Summary: The investigation of a terrorist group creates tension within Don’s team and problems between the brothers.
Original air date: May 16, 2008 (US)
Written by: Cheryl Heuton and Nicolas Falacci
Directed by: John Behring
Opening numbers:
783,350,200: Online research documents
41,000: Gene loci in rice
112: Designer viruses
2: Kidnapped men
Family Concepts: (character development)
- Megan resigns from the FBI to counsel women in prison and finish her doctorate.
- Charlie emails classified documents to scientists in Pakistan and is arrested. He loses his clearance and as a result can no longer work on classified projects at CalSci or work with the FBI.
- Charlie spent a year at MIT
- Charlie is a Boson Celtics fan.
Episode Quotes:
- Charlie: I’ve just been arguing with an FBI counter-terrorism expert. What are you guys up to?
- Alan: Professor Sanjrani? He’s involved in an FBI case?
Don: I thought you were reading the paper.
Alan: Yeah well I was but it’s too depressing. - Megan: So if this is a Pakistani extremist, I’m a Japanese school girl.
- Larry: Last year I was 217 miles above the Earth. Our relationship has never depended on geographic proximity.
- Alan: This is not the first time this house has been divided by fundamental disagreements. That year Charlie spent at MIT, remember when he came home? Now that was a shocker.
Charlie: Yeah, so, I’m a Celtics fan. It happens even in good families.
Don: Not really. Not in LA. - Alan: I think it’s to be continued.
Episode Synopsis:
Two men with ties to the Pakistan International Fund are kidnapped, one on his lunch break and the other in front of his home and family. Phil Sanjrani a professor and colleague of Charlie and Larry is arrested at CalSci because of his involvement with the PIF. Charlie is determined to find out what’s happened to his friend and while at FBI headquarters is asked to help with the FBI case against the PIF.
Agent William Fraley, an FBI counter-terrorism expert, thinks the PIF is involved in sending money and guns to extremist groups in Pakistan. Sanjrani has been arrested because he sent information about bio-weapons to groups in Pakistan. David and Colby are called to a warehouse where the bodies of the two kidnapped men are found. Fraley is convinced they were co-conspirators in a plot to blowup area high school and were killed be the leader of the terrorist cell. Charlie shows using the FBI’s own criteria the PIF doesn’t fit the profile for a terrorist group. He is also able to show another man with ties to the dead men, an attorney named Benjamin Rajar.
The FBI stops an attempt to kidnap Rajar on the street and when questioned about the dead men states they had hired him to look at the books for PIF, they suspected the leader of the organization Ahmad Hassan was stealing money since charities in Pakistan weren’t receiving promised funds. Megan does some digging and discovers there are ties to the Irish Republican Army in phone calls made from PIF headquarters to cites around the US. Eventually she shows that Hassan and a leading IRA member named Shane O’Hanahan are the same person. O’Hananhan was stealing from the PIF to fund his arms deals. O’Hanahan is killed by the FBI when he tries to shoot his way out of an arrest.
Charlie, frustrated because Sanjrani is going to be prosecuted for terrorist acts, even though his research has been proved to be exactly what he said it was: genetic research into crop yields, emails the rest of Sanjrani’s research to scientists in Pakistan. He is arrested and stripped of his clearance; as a result he will be unable to work on classified projects at CalSci and will no longer be able to consult on FBI cases.