30 (Law & Order: Criminal Intent)

"30" is a sixth season episode of the television series Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Plot summary

In this episode, Detectives Logan and Wheeler investigate when Logan's old friend Josh Lemle (Lee Tergesen), a business reporter who had backed Logan after he been transferred to Staten Island, comes to Major Case to report that he has been poisoned with radioactive polonium. Logan agrees to help his friend find out who used Polonium-210 to poison him, but Lemle is reluctant to reveal the whole story to Logan. Both Hazmat and the FBI get involved as the search turns city wide, with both the mayor and the Department of Homeland Security wanting answers.

At first, Logan and Wheeler suspect one of Lemle's sources, a self-styled Russian spy, for leading the killer to Lemle or of being the killer himself. However, the polonium is traced to a restaurant where Lemle last dined with a woman named Rebecca Slater (Miriam Shor), another reporter and Lemle's extramarital lover. It turns out that Rebecca was the actual target, but when Logan and Wheeler go to question her, they hit a wall engineered by the FBI. Logan presses Lemle for more information, and he reveals that Rebecca was working on a story concerning the death of an American teacher with Palestinian sympathies by an Israeli tank.

When Rebecca is found dead, Captain Ross wrestles the truth from his friend, a lobbyist for an Israeli-American political action committee. Rebecca's story was much more explosive than originally thought: an American teacher who had moved to Palestine to show solidarity with the Palestinian people was killed as a result of a false tip allegedly leaked to the Israelis by the Palestinians themselves. Furthermore, the victim was actually a Mossad agent, and thus the Israelis killed their own spy. Then, Logan confronts a dying Lemle with this new information, pleading with him to share what he knew about Rebecca's story, but Lemle simply remains silent.

As Logan and Wheeler follow the trail of clues all over the city, they find themselves digging deeper and deeper into Middle Eastern intrigue. They learn that the dead teacher was really a mole for Mossad, and that her death was the result of a betrayal by the Palestinians, who had given a tip to the Israelis that a suicide bomber would disguise herself as a blond American woman in order to get closer to troops. The detectives eventually decide that the polonium was actually meant for Rebecca, who was about to release the story, but never learn whether it was the Syrians, Hamas, or the Israelis who were responsible.

Background

Interestingly, this episode revealed many resemblances with the Alexander Litvinenko poisoning as well as the death of Rachel Corrie.

Fact

The title 30 is also used to designate the end of a wire news story. In the context of the episode, it is used to signify the end of Lemle's life, as he was a news reporter.

References

External links

• IMDb entry
• Official Website