Assistant Director Skinner is Fox Mulder and Dana Scully's supervisor. He is an ex-Marine: stern and demanding. His strict insistence on by-the-book investigative techniques often puts him at odds with Mulder, whose unorthodox methods grate on the senior man. Skinner gets frequent visits from the mysterious Cigarette-Smoking Man, but the exact relationship is ambiguous at best. Although Skinner once shut down the X-Files on "orders from above," he later reopened them with his own authority, and they have since stayed open.

Skinner's relationship with Mulder is equivocal: while the younger agent's methods and irreverant manner exasperate him, he has found many ways to support Mulder even against the Bureau's hierarchy. In "One Breath," he refused to accept Mulders resignation, and told him of an out-of-body experience he had during his service days in Vietnam. "I am afraid to look beyond that experience, Agent Mulder. You...you are not. Your resignation is unacceptable.

With Nick Lea