Madam Secretary

Peter, tell me you're staying for my party.

Oh, Daniel, you know, I'd love to,

but I got this meeting with an NGO.

- Uh-uh... - But listen, happy birthday.

Go have fun.

Don't work too hard, my friend.

Never.

So you're heading out for the meeting?

If I get back to town early enough,

you want to have dinner with me?

I always want to have dinner with you.

Now, go do some good.

What the hell are you doing, Pete?

Oh, my God.

Right there, right there.

This way!

This way to the stairwell!

This way.

Go to the stairwell and go down.

Go to the stairwell and go down. Right there.

Find the stairwell and go down.

Hello?

Help!

Peter?

Daniel.

I-I cannot see.

- It's okay. - I cannot see.

It's okay, I got you. Come on.

Let's go to the stairwell.

Okay? Marine.

Take this man downstairs.

His name's Daniel, he can't see.

Come on, Daniel. We got you.

Come on. We got you.

Lana?

Lana?

Lana?

Lana...

Don't go.

Lana.

Okay, Madam Secretary, you'll give some brief remarks,

followed by a reading of the names of all the victims,

and then, there will be a moment of silence.

And then anyone who wants to will adjourn

to the conference room for a small reception.

Why "small"?

And "brief"?

Ma'am?

We're commemorating the 20th anniversary

of an attack that took the lives of 32 Americans,

56 Ugandans, injuring hundreds more.

Seems like it's worthy of reflection.

What's with all the minimizing?

Well, we generally

try to avoid highlighting any intelligence failures.

Particularly when it comes to Al-Qaeda and bin Laden.

I'm not looking for a parade here.

But not properly acknowledging

the loss to the department, to the families?

That makes us look bad.

Understood, ma'am.

So the... the reading of the names,

that'll include the Ugandans, too, right?

The 26 Foreign Service Nationals

who worked at the embassy, yes, ma'am.

What about the rest of them?

The 18 children crowded around the gate to their school

down the block from where the bomb went off?

Their teachers?

The four nuns on their way to work at the AIDS hospice?

We don't-we don't have time to say their names aloud, too?

Of course we do, ma'am.

Damn right, we do.

Ma'am, there are, actually, a couple of issues

somewhat related to the anniversary.

First, the White House is asking us to expedite our review

of the sanctions regime on Sudan.

Uh, didn't we sanction them precisely because they harbored

terrorists responsible for the Uganda bombing?

Well, that, and the occasional genocide

against their own people.

The thinking is they've cleaned up their act.

On the terrorism front, anyway.

So maybe 20 years is long enough.

But what's the rush about?

Doing my best to find out, ma'am.

Good. Meantime, gather the relevant folks

within the department, get me a recommendation, will you?

Have fun with Peter Harriman.

Yeah, lucky me.

Last item... and you won't believe it...

Congress is once again making noise about cutting our budget

for embassy security.

I can believe it.

The usual pleading and guilt-tripping

didn't move the needle, huh?

Well, if anyone has an out-of-the-box idea

to convince Congress to keep our diplomats alive, I'm all ears.

That'll be all. Thank you.

Ma'am.

Ma'am, do you want me to scale up the memorial?

As long as all the names are read,

that should be fine.

I was having a moment.

Apologies.

Is everything all right?

Listen, um, about Special Envoy Harriman.

I know he can be a pain.

Go easy today, will you?

He survived the bombing in '98.

I wasn't aware.

I'll do that. Thank you, ma'am.

Yep.

Let's sum up pros and cons

and move to a recommendation for the secretary.

Pete, you have a question.

What's really going on here, Jay?

Why is the White House so hot to lift sanctions all of a sudden?

It's a great question.

And one that the secretary also wants an answer to.

Something stinks.

Is there some sort of Pentagon play afoot here?

Like I said, we're into it.

Kat, why don't you sum up the arguments

- in favor of lifting the sanctions? - Right.

So the idea is that Sudan has basically done what we demanded,

uh, they've stopped supporting terrorism,

as far as we know, they are

allowing more food aid to reach vulnerable populations.

They are no longer

stoking the civil war in South Sudan.

So in short, the chief argument

for lifting the sanctions is that they worked.

Okay, thanks. Now the cons?

Why should the sanctions remain in place? Pete?

For exactly the same reason.

President Qasim didn't just stop supporting Al-Qaeda

out of the goodness of his heart.

He did it because we hit his regime

and his cronies and his family where it hurt.

The sanctions are the only meaningful tool

that we have to affect his behavior.

It's just too soon.

What about the counterargument that the sanctions

aren't really hurting the regime,

but just trickling down to the Sudanese people?

Yes, Qasim and his friends have

managed to evade the worst impacts,

but they've felt the bite enough to come this far.

In the long run, are we preventing more suffering

than we're causing? I say we are.

President Qasim is not a young man.

We could use the prospect of lifting the sanctions

as a carrot to try to affect their choice of his successor,

and how he behaves.

So in my view, we keep our boot on his neck

until this bastard is dead.

So our recommendation

is that we keep the sanctions in place?

Okay. Great. Thanks, everybody.

Look who's here.

- Hey, babe. Ready for lunch? - Hey, honey.

Yeah. Mm.

Um, Henry and I are gonna go eat

peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

in the freezing cold park.

This is what passes for a date night these days.

Ah. Yeah. Don't wait up for us.

- Thank you. - Mm-hmm.

Hey, Doc.

- Hey, guys. - Hi.

I think we may have found a way

to, uh, cut through the noise

on the embassy security funding issue.

Don't oversell it.

Congress wants to cut our budget for embassy security, again.

Unbelievable. But believable.

Look, whatever you're selling, sell it to me on the walk, okay?

Yes, ma'am. Uh, three words:

Bomb-sniffing dogs.

To adequately protect our facilities

and personnel worldwide,

State needs to add at least 30 more in the upcoming year.

Yeah, but every other agency and local PD wants them,

which makes them expensive.

So what's your pitch?

We make a video with you and a bomb-sniffing dog.

Highlighting how much State depends on the work they do,

and implicitly, how Congress is putting our folks in danger

by cutting our funding so we can't afford them.

But because it's a dog video, it's adorable, so it goes viral,

and all of a sudden, there's outside pressure on Congress.

Better be a pretty cute dog.

So, what do you think?

It's the best idea

- I've heard today. - Maybe we should get a dog.

Oh, now look what you've started.

- Just save one. - All right, get into it and get back to me.

- Yes, ma'am. - Will do, ma'am.

You don't have to do this.