"That's funny you say you were almost ready to trust him, coz I don't trust him ONE BIT! lol. A very interesting charachter to say the least, but I think there are too many secrets in his past for him to be trusted.

A few reasons (I also listed elsewhere) are:

1. The first thing he did when he got the directors job (ep5.19- Judgement day part2) That he took something out of his own file and shredded it.

2. There was a possible/probable "identity swap" between him and his boxer friend??

3. The supposed emails from Ziva to Michael. (Does anyone else think these are from Vance- or am I just a conspiracy nut

4. The are too many unanswered questions about Zivas capture and resuce in season 6/7 and other things (Why was the rescue so easy? Why was Salim saking about NCIS? Why was Michael around around when Ziva was caught in the bomb blast?)

But I must warn you that I do like a good consipracy and have to be suspicious of SOMEONE. It's ha;f the fun.

His character has been very well written, because, like you Det. Bckett, I have had moment where I thought, perhaps he's ok after all. But I'm not falling for it.

Hopefully we wont need to wait too long to find out :D"

"Am I the only one that really likes Leon Vance? He's a politician and as DB already wrote he has to find a way between what politics necessarily needs and doing the job the best he can.
Well, there have been identity switches - but as far as we know to save Leon's life. I think as Secnav knows Leon so well and he is fully trustable.
And it's fine for me to see that he and Gibbs have developed a good work relationship with deep respect for one another.
"

"Thanks, Margy. I think it's great to see two so different men like Vance and Gibbs finding out how to work with one another successfully and become friends. In my opinion the reference to Casablanca in “ Rule 51” was a perfect match."

"I warmed up to Vance quite a bit in S7 because of how him and Gibbs seemed to work better together. an example was in the finale - Rule 51 - Gibbs was trying to let him know his hands were tied without coming out and saying "my hands are tied." Here are my thoughts to your points:

1 - SECNAV said most of what was in Dir. Vance's file was not accurate to begin with. SECNAV also said there wasn't a minute of Leon Vance's life he couldn't account for.

2 - We don't know that the person we know as Leon Vance didn't have a detached retina too.

3 - The e-mails were found on the laptop found in Tabal's apartment, the laptop that belonged to Rivkin that he left in place of the one that was found fried in Ziva's apartment.

4 - we didn't see hardly any of the interrogation leading up to that scene in "Aliyah" because Ziva had already been beaten up. She could have given up her ties to NCIS before we saw Saleem rip her Star of David necklace from her neck. Rivkin was with Ziva in the bomb blast because they were working together on the case that started S6. It was a joint Mossad/NCIS assignment that Ziva was on when the blast occured.

Just my $0.02"

"I thought i posted this here but must have been on another thread....just watched Judgement Day and for the first & only time I remember, Vance calls Gibbs Jethro - expressing his sympathy at Jenny's death. That's meaningful - both that he expressed an emotion and that he calls him Jethro. I'm warming up to the character...sort of retroactively! "