After some commercials, it's back to the Mess. C.J. has arrived. Josh is saying, "No, no, no, no. You've walked into quicksand." Toby: "You don't ask C.J. about the CIA." Sam: "You just don't do it." Josh explains: "C.J. has a bizarre affection for the intelligence community that we just don't..." C.J.: "Bizarre? How about right?" Josh resigns himself to hearing about it. C.J. says, "This song is called: 'The CIA: Our Maligned Little Brother.'" So far, I think I prefer "The Jackal." Sam mutters, "Oh, God." C.J. begins her lecture: "We need spies. Human spies. Spy satellites are great if you're trying to detect whether or not Khrushchev's put missiles in Cuba, but you want to overhear a conversation over Turkish coffee in Khyber Pass, you need a spy. You guys want to get great jobs after college and serve your country? Study Arabic, Chinese, and Farsi." Toby, pacing around, suggests "Maybe this would be a good time for a chorus of 'Our Maligned Little Brother, Civil Liberties." C.J.: "Liberties, schmiberties." I found this attitude fairly out of character for C.J. But I guess somebody had to be a fan of the intelligence community in this little morality play, and Leo, a more likely suspect, is busy playing the role of Paranoid Bigotry. Anyway, Toby cracks, "C.J. Cregg, ladies and gentlemen." C.J. snaps, "You know a way to do this without tapping some phones?" Toby: "What about illegal searches? What about profiling?" Yes, what about those things, those things that are going on right now and for the last three weeks, and well before that -- things that have happened directed against anybody with the wrong name, the wrong colour skin, the wrong religious background. Well, there are only forty minutes or so and there are a lot of speeches and stuff to get through, so there's no time to go into anything in any kind of truly educational detail, something this show has sometimes done well in the past. Toby asks whether C.J. knows what Benjamin Franklin said. She snipes, "'Hey, look, I've invented the stove'?" Freddy/Billy/ Smitty/whatever his name is contributes, "He said that, 'They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.'" C.J. puts Smitty in her tractor beams and asks, "What's your name?" Josh: "I'm on it." Donna smiles. C.J. says, "Well, I don't think we're talking about a little temporary safety, and it's not like we need to search high and low for clear and present danger." Toby asks what she thinks is the point of fighting terrorism. She replies, "It's to ensure freedom, Pokey. I don't need the brochure." Toby thinks she does: "Because during times of great crisis and threat, America has used Draconian measures before, and I think maybe you've forgotten just how effective they've been. Can you name some?" Toby is so totally my boyfriend. A student: "The blacklist." Toby says he wants C.J. to name them, whereupon C.J. says, "The blacklist." She continues, "Look, I take civil liberties as seriously as anyone, okay? I've been to the dinners." Oh. Well, then. "And we haven't even talked about free speech yet and somebody getting lynched by the patriotism police for voicing a minority opinion." No, we sure haven't, but thanks for bringing it up in passing. Maybe that would be a good discussion to have. C.J.: "That said, Tobus, we're going to have to do some stuff. We're going to have to tap some phones, and we're going to have to partner with some people who are the lesser of evils. I'm sorry, but terrorists don't have armies and navies. They don't have capitals. Some of these guys, we're going to have to walk up to them and shoot them. Yeah we can root terrorists' nests, but some of these guys aren't going to be taken by the 105th Armored Tank Division; some of these guys are gonna be taken by a busboy with a silencer. So it's time to give the intelligence agencies the money and the manpower they need. We don't hear about their successes. Guess what? The Soviets never crossed the Elbe. The North Koreans stayed behind the thirty-eighth parallel. During the millennium: not one incident. You think that's because the terrorists decided that'd be a good day to take off, not much action that day? End of song."