his appointment with her, frustrating her. Gibbs is able to convince McGee to go to his appointment with Grace, and meets with McGee outside her office after the session, having himself become a more regular patient of Grace. In "Two Steps Back", Grace is seen playing a poker game at Gibbs' house with Gibbs, Vance, Fornell and new NCIS agent Jack Sloane, whom she meets for the first time.
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.
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...", Tony gives her the nickname "Dr. Kate's Sister". 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.
Phillip Davenport The former
United States Secretary of the Navy, Phillip Davenport (
Jude Ciccolella) presumably took over from Edward Sheffield (
Dean Stockwell), who was last seen in the position during the final season of
JAG and the
second season of
NCIS. He was in office from at least 2008 (during which he made his first appearance) until he resigned in 2011 during the events of "
Pyramid".
Eli David Eli David (played by
Michael Nouri, and by Ben Morrison as a younger David in flashbacks) has a recurring role, starting in "
Last Man Standing", as the head of Mossad. Earlier in the series, it is also mentioned that he is Ziva David's father, as well as that of her half-brother, Ari Haswari, a sort of mercenary/terrorist whom she prevents from shooting Agent Gibbs. David also had a younger daughter, Tali, Ziva's full sister, who is also deceased. Though appearing to be "all business" and uncaring about his children, Eli's reasons for this come from the need to preserve the existence of Israel, a country surrounded by enemy nations. He and Director Vance have shared a history since a time in Amsterdam when Eli saved his life from the attempts of 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, David accuses Tony of killing Michael Rivkin out of jealousy; Tony, in turn, accuses him of sending every corrupt Mossad officer to Washington for NCIS to handle. Later, David demands that Ziva return full-time to Mossad and complete Rivkin's assignment. Ziva thus travels covertly into a Somali terrorist camp to eliminate Saleem Ulman, its leader. After one member of the team is killed and the other two are wounded, their instructions stand, and this leads directly to Ziva's captivity and torture at Saleem's hands. Afterward, during the episode "
Good Cop, Bad Cop", Eli sends Mossad operative Malachi Ben-Gidon to Washington to discredit Ziva and her account of events that led to her capture prior to "
Truth or Consequences", which prompts her to believe that her father is corrupt: an opinion disproven during the events of "Enemies Foreign"/"Enemies Domestic" (
season eight), wherein Ziva manages to reconcile with her father after understanding his reasoning, and concluding that she wants to live her life on her own terms instead of her father's. In the 11th episode of Season 10, "
Shabbat Shalom", Director David comes to the U.S. without any type of protection in hopes of making peace not only with Ziva, but also with Iran via their Intelligence Bureau's Head, David's childhood friend Arash Kazmi (Nasser Faris). Unfortunately, both he and Jackie, Director Vance's wife, are shot and killed in the Vance home during dinner in a drive-by shooting orchestrated by hawkish anti-peace Mossad personnel headed by Deputy Director Ilan Tohar Bodnar (
Oded Fehr). The last we see of Director David is Ziva holding his body while sobbing and praying in her native Hebrew. As it turns out, Kazmi was also assassinated that night, an action blamed on the fugitive Bodner, but really undertaken by the CIA in an effort to "stir the (political) pot" in Middle East affairs involving Israel and Iran (see season 10, episode 24, "
Damned If You Do)".
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", 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 where his hired arsonist Andre Fullerton was apprehended in "
Playing with Fire", Dearing now knows that NCIS is onto him after Fullerton was forced to divulge the identity of the man who hired him. With NCIS onto him, Dearing plants a bomb at the NCIS Headquarters in the season finale, "
Till Death Do Us Part". The resulting cliffhanger leaves most of the main characters' fates unclear. These events spur Gibbs to seek personal revenge against Dearing, culminating in a confrontation in which Gibbs fatally stabs Dearing in self-defense.
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". In "
Heartland", it is revealed that Jackson and his son are estranged, but in later appearances, they reconcile and become close. 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 and his granddaughter Kelly. 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. 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. 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. 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. The two went into hiding until Paloma was killed. In "
The Namesake", it is revealed that Jackson named his son after LJ — Leroy Jethro Moore (
Billy Dee Williams). 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 restoring 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. 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, with the
USAF honor guards presenting Gibbs with
Old Glory from Jackson's casket and performing
Taps. LJ and Gibbs' team are present at the funeral. Jackson also appears in the prequel series
NCIS: Origins, played by
Robert Taylor.
