Entertainment

Real NCIS

Advisor Leon Carroll Jr. with actors Brian Dietzen and Mark Harmon. (THE WB)

Is there anything an “NCIS” special agent can’t do?

In the nine years the hit series has been on, the team of investigators that work for Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ (Mark Harmon) has foiled terrorist plots, hunted serial killers, sniffed out agency moles, foiled arms dealers, recovered nuclear warheads and helped rescue a missing Marine in Afghanistan. They’ve solved a few murders, too.

Before the Tuesday night series premiered on CBS in September 2003, hardly anyone outside the US military knew that the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, a civilian federal agency, actually existed, never mind what it did.

Murder investigations are under NCIS purview, but that’s just a fraction of its responsibilities. Real-life special agents do get tangled up in seemingly made-for Hollywood investigations.

They investigate felony criminal cases involving US Navy or Marine Corps personnel, says NCIS communications director MaryAnn Cummings. That includes aggravated assault (domestic or sexual), arson, counter-drug operations, white- collar crimes, not to mention counter-intelligence and “protecting the Navy’s secrets.”

“Our agents have the opportunity to see it all and do it all,” Cummings notes. “And that’s different from other law- enforcement organizations on the federal level, who may have agents specialize in one particular area. ”

Gibbs’ team is patterned after NCIS’ Major Case Response Team, which primarily collects and processes evidence from crime scenes.

The agency’s 1,200 special agents are posted all around the world and even onboard Navy vessels. When a crime occurs — or a juicy tip comes in — the agents are dispatched to process crime scenes, question witnesses, arrest and interrogate suspects and, ultimately, give their findings to prosecutors.

During investigations, NCIS agents work with every government agency worthy of an acronym, as well as local cops.

“There are constantly cases that interconnect with the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service,” says series executive producer Gary Glasberg. “It’s not unusual to bounce from subject matter to subject matter.” Or even jurisdictions.

You’ve seen all of this dramatized every week — minus all the boring paperwork.

“NCIS” has its longtime technical adviser, Leon Carroll Jr., to thank for keeping the drama real.

Carroll, a former Marine, advises the show’s producers on everything from the correct terminology for a paycheck (a “leave and earnings statement”) to the right method for taking a tire-track impression.

It’s geek heaven, for sure, but essential to keeping smooth relations between the show and the real NCIS, of which Carroll is a retired, 20-plus year veteran.

He no longer needs to remind the actors about how to hold a gun or clear a room, but he makes sure he’s on set whenever evidence is being collected. When Carroll weighs in on which evidence storage bags to use — still-wet blood on evidence requires paper bags, not plastic — he knows he isn’t doing anything “earth shattering,” but he says that if even the most minute detail is wrong, there will be hell to pay.

“I get those e-mails from my colleagues: ‘That wasn’t right! What the heck, were you not there that day?’ ” says Carroll.

“I try to put those things in as much as possible, sometimes for self-defense. I want to make sure that the agency is portrayed as being competent.”

That’s precisely why “NCIS” has enjoyed such a close working relationship with the real NCIS — now located at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., although the series refers to the original Washington Navy Yard location. The show has also worked closely with the Navy and the Department of Defense.

“If someone is using your name, your title, your agency, you want to make sure they’re credible and using [the name] in a positive manner,” says NCIS’s Cummings.

Although none of these organizations have veto power over story lines, “We do send them scripts and DVDs [in advance], and we welcome their input,” says Glasberg.

The only major difference between the show and real life: There is no staff coroner, like Dr. Donald Mallard, says Cummings.

Instead, the agency relies on the local medical examiner’s office or the military medical examiner’s office if the death occurs on a military instillation.

Despite all the access that the show has had to real-life NCIS personnel, only a handful of episodes are based on actual cases. (They won’t specify which ones, to protect the victims of the actual crimes.)

Says Glasberg, “We make an aggressive attempt to…approach story lines [the way] that NCIS would end up taking on [cases].

“I don’t think this show has ever tried to be sensational in the types of stories that it’s told; it’s always been more grounded in real situations and relationships and clearly it’s worked.”