The first domino to fall is General Stomtonovich, who calls Charlie in a rage. The interview that aired was not the interview he gave; his words had been turned to tell a story that he never meant to tell. Charlie and Mackenzie write it off as a man being suddenly hit with the full appreciation of what he told a TV reporter. Mackenzie updates Will on Stomtonovich’s call and notices the countdown clock in the corner of the football game Will’s watching. Something about it bothers her, but she’s not sure what. Pay attention kids, this will be important later in the episode.
The second domino is from the Pentagon, in a statement that’s emphatic in its contention that the Genoa story is completely wrong, saying that they’re considering all legal options in regards to ACN’s reporting. That’s pretty strong language if there’s even a chance that Genoa happened, so what does the Pentagon know?
Meanwhile, Elliot follows up with one of Genoa’s witnesses the next night on his show, where it’s revealed that Eric Sweeney had suffered a traumatic brain injury while being deployed overseas, a fact that hadn’t been known before News Night broke Genoa. Mackenzie talks to Will about her own pre-interview with the third witness Valenzuela, and wonders if maybe she led him with her questions. Will disagrees, but Mackenzie notes that Valenzuela offered nothing new, and merely confirmed what Sweeney had said.
With two witnesses suspect now, Maggie reveals that she wasn’t in the interview with General Stomtonovich when he made his “revelations,” and now there’s real concern about the veracity of the story. But it’s Charlie’s source Shep Pressman, the mysterious man from the Office of Naval Intelligence, that’s the last straw. Shep’s son was an intern at ACN who was fired for posting inappropriate things online. He was also a drug addict who later killed himself. When Shep heard that Jerry was looking into war crimes with Genoa, he doctored the helo manifest to help sell it, and gave it to Charlie.
All this comes to a head as protests in Egypt and Libya break out over an American film called “Innocence of Muslims,” but Mackenzie’s still bothered by the countdown clock. Looking at the Stomtonovich interview footage, she sees the shot clock in the corner of the basketball game playing next to the blacked out General skip several numbers. Jerry doctored the footage, and Mac fires him, resigned to the idea that “no one is ever going to believe us again.”
So as the Benghazi story breaks on September 11th, 2012, News Night leads with a retraction of Genoa. Even though both Jim and Don have sources that the Benghazi attack has nothing to do with some hackneyed amateur film about Islam, Will and the team “report what everyone else did.” They don’t trust themselves, and they don’t trust their sources. At the deposition, Will says that after the next day’s election, he, Charlie and Mackenzie will resign.
Just when you thought all hope was lost, Jane Fonda returns as AWM head Leona Lansing, who tells the dynamic trio that “You will resign when I fire you out of petty malice and not before.” Leona says that she has no intention of paying off Jerry after he screwed up, and she’s not going to toss her intrepid news people, who she secretly loves to death, either.
“We don’t have the trust of the public anymore,” says Charlie
“GET IT BACK!” responds Leona. Smash cut to black.