Kelly Gibbs Kelly Gibbs is the daughter of Leroy Jethro Gibbs and his first wife, Shannon. Both Shannon and Kelly were killed in a car wreck caused by Mexican drug dealer Pedro Hernandez in Oceanside, California, while Gibbs was deployed during Desert Storm. She first appears in a brief flashback, identified in the credits only as "Gibbs' daughter", in "
Honor Code".
Shannon Gibbs Shannon Gibbs (née Fielding) (
Darby Stanchfield) is the late wife of Leroy Jethro Gibbs and the mother of his daughter, Kelly. Both Shannon and Kelly were killed in a car wreck caused by Mexican drug dealer Pedro Hernandez in Oceanside, California, while Gibbs was deployed during Desert Storm. She first appears in
"Hiatus" (Part 1).
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".
Margaret Allison Hart M. Allison Hart (
Rena Sofer) is an attorney. She is contacted by Colonel Merton Bell while he is 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. Off-screen in "
The Spider and the Fly", Hart resigns from her job at NCIS and moves away, taking the report with her in order to protect Gibbs from Paloma Reynosa and Alejandro Rivera, Hernandez's two children hell bent on revenge on Gibbs for their father's murder. After Alejandro accidentally kills Paloma, mistaking her for Gibbs, and is arrested, Hart mails the report back to Vance, who then puts it in storage.
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 archenemy 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 since 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 episodes "
Kill Ari (Part I)" and "
Kill Ari (Part 2)", his reign of terror finally comes to an end when he 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. 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 terrorist Sergei Mishnev, the main antagonist of the season (
Alex Veadov) (and Ari's own half-brother on their mother's side), who attempts to kill Gibbs in revenge.
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 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. After Ari released him, Gerald was not seen again until "
Kill Ari (Part 1)" and was replaced by Jimmy Palmer.
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 germaphobic behaviour: reluctance to shake hands, wiping down phones with wet wipes before using them. 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".
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).
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.
Trent Kort Trent Kort (
David Dayan Fisher) first appears in the episode "Smoked". He works for the CIA; while he usually manages to avoid getting caught for illegalities, he nevertheless almost always has his own agenda. He 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 also been 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. After engineering a double murder, Kort 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 field-agent 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 "super soldier" 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. However, his real goal 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 an
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 shown as the main antagonist of that season, and later also being responsible for the apparent death of Ziva David, after hiring a contract killer to burn down Eli David's farmhouse in Israel in a mortar attack. Eventually, he is confronted and killed by Reeves and the NCIS team and FBI agent Tess Monroe when they arrive on the scene and confront him over his actions.
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", 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 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 covert intimate relationship 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 has accessed for a foreign power at least the
Joint Chiefs' strategic battle plans for a potential Middle Eastern operation, if Israel's enemies were to once again make war upon her. 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. Although Gibbs figures out gradually that she is a spy, and affirms his conclusions by inserting a picture of an agent she shot, as if he were the spy, on a barwall "Slain Heroes" wall ("Collateral Damage"), she is caught in the next episode "
Cloak". However, when caught she claims that she was forced to trade government secrets because her daughter Amanda has been kidnapped. But Amanda, it turns out, 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. Director Vance hints that she may have been headed for a death sentence had she survived as punishment for having committed
treason against the United States with her actions. When asked by Vance if Lee should be called a hero or a villain, Gibbs responds simply, "Both".
Gayne Levin Special Agent Gayne Levin (
Alimi Ballard) was an NCIS special agent on the team of E. J. Barrett who appears in three episodes in season eight. In the episode "Swan Song", he is shot and killed in a shootout with Jonas Cobb.
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. However, it is revealed, in the season 13 episode 9 "Day In Court", 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.
Hollis Mann Lieutenant Colonel Hollis Mann (
Susanna Thompson) is a unit commander in the
United States Army Criminal Investigation Command, NCIS's counterpart in the Army. She first appears in the episode "
Sandblast". Mann is assigned by her superiors to work on 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 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. Mann is one of few characters who may know how Gibbs removes the boats from his basement, as the episode ends with her asking Gibbs directly of it, but ends before Gibbs gives any sort of response. 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 I 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
Defense Criminal Investigative Service, which is the criminal investigative arm of the
Department of Defense's
Office of the Inspector General, and she later returns in the NCIS Season 12 episode, "
We Build, We Fight".
John McGee Admiral John McGee (
Jamey Sheridan) is the father of Timothy McGee. He appears in "
Squall", where it is revealed that he has cancer. In "
House Rules", ADM McGee passes away.
