- The body of a Navy petty officer, shot and drowned, washes up on a beach; while Gibbs and company investigate, another body, wrapped in chain, turns up. The FBI becomes involved, the gang find clues, and Fornell and Gibbs find a leak.
- The body of a man, shot and drowned, washes up on a beach in Maryland; the victim was a Navy petty officer; while Gibbs and company investigate at the scene, another body, wrapped in anchor chain, turns up. Gibbs suggests that the PO stumbled onto a mob hit; Fornell tells Gibbs about the second victim; the two of them agree that the feds have a problem with a leak in their witness-protection program. The office of a private security firm explodes nearby while Gibbs and Fornell talk with a polygraph tech; Abby gets a new toy; the gang check out the explosion, and McGoo talks with the tech. Duckman and Palmer work on 10 more bodies; Abby, McGee, and the tech remotely watch the theft of the tech's home computer. Abby provides answers, which raise more questions. Gibbs and Fornell figure out the leak, confront that person, and deal with the problem. McGee asks for a dinner date but fails to get it.—DocRushing
- A seaman out for a jog hears cries for help and goes to investigate. He's greeted by a shot to the chest.
At the office, McGee brags about his video game skills and Tony is quickly distracted by Jimmy Palmer showing photos of his girlfriend to Ziva.
Gibbs comes in to announce the body of the week: a dead petty officer on the pier.
Gibbs and Ziva try to interview two stoner dudes, who manage to report there were two shots and two dudes in a black Lincoln. The victim is Scott Roebuck. He was found in the water.
But wait, there's more! A man is strung up by chains under the dock. He's dead and was beaten to a pulp. His finger print pulls up an FBI red flag and no ID. But they recognize him as mobster Stefano Delmar. The petty officer stumbled onto a hit.
Gibbs rides the elevator with FBI agent Tobias Fornell (Joe Spano). He tells Gibbs that Delmar turned state's evidence and was helping them. And he's not the only dead witness.
In the morgue, Duckie tells them Roebuck's cause of death was drowning, he went in alive. Fornell says the other two witnesses were never found.
Duckie says that it looks like Delmar had tetanus, punctures in his feet. He was in FBI custody the past few weeks, which means the FBI has a leak.
Upstairs, the team reviews the hotels and agents on the witnesses. They find all the cases involved polygraphs done by Cooper's Hawk security.
As Fornell is talking about the benefits of polygraphs, Gibbs interrupts. The punctures in Del Mar's foot were from a tack - a common trick used to beat the machines; the pain caused by stepping on one makes accurate reads difficult.
Fornell and Gibbs go to a judge for a warrant on their clients. Judge Evelyn won't give them what they want, but offers to release Delmar's full testimony, which might have names they can follow.
At the office, McGee reports he's gotten into Cooper's computer. They find Susan Grady, who is also an NCIS polygraph examiner who was semi-stalking McGee.
Fornell and Gibbs meet with Susan, who is defensive and nervous, but mostly because Gibbs freaks her out, outside Cooper's office. As she's reassuring them that her part time job with Cooper's is above board, the Cooper's office behind them explodes into smithereens.
Back at NCIS, Abby directs a platoon of forensic examiners sifting through the evidence. Gibbs sends McGee to talk to Susan, despite his protests that she practically sexually harassed him. She bursts into tears when she sees him and bear hugs him.
Gibbs and Fornell watch the video feed of McGee talking to Susan. She apologizes to him for making him retake his test to see if he had a girlfriend. She liked working at Cooper's because unlike at NCIS, no one treated her like a lie detecting leper.
She doesn't recognize a picture of Delmar and says the internet was down for a while that morning until the techs came.
As McGee is trying to extricate himself, she looks at him moonily and suggests fate brought them together.
Vance thinks the fact Susan is the only one at Cooper's who made it out alive means that she's either very lucky, or involved.
Duckie and Palmer go over the charred bodies and Abby comes for a new batch to ID. Duckie tells Tony there were 10 victims. But there should have been 11 in the building when it blew up.
Abby is suspicious of Susan, which she swears has nothing to do with her own history with McGee.
She retreats her to lab to find McGee inflating an air mattress for Susan. He suggests Susan can stay at his place if it's a problem, but Abby decides the lab is fine.
Susan tells McGee that not all of Cooper's records were destroyed - she took some of the polygraph results home to study. But they can access them remotely.
They log on and see someone is accessing the files. They turn her web cam on and see someone in a hooded sweatshirt is on her computer in her place. Before they can lock the computer, the person grabs it. Later, Ziva and Tony return from Susan's place saying they found nothing. McGee's working on the client list.
Abby IDs the missing employee: the janitor, Gus Templeton.
When McGee sees Susan waiting eagerly for him, he asks to go out with Tony to the janitor. Tony advises McGee give Susan a shot. He suspects she has a really nice butt under those blouses.
Gus Templeton answers the door for Tony and McGee holding a bucket and looking green around the gills. He's had food poisoning for two days, but he knows someone set a fire, even though it was reported as an accident.
They bring him in. Susan is impressed with Gibbs' gut lie detector and says she can't tell at all without her machines.
Gibbs shows Gus photos of the victims and mentions the $40,000 new fishing boat Gus just bought. Gus gets scared and says someone will kill him. He had gambling debts, but some guys offered to wipe the debts out in exchange for his access card. They were going to pose as computer techs.
They find prints for Peter and Arnold Rafferty in Gus' place. Susan recognizes them as the computer techs. Apparently they were mentioned a lot in Delmar's testimony.
Then it's Abby time. She says the brothers' DNA was on both Delmar and the petty officer and in the Cooper's office. They were incinerated in blast, turned to ash, so that's why they weren't among the bodies.
Based on the fire marshal's report, the blast was very small, designed only to destroy the server. But it hit a gas main. Since Delmar's testimony against them was already on the record, Gibbs wonders what the Raffertys were trying to hide.
They find the server that was downloaded held Cooper's polygraph files. Susan says it has the results, including the questions, which are standard - the same ones they ask at NCIS. Someone volunteers that Gibbs has never taken a polygraph.
They have their guinea pig. Fornell and Vance gather 'round to watch. The questions touch on espionage and theft and Gibbs is answering "no" until "have you ever committed a felony?" He flashes back to killing the man who killed his wife and child and doesn't answer. He rips off the sensors.
At both NCIS and FBI, you lose your clearance and likely your job if you fail. Cooper's was pushing for the test to be used in more areas.
Abby has a list of the past year's clients, including senate confirmation appointees. Fornell and Gibbs recognize a name.
They go back to Judge Eveyln and show her her name on the Cooper's list. She says she went to them as a "dry run" before her confirmation hearings. They ask her to take another test.
Back at NCIS, Gibbs questions her about past cases, including one where a witness went missing. She says she doesn't know what happened to them and lying alarms go off. Gibbs and Fornell throw questions at her, asking if it bothered her to see bad guys go free even if they ratted out worse guys. She rips the sensors off and stands up to leave.
They think the Rafferty brothers did her dirty work and the explosion goof wiped out any evidence of her connection. But then there was the break-in to Susan's, which they say was the first crime she committed herself. Gibbs asks her if she really thinks she's such a good criminal that she didn't leave a trace.
Later, Susan tries to figure out if Gibbs was bluffing about the hair. Tony and Ziva tell her not to bother figuring out the ways of the Gibbs.
McGee asks Susan to dinner, but she tries to read him and decides he's just asking to be polite. So she turns him down and leaves him thoroughly confused.
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