The Ledger

14.8 Embedded

In this episode (14.8), a television "tabloid journalist" is shot outside a bar. The prime suspect is a US soldier angry over reporting the journalist did in Iraq which led to the deaths of three other soldiers. Briscoe and Green capture the suspect, but McCoy and Southerlyn develop doubts as to whether they have the right man. The episode contains vigorous debate about the ethics of the war in Iraq and the usefulness of embedded journalists.

The episode begins with the journalist, Frank Elliot, talking with some friends in a bar. They're talking about women when he spots his ex-girlfriend, a blonde woman. He tries to get her to go home with him, since he's leaving for Iraq again the next morning, but she refuses, in part because she is now engaged. He steps outside (off camera) and shots ring out. Briscoe and Green arrive at the club (Louts), and Briscoe immediately recognizes Elliot who is injured but still allive.Briscoe, apparently not Elliot's biggest fan, quips "Only the good die young."

They visit Elliot at the hospital, where he is not yet conscious. His friends are there, and tell them about the blonde and that Elliot was planning to leave for Iraq the following morning. They visit the blonde, Gia, who talks to them while wearing a silky red robe and a black bra. She isn't much help. They visit his workplace, the CJC Broadcasting Network to learn who his enemies might be. They learn there that Elliot profiles a corporate executive who stole from his company. They visit the exec, as he's exiting his helicopter, but he has a solid alibi.

The dets revisit Frank in the hospital, and he's now conscious. Briscoe is angry with Elliot because of a story he did 3 years ago about a corrupt cop in the 12th precinct. The cop went on to commit suicide. Elliot tells the story of his own shooting and says he went out to get the NY Post because he heard he was mentioned in it, and then was shot. He says that perhaps a lawyer named Barry Boyd, who once attacked him in a restaurant, is to blame.

They talk to Boyd who says that he's happy Elliot once ran a negative story about him. It increased his reputation. Boyd reveals that he is representing the families of three soldiers who were killed in Iraq after Elliot ran a report that indirectly gave away troop locations and movements. The detectives review this video, in which Elliot is seen drawing a crude map in the sand illustrating his unit's location. The detectives have a conversation about the merits of the war, and Briscoe says he supports it. Meanwhile, ballistics reveals that the gun used to shoot Elliot was standard Army issue.

They talk to an army colonel to find out which soldiers might have been in NYC the night of the shooting. They learn that 3 members of the 81st Airborne, the unit of the three dead soldiers, were in town. They visit the family of one of them, George Meacham. They says that Meacham was friends with Dickson Hawes, one of the soldiers shot in Iraq because of Elliot's reporting. Meacham's mom and wife explain that he was downtown at a bar with some friends the night of the shooting, celebrating before shipping out for Iraq again the next morning. The bar is right near where Elliot was shot.

The visit the bar, the Blarney Stone, and talk to the bartender who cannot confirm that Meacham was there the entire time. A doorman at Lotus, the club where Elliot was, says that Meacham showed up there asking for Elliot. The bartender also says that his own philosophy about the war is "Nuke 'em all." He mentions that Beacham had a tattoo on his arm: "Business is good." (The detectives later learn that the other half of the tattoo says, "Killing is our business.")

Van Buren and the detectives talk again to the Army colonel, who says Meacham is "forward deployed" and can't be recalled to the states for questioning. But AVB detects some shiftiness in his answers, and learns that Meacham is at Rammstein AFB in Germany, and not yet in Iraq. He is recalled.

Meacham steps off a helicopter (the second helicopter in the episode!) and hands over his weapon to Green and Briscoe, who take him in for questioning. He says that he heard from a cabbie who entered the Blarney Stone that he'd just dropped Elliot off at Lotus. Meacham says he went to Lotus to confront Elliot over the story, and says that he, as a soldier, would be court-martialed if he'd done what Elliot had done. To prevent him from being shipped back to Iraq, they arrest Meacham (26 mins).

The lawyers meet to hash it out. They learn from Evan in Ballistics that the gun Beacham turned over was not the murder weapon, but it wasn't Beacham's weapon either: it belonged to Dickson Hawes. It looks like Beacham somehow switched the weapons while he was at Rammstein. Southerlyn asks the army to locate Beacham's weapon, but they can't find it.

This turn of events causes Elliot, a sensationalistic journalist, to hold a press conference in which he charges the government with a cover-up of his shooting. Various parties in the case against Meacham seek a gag order so Elliot won't be able to talk anymore. The judge allows it. Elliot makes a motion to withdraw the order, but it is unsuccessful. Immediately thereafter, while he is talking to McCoy, to FBI agents appear and arrest Elliot for treason for revealing the troop locations.

McCoy and SS visit the US Attorney responsible for prosecuting the case, Mr Spivak, whom Serena seems to know. He is steadfast about pursuing the case.

McCoy and SS determine that to successfully prosecute Meacham, they need to prove that he acted out of revenge, not a desire to protect troops from further harm. SS talks to Meacham's friends, and they review her findings while McCoy offers her ribs for dinner, which SS refuses. He tries to give her noodles, but she doesn't seem to like those either. McCoy explains in a rather convoluted fashion that Meacham acted out of revenge, but this becomes somewhat irrelevant when they learn that Meacham has changed his plea from one of not guilty to a affirmative defense in which he says he committed the crime but has an excuse: he acted to prevent the Elliot from revealing further information which could endanger the troops.

At trial, Elliot takes the stand and echoes Michael Moore's Oscar speech by saying that the US is fighting "a fictitious war waged by a fictitious president." Elliot also says he would do the same thing again, and he makes an argument against prior restraint.

Meacham takes the stand, and describes the attack in which Hawes was killed. McCoy gets him to talk about shooting Elliot, and then asks him directly, "Did you shoot Frank Elliot?" to which Meacham is unexpectedly evasive, and then finally answers, "No. Because if I pulled the trigger, he would be dead right now."

Well, that kills Meacham's affirmative defense -- you can't offer an excuse for a crime you didn't commit -- but the bigger question is, Who shot Elliot? It doesn't take SS and McCoy to work up a new theory: Elliot somehow got a hold of a service weapon and shot himself with it, or got a friend to do so, so that he could raise his own profile. SS noticed an inconsistency in Elliot's story: he says he went out to get the paper to read the gossip about him, but on the stand he said that earlier in the day, he read the headlines about 6 soldiers killed the day before. SS and McCoy suggest that Boyd might somehow be involved, too. But confronted with this theory, Elliot doesn't back down and he and McCoy get in each other's faces. McCoy says, "This isn't over" and says they'll find the gun and the friend who shot him.

Back at the DAs office, we learn that both Meacham and Elliot are headed back over to Iraq. The case goes unresolved, which is extremely unusual.

Elliot is extremely similar to Geraldo Rivera, who got into trouble himself for reporting troop movements during the war. Elliot is played by Nick Chinlund, an increasingly recognizable character actor, who played a creepy mortician obsessed with hair and fingernails on The X-Files, and who appeared as a thug in Training Day.

Posted by adm at June 8, 2004 01:03 AM

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