Barracks 37 Miles East of Bitanga
Detailed Involvements
Events with rich location context
The barracks 37 miles east of Bitanga is the identified location of the three captured Marines; it exists off-screen as the physical focal point of risk and rescue planning and the potential scene of execution if an inappropriate response is chosen.
Implied hostile and precarious — enemy-controlled, claustrophobic, and time-critical.
Target site and containment location for the hostage rescue operation.
Embodies the human stakes and moral urgency that force the President's decision.
In practice inaccessible without a clandestine or forceful military operation.
The barracks roughly 37 miles east of Bitanga is the hostage site fixed by HUMINT and eavesdropping. Though off-screen, it functions as the immediate physical objective and the moral fulcrum of the scene — the place whose occupants' lives are the direct consequence of the President's decision.
Not depicted directly, implied to be hostile, cramped, and under captor control with an imminent threat to captives.
Primary rescue objective and the spatial anchor for the operational briefing.
A remote, precarious human space that collapses strategic abstractions into a concrete human cost.
Located in hostile territory, controlled by captors; inaccessible without a covert rescue force.
The barracks roughly 37 miles east of Bitanga is the objective and emotional epicenter: where the Marines are held, where execution risk is imminent, and the place the rescue must reach—its existence compresses the timeline and forces the presidency into action.
Unseen by the principals but implied as dangerous, claustrophobic and time‑pressured.
Hostage location / operational objective for the extraction.
Represents the human cost that converts abstract policy into urgent moral obligation.
Enemy‑held territory; accessible only by specialized assault forces under cover of darkness/air insertion.
Events at This Location
Everything that happens here
President Jed Bartlet quietly clears the room and joins Leo McGarry and Admiral Fitzwallace in a private, high-stakes briefing. Intelligence locates the three captured Marines near Bitanga; Leo warns that …
Nancy pulls Bartlet and Leo aside into a private meeting where classified intelligence — electronic eavesdropping and paid informants — places the three captured Marines in a barracks 37 miles …
President Jed Bartlet, pressed by time and conscience, moves from moral paralysis to decisive action. Intercut with the Situation Room, Leo warns that immediate full deployment would guarantee the hostages' …