Dana Walsh


 * "I always knew there was something wrong with her. She was a little too perfect."
 * &mdash; Chloe O'Brian, "Day 8: 7:00am-8:00am"

Dana Walsh — known to some by her birth name Jenny Scott — was a senior data analyst at CTU New York. She was engaged to CTU's Director of Field Operations, Cole Ortiz. Dana was spying on CTU for the Russian government, which was supporting Samir Mehran and IRK operatives trying to assassinate Omar Hassan on Day 8. After being tortured for the evidence of Russia's involvement in Hassan's death, Dana was taken by Jack Bauer who forced her to give him the evidence, and was killed to avenge the victims of her actions during the day, primarily Renee Walker.

Before Day 8
Dana was born in Rock Springs, Arkansas under the name Jenny Scott. At age seventeen, she was convicted on charges of homicide and grand theft auto along with Kevin Wade, her boyfriend, and served five years in jail. Kevin believed she had testified against him since she got out of jail before him; however, she claimed she was released earlier because she had been tried as a juvenile.

Dana stated to Cole that at some point, a Russian approached her and offered her a chance for a new life with a new identity. Eventually, with the Russians' help, she changed her name to Dana Walsh and landed a job as a senior data analyst at CTU New York, acting as a conduit of information to her handlers. Working at CTU, she entered a relationship with Cole Ortiz and eventually became engaged to him. While setting up a mortgage, the couple opened a joint account at First Unity Savings Bank, where one of Cole's high school friends worked. Dana spent the Christmas before Day 8 with her sister Ruth and her infant nephew back in Arkansas.

A few days before Day 8 began, Kevin Wade learned about Dana's new identity and location, and began calling her frequently, trying to exploit her government connections for personal gain. Around this time, Dana went to Pavel Tokarev, and told him that after helping her employers with Omar Hassan's assassination, she wanted out, and for her and Cole to be able to live their lives without their intrusion. Tokarev chastised her for letting herself get close to Ortiz, but she stood her ground, threatening to speak to his superiors in Moscow if he resisted her. Secretly, she had this conversation videotaped as evidence of the Russian involvement in Hassan's death, and stashed the memory card in her safety deposit box at First Unity Savings, along with a gun and a flash-bang device.

Day 8
After working with fellow CTU personnel to avert a terrorist crisis, Dana received a threatening call in which Kevin Wade referred her as Jenny from Rock Springs 5:29PM. Walsh was periodically harassed by Wade over the phone until he finally showed up at CTU. There, he interrogated and blackmailed her to give him a place to stay; if she refused, he would reveal troubling secrets about her past. She surrendered and gave him the keys to her apartment.



When she arrived at her apartment at Kevin's demand, Kevin offered to leave her life if she got him and his partner Nick a large amount of money. She returned to CTU to program a keycard to an NYPD lockup where $120,000 was stashed as evidence. She passed the access card onto Kevin and told him she'd be his guide once he arrived at the warehouse. She gave Kevin instructions to break in, steal the money, and make a clean escape. However, Nick decided to stay and clear the entire lockup, trashing the place in the process. Soon, a cop came for a patrol and spotted the mess. Dana was shocked that Kevin and Nick hadn't left yet, and instructed them to sneak out carefully. However, Nick repeatedly struck the officer with a baseball bat, much to Dana's horror. The two escaped and Dana was distraught and unable to focus on her CTU duties afterward. When she called Kevin to return her key to her apartment and to get out of her life, he refused. She began to worry about what Kevin wanted next. Later, she went to find Cole to tell him about her past. They were interrupted and Cole had to go back in the field. She then set out under the excuse that she was fixing a faulty relay at a CTU substation on 17th Street. She arrived at the strip club where Kevin and Nick were celebrating and spied on them leaving as she examined the gun in her hand.



At around 12:00am, Kevin and Nick took two strippers and exited the club with them in their van. Followed closely by Dana in her car, they drove to a secluded area of Eastwick Park, stopping by a pond. After the strippers left because Nick began harassing them, Dana put a silencer on her gun, exited her car, and prepared to shoot the two. Before she was noticed, however, Cole arrived and stopped her, demanding to know what was going on. Reluctantly, Dana told him about her past and the robbery she helped Kevin and Nick commit.

