Enemy of the State (Season 24, Episode 9)
Premise: A man shoved onto the subway tracks had seen his best friend’s bomb, and the friend’s jihadist handler turns out to be an FBI agent, whom the DA’s office charges with manslaughter.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 24, Episode 9
- Detectives
- Det. Vincent Riley (Reid Scott), Det. Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn)
- Guest stars
- Haaz Sleiman as FBI agent Joshua Haddad, Carlin James as Noah Turan, Brian Hutchison as FBI chief agent Sean Merrill, Josh Hooks as Luke Bragg, Brian Yang as Sgt. Freddy Chen
- Ripped from the headlines
- Luke Bragg, the boxer turned men’s rights influencer, appears to draw on Andrew Tate, the former kickboxer and social media personality whose commentary has raised concern that he promotes misogynistic views.
- Director
- Alex Hall
- Writers
- Scott Gold & Ajani Jackson
Summary
The Investigation
“Enemy of the State” opens with Raymond James Clark leaving a frightened voicemail about something bad he has seen, shortly before he is killed by a J train. The motorman insists Clark did not jump, and platform video shows him shoved by someone wearing a braided leather bracelet. The call went to Sgt. Freddy Chen of the Police Academy, which Clark left after failing a drug test.
Clark’s mother recalls a man pounding on her door: Luke Bragg, a boxer turned men’s rights guru, whose Alpha Institute took Clark’s savings and whom Clark had called a fraud online. Brady questions Bragg, but his alibi holds. Clark’s last text says he was going to see his childhood best friend, Noah Turan, 22, whose mother, Rida, identifies the bracelet; detectives find apparent C-4 in his room. His laptop holds an Arabic text to be posted before an attack, and Brady mobilizes the squad and the FBI. Turan is tracked to the Brooklyn Public Library, where Chinese officials are meeting the U.S. trade representative, and Shaw reaches him first.
The bomb proves harmless: modeling clay and a blasting cap with no charge. Told this, Turan, who speaks of China’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims, admits pushing Clark after Clark saw the device and fled. In a proffer his lawyer offers up the handler who radicalized him, Karim, and detectives arrest a man who announces he is an FBI agent, Joshua Haddad.
The Trial
Turan pleads guilty and receives ten years, but his 24,000 encrypted messages show Haddad refusing to let him quit. Turan says Karim came to his mother’s restaurant and hinted it could burn, and that after Clark saw the bomb he begged Karim to call everything off and was told to deal with the problem. Over the protests of FBI chief agent Sean Merrill, an old colleague, Baxter charges Haddad with manslaughter.
Haddad testifies that he could not have foreseen the killing, and Price asks how a man he believed ready to bomb a library holding 1,200 people would balk at one more death. Merrill calls Haddad a decorated agent who followed orders. Records then show that Baxter, on loan to the FBI after 9/11, wrote the 2006 Joint Terrorism Task Force memo setting the legal rules for the bureau’s Lure and Trap stings. Baxter hesitates, then testifies that Haddad broke those rules by failing to file required reports and by threatening Turan’s family.
Spoiler, the ending: In closing, the prosecution argues that Haddad chose and radicalized Turan and that his disregard for the guidelines cost Clark his life. The jury finds Haddad guilty of second-degree manslaughter. Afterward Price hears a defense of the post-9/11 tactics: they worked, and the city has not lost another building since.
Why it stands out
- DA Baxter takes the witness stand for the prosecution, testifying about the 2006 Lure and Trap memo he wrote while on loan to the FBI after 9/11.
- The case pits the DA’s office against the FBI, with Baxter’s former colleague, Chief Agent Sean Merrill, testifying for the defense.