At the end of the episode, Callen was reading a book called "88 days to Kandahar : A CIA Diary." by Robert Grenier. It details the events of how the CIA installed Hamid Karzai as the first Prime Minister of Afghanistan in the post-9/11 era. Callen use to work for the CIA before he joined NCIS.
On February 28, 1997, there was a shoot-out between two suspects and members of the Los Angeles Police Department near the North Hollywood branch of Bank of America. It was a drawn-out skirmish, where several Police Officers and Civilians were killed in the line of fire, because the assailants were well-armed and protected by body armor. The bank robbers did not survive the conflict.
The 442nd Infantry Regiment was composed of Japanese-Americans who were placed in internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, at December 7, 1941.
Gerald McRaney has another indirect connection to Donald P. Bellisario other than JAG (1995). During the 1980's, when Bellisario's was a showrunner for Magnum, P.I. (1980), the show was the lead-in for Simon & Simon (1981), and as such when a story began on Magnum PI, it would be tied-up via a cross-over on the later show.