David Brant

Dave Brant is a retired career Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) special agent and executive. He served in the NCIS from 1977 to 2005, leading the agency as its director from 1997 until his retirement in December 2005.^[1]

David Brant
Brant as Director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service
Occupation	NCIS special agent
Years active	1977-2005

Background and education

Brant received his undergraduate education at Bradley University and a master's degree from Indiana State University. During his time at NCIS, he graduated from the Senior Executive Course at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Before joining NCIS, Brant was a police officer with the Miami-Dade Police Department.

Career in law enforcement

Brant spent thirty years working in law enforcement, 28 of them at the NCIS, the last 8 years as its director.^[2]

Senator John Warner, who was himself a former Secretary of the Navy, read a tribute to Brant into the Senate record, when Brant retired.^[2]

Accusations of torture at Guantanamo

A twenty-page statement issued on July 7, 2004, describes a series of high-level meetings among the United States Department of the Navy's most senior lawyers, that were triggered by reports, from Brant, that the captives being held in the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base were being subjected to questionable interrogation techniques.^[3]

Alberto J. Mora's statement contained several quotations from Brant, about Brant's reluctance for the NCIS to be involved with the questionable interrogation techniques:

"Director Brant emphasized that NCIS would not engage in abusive treatment even if ordered to and did not wish to be even indirectly associated with a facility that engaged in such practices."

In 2011 Brant provided a video testimonial in which he voiced his respect for Mora, his immediate superior, for the principled stand he took as soon as Brant told him about the abuse of the individuals being held in Guantanamo.^[4] Brant said Mora didn't seem to even hesitate over whether he should a principled stand to his own superiors. Brant explicitly said he realized that Mora was putting his job on the line with his stand.

Television appearance

David Brant made a brief cameo appearance on the CBS drama NCIS playing a Special Agent of the same name in the episode "Frame Up" in Season 3. This episode aired on November 22, 2005 one month before his retirement. He is asked by the character Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) "I heard you were quitting" to which Brant responds "I like to refer to it as a lateral move into the recreational sector...Jethro" to which Gibbs explains to Mossad liaison officer Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) that it "...mostly means fishing and hitting a golf ball".^[5][6]

Post law-enforcement career

After he left NCIS Brant worked as a security expert for the accounting firms Deloitte Consulting and BDO.^[7] While at those firms he was a dedicated fund-raiser for the National Law Officers Memorial Fund.

He would eventually leave consulting for accountants to become the executive director of the National Law Enforcement Museum.^[7][8]

References

1. ^{[dead link‍]}
2. John Warner (2005-12-14). "TRIBUTE TO DAVID L. BRANT". United States Senate. Washington, DC. Retrieved 2020-12-28. Mr. President, I take this opportunity to recognize a dedicated law enforcement official at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, NCIS, David L. Brant, who is retiring after 28 years of service to the United States.
3. Alberto J. Mora (2004-07-07). "Memorandum from Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora to Navy Inspector General" (PDF). United States Navy. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2015-10-18. Retrieved 2007-05-05.
4. David Brant (2011-03-11). "Mora Put His Career on the Line". Witness to Guantanamo. Archived from the original on 2020-09-25. Retrieved 2020-12-28. Brant reported questionable interrogation techniques to Alberto Mora, then General Counsel of the Navy.
5. "David Brant". IMDb. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
6. "7wH6bBQPj-8qD30lhdOQ2w14456 (314x184 pixels)". Archived from the original on 10 July 2012.
7. "Welcome New Staff Members!". Museum Insider. Vol. IX, no. 6. Retrieved 2020-12-28. He served as the Director of NCIS for his last 8 years with the agency and was influential in creating the CBS show, NCIS, with Mark Harmon. He was a director with Deloitte Consulting for six years. Just prior to joining the Memorial Fund, he served as the Managing Director of BDO's Federal Practice.
8. Lisa Trigg (2019-10-14). "Beware 'Us vs. Them' thinking, says former NCIS chief: Brant, who earned master's at ISU, led Naval Criminal Investigative Service". Tribune-Star. Retrieved 2020-12-28. He also worked for the National Law Officers Memorial Fund in Washington, D.C., and the National Law Enforcement Museum.