It’s official. Marwan is being assisted by our very own Department of Defense.

We’ve speculated many times in the past weeks about the presence of so many Americans helping Marwan with his nefarious plans. It now appears certain that someone in DoD has been aiding and abetting Marwan and is using either DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) personnel or hired mercs to assist the terrorist. Consider the following:

McGlennon-Forster Connection

The defense contractor hired Marwan. Tony mentioned that someone at the firm would have had to okay his security clearance. The someone was probably VP of Security Conlon who died at Jack’s hands in the sporting goods store after he shot Paul.

The Fake ID’s for Anderson

Anderson needed DoD help to penetrate our security to steal the Stealth. The false ID’s were made at Marwan’s headquarters.

Stealth Schematics and Flight Simulator

What? Do you think Anderson could have picked those up where he got his copy of “Grand Theft Auto?”

Transponder Frequency for Nuclear Football

This to me is what answers any lingering doubts about DoD involvement. Only someone very high up in the national security establishment would have access to that frequency. And Marwan had it.

Okay, so now the fun part begins. Who’s the traitor? Who would be connected to all those threads that point to DoD involvement?

Wild guess (and I do mean wild) centers on two people: Audrey Heller or her father the Secretary of Defense himself!

Yes they were both kidnapped. Secretary Heller even had a gun to his head when Jack rescued him. But did anyone check to see if that gun was loaded with anything but blanks? And Secretary Heller would be in a position to pull all of those threads above together plus his access to a large pool of current and/or former DIA agents and mercs.

As for Audrey, suspicion falls on her because of Paul’s peripheral involvement. And she would have access to all that information mentioned above. After all, who would suspect poor little Audrey? Maybe the writers loved their Nina surprise so much from season one they wanted a reprise.

Just a few thoughts to chew on as we head into the last 7 episodes.

SUMMARY

Air Force I’s forced landing in the desert is the least of our problems because as the plane decompressed after being “indirectly hit” by an air to air missile the nuclear “football” – a briefcase containing the codes to launch a nuclear strike – was sucked out and landed about 40 miles from the site where the President’s plane was forced down.

The idea that the football would be of value for anything after AF I crashed except the fact that it’s probably made out of fine Corinthian leather is ludicrous. Those codes don’t take “hours” to change as Audrey said later in the show. That would simply be unacceptable security wise. Although no one knows, my guess is those codes can be deleted and new ones substituted in a matter of minutes or perhaps even seconds. Any other scenario would be unthinkable given just such an eventuality as AF I going down.

I almost considered declaring that the show had “jumped the shark.” But, what the hell! It’s a TV show for God’s sake! Let’s suspend belief in reality and move on.

As teams move in to rescue any survivors at the crash site, Jack is ordered by Secretary Heller to head up the effort to retrieve the football. Before Jack can rush out to save the world, he’s got to confront Audrey over his failure to protect Paul. After Audrey muses that it’s her fault because she doubted Paul’s innocence, Jack reassures her:

Jack: You are not responsible for this. I and I alone made the decision on how to handle Paul. If you want to remain effective, if you want to be able to do your job, you have to let it go.

Audrey: Jack, that’s your gift. You’re able to black things out. I can’t do that.

Clearly, Jack’s in big trouble with Audrey. As she starts to weigh the pluses and minuses of her decision, there seem to be more and more minuses coming up where Jack is concerned.

Meanwhile, a couple of innocent civilians are about to be drawn into the vortex of crisis. Kelly and Jason Gerard are out in the middle of the desert camping where they discover the football amidst some wreckage of AF I. Like good citizens they contact their local police who immediately connect them to Jack. As they discover terrorists hot on the trail, Jack tells them to go hide in a reserve power station. Marwan, one step ahead of us as usual, knows exactly where to go and follows the Gerards to the power station.

Back at CTU, Bill Buchanan informs Tony that, although he’s very fond of Michelle, he never got to first base with her outside of work because she still cares for him. Will Tony try and patch things up with Michelle? Or will he wait until after they save the world together? Given that one of them is probably slated to die, it would make perfect sense to have them patch things up only to have one of them bite the dust.

And proving that old political operatives never die, they simply switch allegiances, former Chief of Staff to President Palmer Mike Novak (who engineered the cabinet vote that temporarily ousted the President last season) had occasion to put his skills to use getting the cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment again because of the President’s incapacity. This time, he’s an adviser to Vice President Logan, which begs the question; who would benefit most if the President was killed? The fact that Novak is on the VP’s staff brings immediate suspicion in that direction.

A short note on the oath the VP took. Since the 25th amendment has never been invoked, there’s no precedent for the VP taking another oath of office (he takes the same oath as the President at the Inauguration) for his “fill-in” role. And you may have noticed that the oath concluded without the customary “So help me God.” In fact, those words are not in the oath that’s written in the Constitution (Article II Section 1). However, Washington himself added the words when he took the first oath in 1789 and it’s been tradition ever since. I wonder if we should read any significance into the writers not including “So help me God” in this instance?

Back at the power station, Jason and Kelly try their best to elude Marwan and his thugs. Jack, pinned down outside the station by gunfire, advises Jason to split up with Kelly, each taking a component of the football. Great idea, bad execution. Jason gets caught and Marwan with cold efficiency shoots Jason first in the shoulder and then in the knee to try and get him to reveal where the control board is. Seeing her loved one suffer, Kelly appears and in sheer desperation, tries to bargain with Marwan by exchanging the board for her husband. Marwan smiles a little smile and points the gun at her husband’s head which ends Kelly’s doomed gambit right there.

Just in time (I wish I had a nickel for every time I wrote that about Jack in the last 17 weeks) Jack shows up and saves the Gerards who then pass out of the picture having performed bravely in the service of their country.

Resuming the chase for Marwan and the football, Jack calls on the helicopter to assist. The copter shines a light into the first jeep which goes off a bridge and crashes. Jack recovers the football only to discover that there are pages missing from the code book. Michelle informs him that the missing pages contain both launch codes and information on where the warheads are. And now the race is on to find Marwan before he can find a nuke and terrorize another American city.

Everything that’s happened to date – all the terrorists plans – may, in fact, have been geared toward this one supreme moment when Marwan gets control of a nuke. So many times in the last few hours either Tony or Jack have remarked that they’re just spread too thin to cover all the bases. The evacuation of people from the area of the nuclear plant has taxed the resources of our first responders so that the help CTU and DoD expect in a national crisis just isn’t there. And Marwan knows this which may mean that he engineered these attacks all to get his hands on the football.

BODY COUNT

We’re informed early in the episode that the fighter escort intercepted the Stealth being flown by Anderson and shot it down. Scratch Anderson. Another CTU back-up for Jack is killed. That makes 4 by my count so far. Wonder what the life expectancy is for being Jack’s back-up? Also Baldy, who we left unconscious at the offices where Marwan was directing the meltdowns finally gets it as Jack offs him before he can kill the Gerards. Jack takes care of him and 2 other terrorists:

Jack: 39

Show: 140

Unknown number of dead aboard Air Force I and we’re still waiting on a body count from last week’s attack on Marwan’s headquarters in the warehouse.

LOOSE END

Anyone else find it a little strange that Jack could get back to CTU headquarters so quickly after relaying the info about Anderson’s hard drive at the pilot’s apartment?

And who was that giving the oath of office to the Vice President? Traditionally, that job falls to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. If that was the CJ, I would say it’s fantastic that we finally have an African-American Chief Justice! If not, it’s baloney. As an example, Rehnquist got up out of his sickbed to make it to Bush’s Inaugural. Unless the CJ was out of town, there’s no way anyone else would administer the oath.