Secrets and Lies (Season 1, Episode 21)
Premise: Called into CIA headquarters, the BAU must expose a mole in a counterterrorism unit before a Saudi diplomat finds the wife who informed on him.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 21
- Unsub
- Bruno Hawks (Ray Baker), Hassan Nadir (Navid Negahban)
- Location
- Langley, Virginia; Baltimore, Maryland
- Starring
- Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), Elle Greenaway (Lola Glaudini), Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), Jennifer “JJ” Jareau (A.J. Cook), Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness)
- Opening quote
- “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” (Albert Einstein, read by Gideon)
- Closing quote
- “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” (George Orwell, read by Gideon)
- Guest stars
- Lisa Vidal as Gina Sanchez, Jack Conley as John Summers, Devika Parikh as Olivia Hopkins, David Bowe as Kruger Spence, Andrea Gabriel as Aaliyah Nadir
- Director
- Matt Earl Beesley
- Writers
- Simon Mirren
Summary
The Case
“Secrets and Lies” begins with CIA officer John Summers moving a frightened woman and her children to a hiding place, shortly before he is murdered. Bruno Hawks, a CIA deputy director and old friend of Gideon’s, tells him the CIA staged the death as a suicide and that only Summers’s own unit knew he was CIA. With the unit locked down, the team is summoned to Langley at 2 a.m. Summers had recruited Aaliyah Nadir, the abused wife of Hassan Nadir, a Saudi diplomat who raises money for terrorist groups; her death was faked in a car crash, and he hid her and the children in the U.S. Now Hassan has arrived in Washington under diplomatic cover, and Summers’s wounds show more than one torturer.
The team profiles a mole who has accepted being executed if caught. A three-hour tape of Gideon’s psych evaluation of Summers shows Aaliyah in his car, and the team narrows the suspects to the four senior officers who served in Riyadh: Kruger Spence, Olivia Hopkins, Gina Sanchez and Hawks himself. Olivia’s interview exposes her affair with the married Kruger, and soon afterward she is found with her neck snapped. Suspicion falls on Gina when the virus that disabled the security cameras is traced to her computer, though she says she is being framed. Through that virus, Garcia learns that Summers ordered his own evaluation. On another viewing, his talk of a ship’s hull and a box kept as insurance points to a shipping container at the Baltimore port, but someone is tapping the feed.
Gideon points to Kruger as the mole, and Morgan takes Gina to the port. Hassan reaches the container first, but Morgan stops him, ruling that the uncleared container is not legally U.S. soil, so diplomatic immunity does not apply. Gina then holds Hassan at gunpoint, and Hawks orders her to finish him as the feed is cut.
The Team
The case reaches into Gideon’s past: he has quietly done psychological evaluations of the unit’s field agents for years and did his military service with Hawks. Garcia, barred from Langley because her name is on a list, works remotely and jokes about learning the truth about Princess Diana.
The ending
Spoiler: Gideon accuses Hawks, who said he felt angry rather than guilty about Olivia’s death. Hawks notes that with Hassan dead there is no proof, but Gina explains that she was testing him, and it turns out that Hassan is alive and on his way in. Olivia, it emerges, was digging into Hawks’s finances, and he boasts of the $20 million Hassan was paying him. Later Garcia finds Prince William’s phone number in the CIA files, but her pen fails.
Why it stands out
- Morgan’s dog, Clooney, is introduced when an analyst zooms a satellite image in on his house.
- An evidence board from the Mark Gregory case in “Charm and Harm” is still up in the BAU offices, placing this episode shortly after that one.
- Mandy Patinkin, whose Gideon is investigating corruption at the CIA here, later played Saul Berenson, a CIA director, in Homeland.