Lessons Learned (Season 2, Episode 10)
Premise: With an anthrax attack days away, Gideon tries to reach a terror recruiter held at Guantanamo Bay while the rest of the BAU hunts his sleeper cell.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 10
- Unsub
- Jind Allah (Anthony Azizi)
- Location
- Northern Virginia; Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
- Starring
- Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster), Jennifer “JJ” Jareau (A.J. Cook), Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness), Haley Hotchner (Meredith Monroe)
- Opening quote
- “Some of the best lessons are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom of the future.” (Dale Turner, read by Gideon)
- Closing quote
- “In order to learn the most important lessons of life, one must each day surmount a fear.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, read by Gideon)
- Guest stars
- Kevin Chapman as FBI Agt. Andy Bingaman, Lauren Stamile as DEA Agt. Bonnie Ryan, Roger Ranney as DEA Agent Ken Norwood
- Director
- Guy Norman Bee
- Writers
- Jim Clemente
Summary
The Case
“Lessons Learned” begins with a DEA raid on a suspected meth lab in Northern Virginia that turns up a device built to spread a chemical or biological agent; the four-man cell inside fled through a tunnel. An intercepted Arabic message promises a “gift” at the next crescent moon, two days away. The phone is tied to Jind Allah, a recruiter caught leaving the country two months earlier and held since then as an unacknowledged “ghost” detainee at Guantanamo Bay, where CIA interrogators have gotten nothing from him. Gideon flies there with Reid and Prentiss, while Hotch and Morgan work with DEA agent Bonnie Ryan.
Gideon stages an angry interruption of the CIA’s session, then treats the bruised prisoner with respect, sends him a prayer rug and draws him into talk about faith; his speech marks him as Egyptian. Garcia identifies a list from the safe house as additives for weaponizing anthrax, and she and JJ find intercepted chatter pointing to a second site in Annandale. When Gideon reveals the raid, the watching agents see relief in the prisoner; the team scrambles out, but the rigged building explodes and kills a SWAT agent. A slip about a murdered son lets Garcia identify the prisoner as Jamal Abaza, a Cairo imam whose eight-year-old son, Amir, died in a bombing there, and who later recruited American inmates into the Militant Islamic Society as a Virginia prison imam. Gideon gets the CIA to share intelligence, which leads through a possible anthrax theft in the Netherlands to a house where five men lie executed beside a crude lab, with tags from four new backpacks.
With the attackers already moving, Gideon acts as if the attack has happened, and Abaza, believing it has succeeded, boasts that people will think twice before visiting a new shopping center. The target is the grand opening of the USA Mall in McLean, Virginia, where Haley planned to take Jack for his portrait.
The Team
Hotch is called in early, and Haley, sensing danger, asks him to come back safely and keeps the next day’s portrait appointment for Jack. Prentiss meets the team and joins the trip to Guantanamo as the only member fluent in Arabic, despite doubts about testing a newcomer in an interrogation.
The ending
Spoiler: Unable to reach Haley, Hotch finds four men on the roof cameras, heading for the air vents, and Morgan’s team stops them; the news reports a foiled robbery. At home, Haley says she canceled Jack’s photos because she wants the family there together. Gideon explains that he had been moving up Abaza’s prayer times so he would believe sunset had passed. After a chess game ends with Reid giving up, Gideon asks Prentiss if she plays.
Why it stands out
- This is the first episode written by Jim Clemente, a real-life FBI profiler and consultant to the show.
- The episode won the 2007 Human Rights First Award for Excellence in Television for its humane portrayal of detainee interrogation.
- It is the first episode in which Prentiss takes an active role in a case.