Flight Risk - 114

[Barely believable episode] Tiner (Ti) looked through a college catalogue for classed to complete his bachelor's degree thinking of going to law school. Then he commented to Gunny (G) that he thought that being a lawyer was too calm and peaceful using the office as an example of people being so "nice." G complimented him on his powers of observation. Renee showed a sneak preview of her election commercial for Bobbi Latham to the JAG crew but it was anti-military spending and fell flat. She said they weren't her target audience. H hadn't heard from Sergei in two weeks. Renee still nagged Harm (H) to tell his mother about his half-brother Sergei. After all she had raised H alone so "probably wouldn't break." He came home one evening to find his mother and Renee in his apartment. Hs mother was on her way back from Venice where she renewed her vows with Frank, her new husband. Renee told H to ask them "where Frank bought their ring." H might have told his mother about Sergei but she revealed that she had "grieved all over again" when she found out that H had evidence he was really dead. Chegwidden (C) told Dr Walden that the next place they went for lunch had to have vertebrates on the menu, and asked her to the opera for her birthday. Danny Walden came to JAG and told (C)C about usually having dinner at a favorite resteraunt of his fathers on his mothers birthday so C agreed to go change and go with them both. C asked Mac (M) to look at, and comment on, his birthday gift, the complete works of Shakespeare. She called it "too thoughtful" and not enough romantic until C quoted a very romantic passage from it. Then Danny was a "no-show" at the dinner and didn't answer his phone so as to destroy his mothers date with C. They finally found him at home feigning innocence with a grin obvious to C but not to his mother.

H and Bud (B) bet on Ms tardiness to work. H won $1 for 0:5:12. Brumby (Brum) was there unexpectedly to M and embarrassed her. She told him "surprise, I've moved to America; surprise you're my brunch date; surprise, were working together." He claimed he "didn't want to mix business and pleasure" and she said "but back on the surprises or there won't be any more pleasure." H and B were assigned to investigate Frohl Technologies where two navy pilots were killed picking up a refurbished F14. Brum was representing FrohlTech and dogged them claiming pilot error, even into their JAG meeting! (?!!) He interfered with their interviews of employees and H didn't comment on it (?!!) Lt. Burke and Cdr Urquizu signed for the plane from Lt Cdr Holtsford, working at FrohlTech, then died when it crashed after take off. They met FrohlTech's test pilot, Wilson, who invited H to fly with him sometime. H finally talked to a rude mechanic alone who asked "what do pilots use for birth control?" H answered, "their personality," and asked "what is the difference between a pilot and a jet engine?" The mechanic answered, "the engine stops whining when it lands." H found that a plane was ready for pickup except for a CSD (constant speed drive) so Holtsford used the one out of the mishap plane. Then when it was ready he cannibalized the CSD from another arriving plane without paperwork, testing or inspection. C agreed to proceed with court martial of Holtsford but Latham (L)came asking for records saying that she had given Holtsford immunity for testifying in her committee on military waste and fraud. She became loud and abusive to H saying that "it's a done deal" so he demanded to be there. She was against project "spyglass" (another FrohlTech project) and H said that there wouldn't be a hearing if she wasn't in a reelection campaign. Going to a pre-hearing conference Congressman Porter told H that he was on "a fool's errand" to which L commented "and that makes me the fool?" Porter said that Spyglass was satellites which could read the label on Castro's cigar. Holtsford asked if he had immunity in the conference as well and was told "as long as you tell the truth." He dumped the whole thing on FrohlTech, saying that they never had enough man power, cut corners, hired inexperienced mechanics making it impossible to do the job without cannibalizing parts, falsifying reports and gun decking inspections; and so they could get through this job and onto the next. H said it was Holtsford's job to protect the Navy's interest and he said that he had been passed over for Cdr twice and was out in a year. FrohlTech had offered him a job to if he just got the planes out on time.

H was having mixed feelings about FrohlTech because he liked Spyglass. Porter questioned Holtsford who said that he had never seen the Jim Hepperly, the "big boss." Then Porter revealed a secret tape recording from Hepperly's office of Holtsford trying to "shake them down" for money in order to "say the right thing." Hepperly told him to "get out of his office." So L "bailed" on the issue trying to avoid bad press. H pointed out that Holtsford had lied making his immunity void and the court-martial back on. He volunteered to defend Holtsford and C advised that "there were other forums to expose corporate misdeeds." Brum still dogged Hs interview and was complimented on his "complete whitewash, except you forgot to fill in the hole where they crashed." Wilson asked H if he was "still turning over rocks" and H said that "the worms have a lawyer" so he had to leave. He then took Wilson up on the offer to fly and was told it was though H had never been out of the cockpit. They had to hurry back because the runway closed at 4 pm and he would be fined $500 which made H suspicious and he faked a CSD failure nearly running them into the ground until Wilson said "damn idiots, they keep doing this!" He still refused to testify for H because they wouldn't let him fly again but told H where to look. Brum claimed harassment and M obviously tag teamed with him against H so the judge denied Hs request for records. A mechanic said that when he came to work at 3 Wilson had just taken off to test the mishap plane. H knew Wilson couldn't have done the full 2 hour test if the runway closed at 4 so Wilson finally agreed to testify. He said that they scheduled 3 tests after noon which couldn't be done. M was shamed into agreeing with obtaining records and FrohlTech swamped them with useless records to obfuscate issues. L, B, M and H were going over the records when Brum walked in and confessed that he was there while the top echelon were culling papers to submit. He said that he had taken a memo and then gave them the "smoking gun." The memo was about "risk/reward analysis" on the refurbishment project and said they would cut their losses by "limiting the parameters of infrastructure support" preferring a few fines to the continued losses of doing it right. H and M bargained for Holtsford's "negligent homicide with 18 months." FrohlTech got a $10 million fine, reprimand and promise to work harder on the spyglass project.