From Real Cases to Prime Time: How Dave Brant Helped Launch NCIS on TV

Ever wonder how NCIS became the centerpiece of one of television’s most successful and longest-running crime dramas? In this episode of Fed Time Stories, hosts Dave Brant and John Gill dive into the real-life events that inspired the creation of the NCIS TV show and reveal how the agency’s work captivated Hollywood.

Dave Brant, former Director of NCIS and co-host of Fed Time Stories, recounts the early days when a surprising encounter led to a partnership with Hollywood and the launch of a show that would transform public perception of the agency. Throughout the episode, Dave and John explore the impact the show had on recruitment, the agency’s image, and even its day-to-day culture.

The conversation also gets into the show’s early casting choices, with Dave recalling the excitement of landing a big name like Mark Harmon to play the lead. He talks about how Harmon’s presence gave the show a sense of authenticity that connected with audiences and made NCIS’s work feel even more real.

Tune in to hear behind-the-scenes stories, unexpected challenges, and the fascinating journey of turning real cases into a primetime hit that continues to shape the agency’s legacy.

Fed Time Stories is brought to you by Kaseware, an investigative case management solution. Learn more at www.kaseware.com/fedtimestoriespodcast

Transcript

0:05

From the halls of your federal government and the corridors of power, secrecy and duty, this is Fed Time Stories. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Fed Time Stories. We are your hosts, Dave Brant and John Gill, and we are coming to you today in person in our studio in Arlington, Virginia, our glass enclosed nerve center. And different than our previous podcast. Today we don't have any guests. It's just going to be Dave and I sharing stories from our past that we hope will be insightful and enlightening. We're going to start with Dave, who, as I understand it, may have had a hand in a little television show that I've heard about. Have actually never seen it, but I understand that there may be a television show out there called NCIS. Well, first of all, John, I'm shocked. I'm absolutely stunned that you've never seen the most famous and the most successful TV show in TV history NCIS. So that's kind of a stunner. And two, don't distract me today. Just, I, I mean, it's going to be very, very hard to keep going with you sitting right close to me. But no, seriously, for the listeners. Thought we'd take a couple minutes and tell some, I guess, modified war stories. Mine, just reviewing my history. I spent almost 29 years at NCIS, Naval Criminal Investigative Service. There is a real agency in addition to the TV show. I was a director of the agency for about eight and a half years. I want to tell you since all kidding aside, NCIS, the TV show is, I believe, now officially in the top two or three longest running TV shows in TV history. And I'll tell you how that came about. First, there is a real NCIS. I probably talked about this before. They are a investigative agency, global, few thousand agents scattered across the world and conduct criminal counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations as well as other security roles for the Department of the Navy, which includes the Marine Corps, civilian dependents, contractors, et cetera. Great agency, phenomenal mission. Had the pleasure of being there, as I said, a number of years and leading the agency for a number. So flashing to about 2002, I get a call from a CBS reporter named Susan Zerinsky. She was commonly known as Z. She ultimately at the time she was the executive producer of 48 Hours. She went on to become jumping way forward, the president of CBS News and then the president of CBS and she's now retired, doing documentaries. Never heard of her at the time, didn't know anything about it. My administrative person passed her through to me and her reason in calling me at that time was she wanted 48 hours to do a feature on an espionage investigation that NCIS was running jointly with the FBI. And the story at that time was a sailor had portrayed himself as interested in selling submarine secrets to the Russians. And I won't go into all the details, but he was intercepted and arrested and prosecuted and convicted. And during his conviction and his appeal, he made several allegations that he'd been. His rights had been violated during his interview interrogations and he really didn't do what he admitted to doing. So we all know that he was guilty. So. And he was already in prison and he'd reached out and was getting an episode of 48 Hours on this issue. So she, Susan Z. Had attempted to get FBI to go on her show 48 Hours and talk about the case and they declined. And so she went to her backup plan and got to me and said, would you like to go on 48 hours and have your folks talk about this investigation? And I of course said, no, not my role. Follow the FBI lead, have nothing to say. She went on then to say, well, kind of stopped the conversation about going on air and said, well, basically who are you anyway? What is ncis? I've never heard of you. I explained to her the agency, the mission and offered to host her at a visit at NCIS headquarters in Washington D.C. where we would demonstrate certain things, give her briefings on the agency and talk to her about our organization. Shockingly, she took us up on that. She came to Washington D.C. about maybe a month later with the camera crew and said, I'm going to spend the day with you. We may feature your agency a later date. So that all went well. She was a fascinating lady. I spent some time with her. She was really plain and very well spoken. Knew her craft well, was big on dropping f bombs on without purpose. So very plain spoken person. The reason I mentioned that is when she was leaving, she said, look, I really appreciate your time, love your agency, love what you're doing. I'm going to get you a feature on 48 Hours. I said, great, see you got a call about a month later and she says, can't do it. There's nothing unique about what you've told me. So no dirt. I have no right, you know, nothing is going to capture the public's attention based on something gone wrong. Just thank you for your time. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you, but I'm going to do something for you. I said, what? She's like, I'm going to mention you to some people I know in Hollywood. And what she was talking about. She said, you're going to get a call about another month passes and I get a call out of the blue from a guy named Don Bellisario. Don Bellisario, unbeknownst to me at the time, was the executive producer for Quantum Leap. For those of you that go back that far, Magnum PI the original Magnum PI and JAG. So he created those television shows among others and was a well known Hollywood producer. And his call consisted of, We would like, based on Susan Z's recommendation and what we've learned about your agency, we want to talk about potentially including you in a pilot to create a successor show to JAG. So I'm like, I don't know anything about Hollywood television. Doesn't make much sense to me. Talk to a couple of my people and let me know if you're really serious. So we progress in some talks with a couple of his writers and him and it leads to a pilot episode that aired I think in spring of 2000, probably three maybe it was a show that aired alongside JAG as a pilot. From that, Bellisario then calls me again and I talked to him a couple times and said all complimentary about the agency. We're now going to create a standalone show NCIS, and we need your cooperation to do this. We need, we need access to some of your investigations. We need to understand your agency. We need to know what you do overseas. We need to know a lot more than we now know to create a show that will capture the attention of TV audiences. We did that. We kicked around the name and what it should be called, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I'm going to jump to the bottom line pretty quickly. And lo and behold, he called me another day and said, good news, CBS wants to X amount of episodes they've bought. And even better news, we're going to sign Mark Harmon as the lead actor. And you will thank me one day for this because NCIS, I guarantee you, will become the biggest television hit and outlive Gunsmoke for the longest running TV show in history. And I'm like, this is pure BS. Pure. This is a Hollywood guy telling me everything. I think he probably saw in me the potential for an appearance on the show. So we'll get to that in a minute. But the reason I highlight this is it. There aren't TV shows that often that appear based on a real life agency that has the mission we do. They're kind of, we did kind of hard to portray. It's tough to get access to information that makes the show kind of real, but it's also fictional. So we had good success. I had a good relationship with the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, and we gave a number of real life investigations that were closed, adjudicated and were open to be shared in the first year or two to the TV show to use as their framework for the shows that came out. And so we were fortunate enough, if you want to use that term, to have a really good working relationship with the TV show. They were good people. They just wanted to portray, you know, good versus bad, good wins. You guys are good guys. We want to show you in a positive light. There were a lot of skeptics, a lot of people who didn't want this to happen within my chain of command, but it did. And to Mr. Bellisario's prediction, what is it now? 21 to two years later coming up on the show, still running, it created several spin offs. The original NCIS led to NCIS LA, NCIS New Orleans, NCIS Sydney. The first show still remains among the top five, sometimes the top most watched show in television history. So it's amazing. And I was really just half tongue in cheek, mostly tongue in cheek earlier. You've never seen. I have, I have. Good. I broke you down. I haven't watched recently, but I've seen. I mean for me I'd be interested also to know to what kind of recruiting had this kind of engendered by having this out there? You know, did you find that it brought a lot of people to the recruiting roles? And look, NCIS at the time, fairly not very well known agency for a reason. We weren't seeking that. And our mission is pretty focused on a particular element in our society, Navy, Marine Corps and Defense. So a lot of people who would tend to have an interest in a career in law enforcement didn't immediately think of in years past NCIS like they would have FBI or Secret Service or ATF or DEA. Recruiting went through the roof. We had an incredible number of uniquely qualified people with diverse educations, diverse experience, diverse backgrounds and our ability to hire very, very talented people almost without doing anything except answering the phones went through the roof. And most interestingly, which was kind of surprising to me, people really liked and still do the TV show. And honestly, having lived at the agency for 29 years, almost, the TV show kind of reflects the way the real agency is. There's a high level of professionalism, but there's also a certain informality and Camaraderie as people do their work and do their jobs all over the world. And the mission is a fascinating mission of the real agency. And the TV show did a very good job reflecting that in a positive way. There were no, oh my God, I can't believe they just did that. And fortunately for us at the time, they hired a technical advisor who had been an agent, a special agent in charge, name is Leon Carroll, who 20 some years later is still with them. So, if something was going to be portrayed as this is so ludicrous, it's not going to fly. He was always on set providing insight, input. Our team at the time, when I was there, gave a lot of insight into how investigations are conducted that I think in many ways benefited other agencies in addition to us. The other thing that was really good about it was the actors there, including Harmon and Weatherly and Paulie Perrette treated anytime our people, whether they're agents, analysts, other professionals, went through LA, they would invite them to the set, they'd give them tours, they'd invite families, they'd take pictures, they made holiday, you know, videos of to send to people deployed overseas. So all in all, again, surprisingly, among a lot of skeptics, not only in recruiting, but in sort of agency morale, agency appreciation, it went skyrocketed in terms of that partnership and it still lives on today. Fed Time Stories is hosted by Dave Brant and John Gill and is a Kaseware production. For more information on the podcast, feel free to reach out to us on our website at www.kaseware.com/fedtimestoriespodcast until next time.