After she finished, Cole confronted the two criminals with a gun, and they finally agreed to leave Dana alone. After he left, Nick stabbed Kevin, grabbed a gun, and prepared to shoot Cole from behind. Kevin, who was dying, crawled out of the vehicle and shouted a warning to Dana and Cole. As Nick shot, they jumped behind Cole's car and Cole fatally shot Nick in the chest with a shotgun. Dana rushed over to Kevin, who was dying in her arms apologizing for coming back into her life.

After Kevin died, Dana and Cole dumped the bodies on the water and agreed to strip the van.



Believing her troubles to be over, Dana returned to CTU, only to be confronted by Bill Prady, Kevin's parole officer. He was adamant about getting to what he believed was the truth behind Kevin's disappearance. After the EMP knocked out CTU, he went to Hastings, who put him in a holding cell. Dana came in to confront him one last time where he accused Dana of aiding Kevin in the robbery. Dana strangled him to death at approximately 4:58 am. She then hid his body in an air vent and called Samir Mehran to more actively assist him with the conspiracy.

When Samir and Tarin Faroush were trying to evade the authorities with the fuel rods, Dana called Samir and whispered instructions to him. She then deactivated the satellite coverage for 30 seconds, allowing the terrorists to escape. At one point during that conversation, Dana revealed that she doesn't work for Samir, but for another group that is helping him.

When President Allison Taylor refused to surrender IRK President Omar Hassan to Samir and his men, Samir called Dana and told her he planned to detonate the nuclear device in Manhattan. Dana looked concerned and tried to convince him that he should wait, because the radiological device is his leverage. However, her cover was blown when Jack retrieved Tarin Faroush's phone off of his dead body and Chloe was able to access the phone records off of the memory card. When Dana realized that her cover was blown, she fled CTU Headquarters, killing two guards and escaping to the parking lot in the midst of a shoot-out. Because of the red alert on her, Cole rushed out to the parking garage, where he shot out her tires, causing Dana's car to slam into another vehicle. She was detained by CTU and taken into custody after a tense moment with Cole, but demanded to speak only with Jack Bauer.

When questioned by Jack, she offered the location of Hassan on four conditions: federal immunity, government protection from the IRK, compensation from money lost because of her cover being blown, and that Jack lead the rescue operation, because her deal goes out the window if Hassan dies. She refused to disclose any information about the party who offered to pay her for her espionage, which disturbed Jack. Shortly later, she briefed CTU about the terrorist safehouse, an apartment complex on Holland Avenue, occupied by Samir's remaining six terrorists. However, Hassan was discovered dead half an hour later, effectively voiding her immunity agreement.

Soon after 9:00am, Jack went to the courthouse where Sergei Bazhaev was being held. Jack told Bazhaev to give up the people who killed Renee, but Bazhaev said that it was the Russian Government behind the day's events, not Red Square. Jack wanted to know how and Bazhaev told him it was through their source on the inside, Dana. Jack went to CTU to question Dana. Jack began to question her and told her that Renee was killed. Shocked by this Dana said that she was truly sorry. Jack, furious by this, banged Dana's head on the table an began slapping her repeatedly. Dana said that she could give Jack the hitter, but she wanted her immunity back. Jack told her that if she was lying that he would find her no matter where she tried to hide. When President Taylor arrived at CTU, she said there wasn't enough evidence to give Dana immunity, so Dana remained in custody.

Shortly after 10:00am, Charles Logan approached President Taylor and announced that Dana was no longer safe at CTU, since Jack Bauer would be attempting to interrogate her at all costs. He suggested that she be taken to a safe house by a private security firm that he had already contacted, and President Taylor agreed. When Mark Bledsoe arrived at CTU to take Dana, he contacted Jason Pillar and said that after his people interrogated Dana, it would be best to kill her so she would be out of the way. Pillar agreed to let Logan know. Dana was then transported to the safe house, after desperately begging Chloe O'Brian to help her. Shortly before 11:00am, Dana taken to an abandoned warehouse on 14633 12th Street and was forced into a room filled with various torture devices. Dana was then strapped to a table, with her torturers preparing to waterboard her.



