Fitzwallace Exposes Russian Heavy Water Reactor in Iran
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Fitzwallace dramatically enters with military personnel, momentarily lightening the mood before presenting SR-71 reconnaissance photos of a suspicious Iranian nuclear site.
The tension ratchets higher as Fitzwallace corrects his own assessment - it's actually a heavy water reactor capable of producing plutonium, contradicting four intelligence agencies.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Despondent and suicidal, as relayed
Jake Kimball is invoked by Leo just prior as 'looking a hundred years old' from Antares' recall despair, his suicidal desperation haunting the room's atmosphere as the briefing pivots, symbolizing the economic wreckage now compounded by nuclear alarm.
- • Seek White House intervention for corporate survival
- • Convey the human scale of impending job apocalypse
- • Government lifeline is last hope against market annihilation
- • Personal ruin mirrors national economic peril
Professional assurance laced with corrective urgency
Fitzwallace strides in with uniformed aides, greets formally, banters lightly with Bartlet's slang ('You trying to be one of the fellows?'), presents and meticulously explains the SR-71 photo of Bushehr—self-correcting from light to heavy water reactor built by Russians for plutonium, directly challenging intel consensus.
- • Deliver irrefutable photographic evidence to realign threat assessment
- • Prompt decisive presidential response to nuclear proliferation
- • Military recon trumps agency consensus when visuals prove otherwise
- • Casual rapport strengthens alliance in high-stakes briefings
Professionally focused with deferential poise
Charlie enters the Oval Office quietly during the post-recall huddle, addressing the President with a single deferential 'Sir...' that prompts a brief acknowledgment before Fitzwallace's arrival shifts focus, embodying his role as the unobtrusive conduit in crisis.
- • Interrupt politely to deliver or check on a message
- • Maintain seamless access for the President amid overlapping crises
- • Strict adherence to protocol honors the President's authority
- • His presence facilitates the inner circle's efficiency
Jovial familiarity masking mounting concern over layered crises
Bartlet, still reeling from glasses-off shock of the recall, responds curtly to Charlie then hurries to warmly greet Fitzwallace with affectionate banter ('Fitz! you old polecat'), listens intently to the Bushehr briefing, probes with 'What's the problem?' and 'What do you use heavy water for?', his paternal command bridging levity and gravity.
- • Absorb and interrogate the new intelligence threat
- • Reinforce personal bonds to extract candid military insight
- • Trusted old friends deliver unvarnished truth in crises
- • Presidential levity disarms tension for clearer focus
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Uniformed aides bear the SR-71 photographs into the Oval; Fitzwallace thrusts them forward, pointing to Bushehr's skeletal construction, using them to dismantle light-water assumptions and prove Russian heavy-water plutonium intent—pivotal evidence shattering intel consensus and escalating the event's dramatic pivot from economy to nukes.
Bartlet's glasses, removed in disbelief during the immediate prior recall shock, remain off in his hand as Fitzwallace enters and briefs, serving as a lingering prop of stunned vulnerability that underscores the emotional toll transitioning into nuclear revelation, amplifying the President's bare-eyed absorption of dual crises.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Gulf frames the SR-71's routine flight path, enabling the clandestine capture of Bushehr images that Fitzwallace deploys to correct intel errors, merging maritime patrol tensions with nuclear exposure and heightening the event's geopolitical stakes in the Oval's pressure cooker.
Bushehr is pinpointed in the SR-71 photo as the epicenter of deception—its early heavy water reactor scaffolds exposed, transforming a presumed civilian site into plutonium peril, fueling Oval shockwaves that bind distant Iranian sands to immediate presidential calculus amid economic fallout.
Organizations Involved
Institutional presence and influence
Antares' looming 80-million-chip recall devastation lingers from Leo's prior relay, its job carnage and NASDAQ gut-punch providing the grim backdrop as Fitzwallace pivots to Bushehr, illustrating how corporate implosion primes vulnerability to foreign nuclear threats in Bartlet's crisis cascade.
NASDAQ's impending 'kidney punch' from Antares' recall haunts the room's edge, Bartlet's cited stats underscoring market hemorrhage as the briefing shifts to nukes, framing economic fragility as a multiplier for diplomatic resolve against proliferation.
Iranians emerge as cunning contractors hiring Russians for Bushehr's plutonium reactor, their light-water pretense shattered by photos—positioning them as active proliferators in the Oval's recalibrated threat matrix.
Russians are unmasked as Bushehr's heavy water architects per SR-71 proof, their contract with Iranians defying light-water cover—Fitzwallace's correction casts them as proliferation enablers, priming Russia summit hostilities atop U.S. woes.
Four U.S. intelligence agencies' light-water verdict on Bushehr is eviscerated by Fitzwallace's 'I'm wrong' admission and photo proof, exposing collective blind spot that forces real-time Oval correction amid compounding crises.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Fitzwallace's revelation about the Iranian reactor sets up the subsequent decoding of Chigorin's message, which offers a diplomatic solution to the crisis."
Themes This Exemplifies
Thematic resonance and meaning
Part of Larger Arcs
Key Dialogue
"FITZWALLACE: "This picture was taken by an SR-71 during a routine flight over in the Gulf. This is Bushehr, and this is what looks to me like the early days of construction of a light water reactor. Light water is... ordinary water, sir, it's tap water. It's Perrier.""
"FITZWALLACE: "Four intelligence agencies are telling me I'm wrong, and I am. The Russians are building them a heavy water reactor.""
"BARTLET: "What do you use heavy water for?" LEO: "Plutonium.""