'The Outsider' Details the Ins of Intelligence Work
The AMC series Rubicon is an old-school espionage drama about a group of government intelligence experts who wield there way through stacks of top-secret files to decipher, demystify and distill the information into useful recommendations for their unseen higher-ups. Will Travers, the defacto leader after his boss/father-in-law David Hadas dies in a train accident, lost his family during 9/11 and often appears just as lost as he meanders his way through both his life and job. He quickly finds himself, however, secretly investigating what he believes to be a conspiracy surrounding Hadas’ death in addition to rising to the forefront of his profession.
Although Rubicon often progresses at a very slow, deliberate pace as Travers attempts to unravel the mystery surrounding him, the show’s fourth episode, “The Outsider,” momentarily pushes the investigation to the backburner. In what can be considered a more traditional stand-alone installment, the episode features two separate but concurrent storylines—Travers is sent to Washington DC to assist with securing the necessary funds for their operation while his colleagues back in New York are left to evaluate information regarding an al-Quaida operative and whether or not the United States should launch a surgical missile strike at his supposed location. Through the course of the narrative Rubicon effectively, and at times brilliantly, illustrates the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of the unglamorous intelligence analysis profession and the emotional toll the job has on its practitioners.
In many ways, Will Travers is the antithesis of a government bureaucrat. He never wears a suit to the office, for instance, and carries a backpack over his shoulder instead of the more customary briefcase. His brilliance, as well as the personal tragedy of 9/11, likewise makes him both quiet and rather aloof. Still, his positive qualities and demeanor have obviously made an impression on his superior, Truxton Spangler, and although Travers involvement during the series of high-level meetings in DC makes him more of a prop than catalysts, one can’t help but assume he is being groomed for something bigger. And while Spangler himself initially appears as a weary and easily distracted government official who has been at his position for more years than even he can probably remember, he displays an uncanny ability to play the political game on Capital Hill nonetheless.
“When you left the house this morning wearing that tie, perhaps your wife stopped you in the doorway,” he remarks to an intelligence community executive during one closed-door meeting. “Perhaps she told you how good you looked in that tie. How handsome it was. Now while I’m sure you love your wife, might I suggest you have many reasons to distrust her judgment about that tie. Maybe she has a fond memory of another time you wore it, a sentimental attachment, or perhaps she knows your tie collection and she’s simply glad you didn’t choose one of the ties she dislikes. Perhaps she just sensed you were feeling a little fragile—she felt like bucking you up a bit. Now imagine for a minute you sit down here with us and I say to you how much I admired that tie. Instantly you have another opinion but you don’t know me. There’s nothing personal between us, we have no sartorial history, no emotional attachment. Whose judgment are you going to trust, mine or your wife’s?”
Spangler pauses for a moment before pointing to Travers and continuing. “The gentleman to my right is a remarkable intelligence analyst, he is skilled in pattern recognition systems analysis, emergence theories... but in truth his greatest asset for you, is that you don’t know him and he doesn’t know you. He doesn’t care about you or your feelings. He just knows what your tie looks like. You can trust him.”
While Will Travers is working the money circuit in Washington DC, his team of fellow analysts—Miles Fiedler, Grant Test and Tanya MacGaffin—have been given the task of discerning whether recent intelligence information is reliable enough to launch a surgical missile strike against a high level al-Quaida operative known as Kateb. Although the assignment may appear simple enough—will the person in question be at the specified location at the specified time or won’t he—the ethical questions the trio faces play a role in the decision making process as well.
Miles Fiedler, for instance, immediately latches on to the fact that the operative had yet to commit any acts of violence directly against the nation and that the law “prohibits assassination unless the target is specifically engaged in combat against the United States.” The more conservative Grant Test, meanwhile, continually attempts to keep the group focused on their main objective. “Kateb is a good target, this is a great source,” he remarks at one point. As for the newest member of the group, Tanya MacGaffin initially evokes the idealistic viewpoint that the al-Quaida operative is a murderer, criminal and deserving of elimination by the United States regardless of whether his actions have been directed at the country or not.
“If we take this guy out, we gain nothing new,” the more realistic Fiedler counters. “No intelligence, no leverage, no real justice. Just one less player on a crowded field.”
As their analysis progresses, more information is obtained that further clouds their deliberations, including a photograph of some children playing in the vicinity of the proposed missile strike. While the implications cause Tanya MacGaffin to have second thoughts regarding her earlier approval of military action, Miles Fiedler begins to side step his initial negative reaction and in the end votes in favor of the strike, explaining that “I’d rather live with the consequences of my action than my inaction.” Grant Test, who has held steady throughout the discussions, agrees but Tanya MacGaffin by now has fully flip-flopped from her initial stance.
She bemoans that the file they have been given is incomplete but is simply told, “Intelligence is always incomplete, that’s the nature of it.”
The decision needs to be unanimous, however, and by the time it is finalized MacGaffin has relented and agreed with the others. It is left to Grant Test to deliver the verdict—despite his firm stance and conviction, the weight of the decision is obvious in both his physical demeanor and verbal tones.
“Your recommendations were accepted,” Will Travers later tells the group upon his return from Washington DC. “We won’t know if we were successful until Kateb either surfaces again or doesn’t,” he adds, causing Tonya MacGaffin to respond, “Two days of psychic torture and that’s it?”
Despite its slow pacing and portrayal of the mundane government work of intelligence analysis, Rubicon is in many ways a suitable companion piece to the Emmy-award winning drama The West Wing. That Aaron Sorkin-created series often served as an idealized version of what politics and government in the United States should be like; Rubicon, on the other hand, portrays the behind the scenes reality of bureaucracy and the people who serve as the cogs for the intelligence community’s machinery. The West Wing was also a well-written television show that delivered more than its fair share of quality episodes and “The Outsider” proves that Rubicon had a similar talent as well.
Anthony Letizia (August 23, 2010)
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