Oh please, it was obvious to me as soon as Stanton came on to testify that Sherry isn’t just part of the conspiracy, she’s behind it, at least the part to overthrow the president. It is probably the case that the initial plan to bring in the bomb came from the terrorists, but it’s clear that everything after that – at least with respect to the president – was orchestrated by Sherry to get back at Palmer and “reclaim” her place in power (or at least behind the power). Probably, she got early word about the terrorists and the bomb from her sources, and then constructed the elaborate scheme, culminating in Palmer being discredited and removed. Remember her little phone warning to Stanton, but then tipping off Palmer about him? All part of the plan, to have that damning evidence to use against him. Remember how she let the reporter go? All part of the plan. Think about everything that Sherry did, and it all fits into her being behind the plot from the beginning.
I dunno. I wonder: why would the architect of such a wide-ranging, dangerous plot be the one getting her hands dirty, and risking her neck on the scene doing scutwork? I’m gonna stick to my guns – Sherry Palmer will prove to be a most unlikely, but effective, cavalry. 
With 24, it’s best to conveniently ignore any of the technical details they give. Like the live satellite pictures transmitted instantly to your very own SecretAgentPDA, for instance. But concievably, if one wanted to try to explain this angle, one could suppose that the signature was found on a project file created by the program that the hacker used to create the falsified recording, instead of on the actual source files themselves.
Oh man, I was really hoping the deciding vote would belong to the Secretary of Agriculture!!
My only problem with 24 is that it’s stressful to watch. So much tension, suspense, agonizing backstabbing, plot twists, betrayals, amazing incompetence…and that’s just Kim. Add in the rest of the characters and it gets a little overwhelming. Plus the title sounds: “Tick SLAM, tick SLAM, tick SLAM.” Recipe for psychosis. “Take one disturbing soundtrack, Kiefer Sutherland, several dumb blondes and some manipulative brunettes, add a bunch of accents and a lot of incompetent cops…”
It helps me de-stress to visualize President Palmer in a Cleveland Indians uniform, sacrificing booze to his voodoo deity. I thought his silent exit after the vote was very depressing. Wouldn’t it have sounded better if he’d said to his traitorous, backstabbing VP, “I go to you. I stick up for you. If you no help me now, I say F@$k you, Jobu. I do it myself,” and then opened up with a bat? Admit it, we’d all be cheering.
Because she’s a control freak. And if you think back over what happened and what Sherry did, she had to be in the middle of things to direct everything the right way. The most damning evidence against Palmer was the torture of Stanton. Even though I am convinced that Stanton is in on the plot too (else why would he have lied?), without Sherry’s artful guidance and manipulation, Palmer might not have found out about Stanton in time to force him to torture him.
Besides, never underestimate the power of a woman scorned. She’s behind it, no question.
Sherry is rotten, but whenever she does something terrible, it’s with the aim of helping David’s career.
Maybe she thought that a nuclear crisis would provide David with a huge opportunity to rise up, rally America behind him, and become the great leader she was always convinced he could be. I don’t think she’s crazy or evil enough to blow up L.A., but she might have been persuaded that the best thing for her ex-husband would NOT be to have the bomb disarmed right away, but to have a drawn-out disaster that would give him a chance to wrap himself in the flag and pose as America’s hero.
No, we don’t really want to think about the bomb very closely.
The 9/11 attack in NYC caused a mere 2500 dead and a few tens of millions of dollars of damage, many thousands of lost jobs, a huge budget deficit in NYC, and a total change in the way the U.S. handles security.
Now think about a nuclear bomb in L.A. Mutltiply all those numbers above by orders of magnitude. Could any oil company seriously think that if the U.S. economy took a trillion dollar hole that it would help them to get a few dollars more from Caspian Sea oil? That it would help the stock prices of their firms? That it wouldn’t change the whole world’s economy? That they could continue business as usual in L.A.?
The notion that business would do this is too ludicrous even for the most anti-business no war for oil fanatic. It won’t work economically in any conceivable way. You can’t apply logic to why anyone in this show would do any such thing. Perhaps a true suicidal anti-American martyr would want to take down the country, but there cannot be a calculated reason to do so. It’s just a macguffin of monumentally idiotic proportions.
Now, back to the fun. Didn’t you get the feeling that the way the show has been going that even if the hacker had lived in Utah, it would just be a ten-minute drive for Jack?
Thanks for the backup, astorian!
Exapno, I thought the same thing – right as Jack was learning about the programmer, I called out to my roommates, “I bet he lives in North Hollywood.” (Down the road from us.) Verily, he did. Heh.
Expano,
The conspirators never intended for the bomb to go off.
Gangster: the oil people did–they need the war. That’s why they got to the 7th commando and had him off the other guys. The Vice President and his pals didn’t, they just wanted to make the government look good and beef up national defense.
(um…right?)
Meanwhile Kim has been in that cruiser for like an hour. Gotta love the consistency. Not that I wanted to see Kim DO anything, mind you. I would be very happy if she spent the rest of the show in that cruiser. But I know from past experience that Kim’s cruiser rides end badly.
Yeah, not to mention Windows XP. 
Okay, pretty good episode – and at the end when I saw the person entering the apartment from behind, and realized it was a woman, I knew it was going to be Sherry, and I immediately yelled out, “That bitch!!”, as she turned around.
Gotta love her.
Bring Nina back!
(Truly, I think the best moments of this season have been Jack/Nina scenes).