An ex-marine with a stern sense of duty, the Bureau's Assistent Director Walter Skinner has little patience with Fox Mulder's unorthodox methods of investigation. More than once he has warned Mulder and Scully that their inguiries were crossing into dangerous territory, and aoce he shut down the X-files entirely. But when Dana Scully was kidnapped he reopend them. It's never clear whose side Skinner is on , or whose he takes his orders from.