Sarah McGee Sarah McGee (portrayed by Sean Murray's real-life stepsister
Troian Bellisario) is the younger sister of Timothy McGee. She makes two quick cameos in Seasons 2 and 3 before making a full appearance in "
Twisted Sister".
Tess Monroe Tess Monroe (
Sarah Clarke) is an FBI Senior Special Agent. After working with Tobias Fornell, Monroe joins NCIS in the hunt for British spy Jacob Scott during season thirteen. She participates in a shootout with the NCIS team that results in the intentional death of Trent Kort. Executive Producer Gary Glasberg described Monroe as "full of fire and cynicism and sarcasm and wit and energy and is extremely experienced". 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".
Leroy Jethro "LJ" Moore Leroy Jethro "LJ" Moore (
Billy Dee Williams) is the childhood friend of Jackson Gibbs and his future wife Ann — Jethro Gibbs's parents. They were all friends growing up together. Jackson and LJ both fell in love with Ann, but Jackson married her. LJ is "
The Namesake" of Jethro Gibbs, and according to Jethro, it was LJ who inspired him to join the Marine Corps as a teenager. LJ stands next to Jethro Gibbs at Jackson's funeral in Season 11's final episode "
Honor Thy Father".
Thomas Morrow Thomas Morrow (
Alan Dale) is the Director of NCIS until the beginning of season three. He 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
Department of Homeland Security. 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.
Chris Pacci Special Agent Christopher "Chris" Pacci (
Tim Kelleher) is an NCIS special agent who worked at NCIS Headquarters with Special Agent Gibbs for at least three years. He was murdered in "
Dead Man Talking".
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.
Phineas Phineas (Jack Fisher) is a 9-year-old boy who lives across the street from Gibbs. He and Gibbs first make contact after he throws a baseball through Gibbs' window. Gibbs and he spend much time together, including when Gibbs provides help for a science project. In the season 17 episode "IRL", Phineas' video-gaming abilities help the team capture a murder suspect. Phineas' parents are said (by his mother Sarah) to have been locked in a custody battle over him. It is later revealed that his mother, whose real name is Sahar, is the woman trying to kill Ziva.
Sarah Porter Sarah Porter (
Leslie Hope) is the incumbent
United States 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 is divorced and has one daughter, Megan, who is revealed to be a teenager. Gibbs is later tasked with locating her daughter after she is kidnapped in "React", an event which leads Porter to question her future as the Secretary of the Navy, although she remains at her post as of
season 14. Secretary Porter has also appeared in an episode of season 2 of
NCIS: New Orleans, and has frequently been mentioned on
NCIS: Los Angeles, although she never physically appeared in any episodes of the latter series.
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: Agent 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 unintentionally 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.").
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. However, Alejandro 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— Agent Gibbs.
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 but Rivkin ignores both warnings. In the episode "
Semper Fidelis", what appears to be an open and shut case concerning the death of an
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent is complicated by the presence of Rivkin, who is still in the US visiting Ziva. It is later revealed that Rivkin killed the ICE agent accidentally while attempting to render him unconscious (not knowing that the agent had an underlying medical condition). 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, Rivkin resists and a vicious struggle ensues; Tony is eventually forced to shoot 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.
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.
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 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, D.C., 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.
Charles "Chip" 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.
Diane Sterling Diane Sterling (formerly Gibbs, Fornell) (
Melinda McGraw) is the first ex-wife of 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.
Cyril Taft Captain Cyril Taft, M.D.,
USNR (
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 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.
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.
Jackie Vance Jackie Vance (
Paula Newsome) was the wife of NCIS Director Leon Vance. In the season 10 episode "Shabbat Shalom", Jackie is shot in a drive-by shooting that kills Mossad Director Eli David, who was having dinner with the Vances at the time alongside Ziva, and dies in surgery. Jackie's estranged biological father, Lamar Addison, who was never married to her mother, walked out on Jackie and her mother and brother (Michael Thomas) when she was young. Vance and Jackie have two children: a daughter, Kayla, and a son, Jared. Jackie and Vance met while attending a University of Maryland basketball game where
Len Bias was playing.
Kayla Vance Special Agent Kayla Vance is an NCIS agent and the daughter of Leon and Jackie Vance. She is played by Naomi Grace as an adult, and was played by
China Anne McClain and
Kiara Muhammad as a child.
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.
Cassie Yates Cassie Yates (
Tamara Taylor), an NCIS special agent, first appears in the episode "
SWAK" and again in the episode "
Jeopardy". In her first appearance, it is revealed that she was trained by the late Special Agent Chris Pacci. == Crossover cast and characters ==