Walter
Sergei Skinner(Mitch Pileggi) is Assistant Director at the F.B.I.
and he has a stern and serious demeanor coming from his years
in battle as a Marine. He also wants to have agents investigate
using conventional methods and frequent field reports. This raises
a problem for him in dealing with Fox "Spooky" Mulder's
strange logic and unconventional methods of investigation. He
seemed to take orders from the Cigarette-Smoking Man, who stood
quietly in his office.
He first appeared in the first season-episode "Tooms". In the season 1 finale "The Erlenmeyer Flask", Skinner shut down the X-Files project, splitting up Mulder and Scully. He then re-opened the X-Files after Scully's abduction in "Ascension". When Mulder tried to resign from the FBI in "One Breath", Skinner described to him a near-death experience he had in Vietnam, and told Mulder he would not accept his resignation.
In the third season-premiere "The Blessing Way", Skinner was involved in an armed standoff with Agent Scully. In the succeeding episode, "Paper Clip", Skinner was carrying a digital tape containing information on an alien-coverup when he was ambushed and beaten, the tape taken away from him. In the episode "Piper Maru" Skinner was shot at point blank range but survived after being rushed to a hospital. He was almost charged with the murder of a prostitute in the episode "Avatar", but he was not charged due to evidence from Mulder and Scully.
He was involved in the cover-up of a bee attack in the episode "Zero Sum". In the fifth-season episode "Redux II" he was almost put to blame for the conspiracy, with Section Chief Scott Blevins telling Mulder that they had evidence against him. Later on, Mulder instead revealed the person responsible for it was the Section Chief himself. Skinner confirmed it. He had been taking more interest in Mulder and Scully's cases during Season 5, appearing in more episodes and helping the two agents. However, in the X-Files movie Scully and Mulder were reassigned to Assistant Director Kursh, effectively removing Skinner as the intrepid agents' main FBI ally.
In the season six episode "S.R. 819" Skinner was
infected with a fatal disease that was brought on by microscopic
robots in his blood. His heart stopped but it was restarted when
Alex Krycek stopped the robots with a remote control. Later,
Krycek told Skinner that he could kill him anytime.
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