This post contains spoilers for the January 22nd episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Season 14 episode 13.
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| Boston Brakes CSI 1413 |
Last night's episode abandoned this season's Perry Masonesque practice of locating guilt in the LSP (Least Suspected Person).* Instead, it offered a story that was less a "who done it" than an argument about the power and decency of government agencies. On one side of the argument is our belief in reporters who share information on government over-reaching. On the other side our belief that government agencies are actually on our side.
The story turned a reporter, John Merchiston, portrayed in earlier episodes as a celebrity journalist, into an Glenn Greenwald type, hot on the trail of a story about government surveillance and accepting leaks from an Edward Snowden type code-named "Suvari". Early on we see the CSIs watching a video of an interviewer telling Merchiston that he's gone from being a "Rock journalist to quixotic muckraker." And Murchiston says, "I'm just a seeker of the truth. . . In our obsession with security we may be relinquishing our freedom, surrendering to the real enemy - fear."
The plot of the show weaves around a series of killings: of Merchiston's assistant who dies in an exploding car (causing everyone to think that it's the reporter who is dead) and the buxom young woman who contacted him to pass on a thumb-drive from Suvari. There's even an earlier murder of a government worker who may have had an affair with an air force general.
At first, the argument for Merchiston is pretty weak. CSI Finlay (who has probably had a romantic involvement with him) calls him paranoid. His lawyer says that "His story was going nowhere . . . John's own worst enemy was always himself." At one point, as evidence is found linking Merchiston to the killing of the young woman, CSI Nick Stokes says, "He's a stone-cold killer." And when we see Merchiston in the flesh after the car crash, he is red-eyed and crazy acting.
But we also see that CSI D.B. Cooper, head of the night time shift at the crime lab, believes him and seems to be on his side, risking arrest by taking the reporter to Finlay's house so that he's safe. Over the program we slowly find out that Finlay wasn't paranoid, that someone had indeed been tampering with the evidence, hacking crime lab computers, and putting "back seat driving" capabilities into contemporary cars.
As the case against the reporter gradually erodes, so does the "case" against the FBI. At first we see them as dark suited and unfriendly automatons. They enter the crime lab like a regimented pack, carrying out evidence in the case. Later there's a scene in which an offensive FBI agent is interrogating Finlay with Brass standing in the room observing. After the agent makes particularly rude sexual comment to her about her relationship with Merchiston, Brass steps in and says, "Screw you!" and then turns to Julie saying, "Isn't that what you wanted to say?" He then tells the agent, "My house, my rules" and that he needs to be nicer. The action taken by one of our beloved regular characters against an FBI agent shows the Bureau in a bad light.
But this light fades as the FBI joins forces the Las Vegas police later in the program. After a car Nick Stokes and the lawyer are "driving" has been hacked and almost kills them, CSI Greg Sanders says to another FBI agent, "Like I told you the truth would set us free." The agent tells Greg, "Like I told you, we're on the same side."
It turns out that while inappropriate snooping was going on, it wasn't being done by the agency itself but by an Air Force General Robert Lonsdale. The show ends with a sharp confrontation between Lonsdale and DB, the former on the side of "Everything for national security" and the latter representing both the law and freedom.
DB: "I know what you've done. You've used the entire national security apparatus, all of their technology, to cover up an affair."
Lonsdale: "You don't know what I've done. And even if you did you couldn't understand it. You're not a soldier, a patriot. You are just another child of the Sixties who cloaks himself in principle while our enemies plot to bring chaos to our streets. I am not going to let that happen and I will stop anybody who gets in my way."
DB then says that his "hippie parents" taught him patience and that Lonsdale has involved way too many people for his crimes to remain hidden. "Someday there's going to be another . . . person of conscience and when they step up I'm going to be right there waiting patiently for you. You're dismissed, General."
So the bad guy is neither the reporter (the media) nor the government itself, but a single individual who is high enough placed that he can misuse the secret tools designed to protect the people. And the good guy is the baby boomer team leader who has the moral authority to challenge the bad guy who seems to be protected by a governmental cloak of invisibility.
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* This concept is an old one but I got the acronym from listening a Great Detectives of Old Time Radio podcast of a 1946 episode of the radio mystery, Casebook of Gregory Hood. The episode was entitled, "The Three Silver Pesos."
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