Ok, I admit it… I was out at a bar and I totally missed this episode. In the past I actually mailed a video cassette with an episode on it to a fellow Doper. I forget his name.
So could someone recap/ spoil this episode for me and if you’re a true friend mail me a video of the episode?
Much thanks,
USCDiver
Source: http://www.westwingepguide.com/S5/Episodes/110_NE.html
It was actually better than the two commentaries reveal.
OK, I confess, I’m dumb…
So was there or was there not an actual bacteria released? If there was, then why did the President “know it was tonight”? And if there wasn’t, then why did the guy say that the bacteria wouldn’t “get through again”?
Max
There were not any actual bacteria. The president knew there would be a drill tonight, but just learned tonight that there had been an FBI investigation of a chemist who tried to buy bacteria from the Centers for Disease Control. The bacteria won’t get through again because it will be added to the list of bacteria that the system checks for.
It was a fairly boring episode. The knockdown of Toby was interesting. But the most interesting scene of all was…
…Donna walking out as Josh yelled for her.
Poignant. And about damn time.
No, no, lib. There most definitely was bacteria. After Bartlett told Charlie and Fiderer it was a drill, the agent asked the prez, “they bought it?” Then Charlie and Toby (or was it Josh) lamented the fact that the Secret Service explanation of “it was a drill” was getting old, and wasn’t going to work anymore. Plus, after the “false alarm” was over, Fiderer still saw a haz-mat unit cleaning out a car in the elipse.
Yeah, but why does that mean there were bacteria? I’m differentiating between false alarm and drill.
Because Bartlett told Charlie and Fiderer “It was a drill”, then afterwards, Butterfield asked him, “They bought it?”…in other words, he was asking the President, “Charlie and Fiderer bought the ‘drill story’?”
A false alarm is what you have to tell the public what happened for national security reasons, because you can’t reveal what sort of drills are occuring.
A drill is what you have to tell Charlie and Fiderer happened because they’d freak out if they really knew - plus, the knowledge of a bio-attack on the White House isn’t knowledge they should have.
Think of it as several layers of security.
Okay, that all makes sense. Thanks, Munch and Captain.
Actually, I thought telling Charlie and Fiderer that it was a drill was so they didn’t get all freaky that their homes were being used as terrorist targets.
Good thing that when the lockdown occurred everybody was paired up in neatly dramatic duos, huh? Sure would have been a quiet episode if everybody had gone home that five minutes earlier or had been alone in their offices. 
Anyway, could somebody with experience in these matters do a security diagram for me? Who has what clearances? Josh is Deputy Chief of Staff, yet the Deputy NSC tells him he doesn’t have her security levels. Wouldn’t the Deputy Chief of Staff need to be cleared for everything just to sit in on half the meetings he already attends? Or is it that much lower a position? I don’t understand how the NSC - an executive branch creation - would function if it could not talk to high-ranking White House staff.
And what would Leo, as Chief of Staff, be cleared for that Josh wouldn’t?
Just FWIW, I also understood at the end that Charlie’s mail had been tampered with for real but that the Secret Service and the President were keeping that knowledge to themselves with separate “drill” and “false alarm” cover stories.
No, because if that was the case, they just would have told them it was a false alarm.
The key to security clearances is need to know. The higher the security clearance the more stringent they get about this. While everything Josh, or Leo sits in on they have clearance for, it does not mean that they have necessarily “more” or higher clearance. Any classified briefing they receive would probably be prepared by someone who has at least the same overall level of clearance, but with more “need to know” all of the nitty gritty details rather than the big(ger) picture presented to the President or his staff (or Congressional personnel for that matter).
There were a few threads on security clearances recently in GQ, probably worth checking out.
Josh is a political analyst/operative. Top of the heap when it comes to what goes on between the White House, and the Congress, but not included in “sit room” type stuff. He has some need to know in matters of security, but not nearly the level of a senior assistant to the NSC.
By the way, as portrayed, his attitudes and habits make him seem to me to be a grave security risk, and I
would yank his access just about every week. He doesn’t take it seriously. Security is for other people.
Tris
In real life, Deputy Chief of Staff appears to be a very below-the-radar position.
At results.gov, two people have that position: Joe Hagin and Harriet Miers.
Hagin was given some heavyweight duties after 9/11, Real-life ‘West Wing’ drama, but I can’t find anything on what Miers does except “policy”.
The tv show obviously conflates the two positions, but neither one in real life appears to do anything Josh is shown as doing.
There’s still a couple things about this that are unclear to me. If this was actually an attack and the attack really was at Charlie’s home (was it?) would the Pres. really leave him in the dark on that?
That question leads me to consider what was said when the agent took Charlie into the other room alone. I originally thought he was just chewing Charlie’s ass for bringing outside mail to the west wing. Now I’m thinking maybe he let Charlie in on the truth.
Was the cover story of a drill just for Fiderer’s benefit? The Pres. knows that Charlie can be trusted and can handle the knowledge that he’s a target. After all, he’s already been shot at.
AfaH, I’m not sure if anything is accomplished by officially putting Charlie in the loop. By saying it’s a drill, he still becomes aware that his house and his mail are a potential target, that he shouldn’t be bringing in outside mail, and ultimately that there’s nothing he can do about it past that. In or out of the loop, Charlie’s still a target, and he knows that.
Munch…good points. Thanks.
Things like this must be incredibly difficult to keep track of. There must be scores of things that happen where different people are told different stories. How are the people that know the truth supposed to keep it straight, when even their closest advisors may have been told different versions of history?
What’s confusing me is that afteraward, the FBI guy was talking to the President, and he said something along the lines of, if it had been real, it would have contaminated the communications area.
But they didn’t treat Donna or CJ.
And did they actually give Cipro to the Oval Office group after all?
No, they didn’t get Cipro, because by the time the doc was about to prescribe that, they had already determined that the biological agent was tularemia, so they took specific antibiotics for that bacteria-- and they still have to take the antibiotics, which is why they were told it was a drill, and not a false alarm.