Ten minutes later, Jack and Cole stormed the warehouse and rescued Dana. After being threatened by Jack, she agreed to take them First Unity Savings Bank where she had a private safety-deposit box containing the evidence. Cole took her inside under the guise of them checking their finances for the wedding. While waiting for the box Dana began to tell Cole the truth. She said she really did care about him, and that she was a girl with five years of prison time behind her with no visible future, but a Russian approached her with an opportunity to have a life and she chose to take it. When the box was delivered to them Dana went to open it but Cole stopped her. He opened the box and saw a silenced pistol with other items. He said she was unbelievable and picked up the pistol. Under it was a flash-bang that was rigged, and Cole was knocked unconscious by the blast. Dana then called the police pretending to be a distressed woman calling about the presence of Jack. Before leaving, she brushed Cole's face with her hand, indicating she was somewhat truthful in saying she had feelings for him. Her phone call brought the NYPD to the bank, where they attempted to arrest Jack, but he broke out of custody and pursued her down the street to a closed building.

After trading several gunshots, Dana ran out of ammunition and was cornered upstairs. She surrendered the data-chip. Once again, she tried to bargain her way out of the situation, begging that she knew nothing of the plot to murder Renee Walker. She asked Jack what she could do. Jack replied "nothing", and shot twice, finally killing her.

Minutes later, NYPD officer Mund escorted Cole to Dana's corpse to question him about the shooting. Stunned, Cole gave Captain Walleki her name, and listened as the captain pointed out powder burns on her gunshot wounds that suggested she was executed at close range. Despite the betrayal, Cole was saddened by Dana's death.

Memorable quotes

 * Dana Walsh: My name's not Dana Walsh...it's Jenny Scott.


 * Dana Walsh: Cole... Cole, what about us?
 * Cole Ortiz: I don't know.


 * Dana Walsh: Tick tock Mister Bauer. You're running out of time.


 * Dana Walsh: Jack... Tell me what I can do. (last words)
 * Jack Bauer: Nothing.... Nothing. (shoots Dana twice)

*Dana Walsh: You want answers, Bring me Bauer.

Background information and notes

 * Dana's name was originally scripted to be "Dayna Pakkala".
 * In an interview, Katee Sackhoff revealed that to remember all her technical lines, she taped the difficult phrases to her computer screen to read when filming.
 * Several of the events surrounding Dana in Season 8 parallel those of Nina Myers in Season 1, up until and including the execution of Dana by Jack Bauer (although when Jack shot Myers she was reaching for a weapon; Dana was completely defenseless).
 * Dana also has parallels with Marie Warner. They were both engaged to a fiance, and both turned out to be working for terrorists.
 * Dana Walsh appeared in 20 episodes of the show, with more appearances than any one of the main villains of prior seasons, including Habib Marwan (16) and Abu Fayed (15). Other secondary villains to share this distinction are Charles Logan and Nina Myers.
 * She is the ninth character to die while she was portrayed as part of the main cast, along with Teri Bauer, George Mason, Edgar Stiles, Milo Pressman, Bill Buchanan, Larry Moss, Omar Hassan and Renee Walker. Dana's death marks the first time that more than two main cast members have been killed in any one season.
 * She is the third character to die while being part of the main cast without receiving a silent clock, the first two being Milo Pressman and Larry Moss.
 * Dana is the first character to be killed by Jack Bauer while a member of the main cast.
 * Dana was the third of four females to be killed on-screen by Jack Bauer, the others being Nina Myers, Nicole and an unnamed Russian operative in Day 8: 12:00pm-1:00pm.
 * With regards to Dana's unpopularity with fans, Howard Gordon said "We anticipated that from the very beginning. This woman had a secret life, with a secret life behind it — something that came out later. It emotionally justified something that we always recognized was a pretty tricky and far-out story. We were very lucky to have Katee Sackhoff play along."
 * Katee Sackhoff originally auditioned for the role of Kim Bauer.

Appearances
Dana Walsh