How Much is the Television NCIS Like the Real Thing?

The agents on television deal with cases involving terrorist threats, a bomb situation on a naval warship, the investigation of murders, kidnappings, the death of an American President's military aide, and other tense situations. How true to life is the television show NCIS?

In real life NCIS, the United States Naval Criminal Investigative Service, deals with many of the same issues as the television show does, even though the show may be dramatized. The actual agency deals with combating terrorism, counterintelligence, cyber issues, and felony investigations, including murder.

The real NCIS is very involved with protecting the navy from real terrorist threats, including attacks against sailors, marines, and Department of Navy personnel. The threats the agency seeks to avoid could be against ships, installations, airfields, ports, and exercise areas used by navy personnel.

NCIS also has exclusive jurisdiction within the navy to investigate suspected, potential, and even actual acts of sabotage, espionage, defection, and assassination. It safeguards classified information and vets personnel to insure trustworthiness.

It protects classified information by neutralizing foreign intelligence services that are seeking valuable information from the Department of Navy.

Just like on the television show of the same name, the real life NCIS investigates crimes within the navy all crimes that are punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice by penalties of a year or more confinement. The crimes can be rape, burglary, robbery, homicide, and the theft of personal and government property. NCIS investigates the death of any naval service member whose death cannot be explained by natural causes or disease.

The episodes of NCIS have been dramatized to make the more interesting for viewers. Fictionalized incidents have been added. The same is true of other portrayals in television and the movies of the agency and other military agencies-such as the portrayals of the Judge Advocate General Corps on the television show JAG and in the movie A Few Good Men. Nevertheless, the real NCIS shares actual cases with the producers of the television constantly. People from the television show and real life representatives from NCIS constantly work together consistently to ensure the agency on the television show closely resembles the real NCIS. They even help guarantee the agents on television, walk, move, and talk like real NCIS agents.

One thing that is very different from real life compared to the television show is how informal the agents are toward each other. Experts say that real life NCIS agents would not go around head slapping other agents. They are more professional than that. Real life NCIS agents are civilians, although many of them may have once served in the navy or marines.

The real life NCIS investigates crimes all over the world-like on television.

In real life the NCIS uses its own experts, but also uses outside experts, such as forensic scientists, to help solve crimes. Agents use cadaver dogs to help them find decomposing human bodies, and they will bark if they find the bodies. They are specially trained not to touch the bodies, to avoid disturbing the evidence. NCIS uses forensic anthropologists to determine whether bones found, without a body, are human, and whether a crime has been committed or not. Evidence must be gathered that will help convict a murderer, even without the body.

While the real life incidents NCIS agents are involved with are not always as dramatic as those on the television show that is not always the case. After the marine barracks were bombed by terrorists in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983, NCIS opened up the 24-hour-a-day operational intelligence center the Navy Antiterrorist Alert Center to give warnings of terrorist threats to marine and navy commands. NCIS was responsible for investigating the Tailhook Scandal, in which more than 100 navy and Marine Corps officers were accused of sexually assaulting or other improper treatment toward 87 women at the Las Vegas Hilton.

When you watch NCIS on television, remember that although the incidents and characters may be a little more dramatic than in real life, they may be closer to the truth than you may have imagined.

Naval Criminal Investigative Service, no author listed, en.wikipedia.org

NCIS, no author listed, ncis.navy.mil

Is the Real NCIS like the Television Show, no author listed, wiki.answers.com

The Real NCIS, no author listed, investigation.discovery.com