Criminal Minds (TV Series)

False Flag (2017)

Aisha Tyler: Dr. Tara Lewis

Photos 

Quotes 

• Melissa Miller : Okay, stop right there.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : What?

  Melissa Miller : You guys have a jet?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Yes.

  Melissa Miller : A jet.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Yes.

  Melissa Miller : Black helicopters surveilling the American people; no, no that's ridiculous. But a little branch of the FBI has its own private jet.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Okay, one, I never said the FBI doesn't have black helicopters. And two, when people are being murdered, we have to respond quickly.

  Melissa Miller : [with a scoff]  A jet. I can't even.

• Emily Prentiss : What's your name?

  [pulling her badge out] 

  Emily Prentiss : I'm Emily. Emily Prentiss. It says right here. The reason I'm asking is so we can have a conversation.

  Doug Downey : Doug. I'm Doug.

  Emily Prentiss : Great, Doug. Let's just take a second. Let's think through the logic of this.

  Doug Downey : I... I didn't do any of this!

  Emily Prentiss : We're not saying you did, but you are making things worse with that gun.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : The reason we asked you here, the only reason, is to listen. That's all. Okay? So just listen.

  Emily Prentiss : Listen. Put the gun down.

  Doug Downey : [seeing something]  I know a false flag when I see one. You bitch!

  Emily Prentiss : No!

  [Doug puts the gun to his temple and pulls the trigger] 

• Emily Prentiss : You want to talk about it?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : No.

  Emily Prentiss : It's okay to tap out if you want.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : No. Emily, I can do this.

  Emily Prentiss : Has she said anything that points to her involvement in the murders? Have you gotten any answers out of her?

  [Tara shakes her head no] 

  Emily Prentiss : Maybe it's time to change up the strategy.

• Dr. Tara Lewis : Melissa thinks that Sandy Hook was staged. I was there that day, and I counseled those parents, and I saw... I saw those kids. So the day that I lose to someone like her... that's the day that I quit.

  Emily Prentiss : It's biased thinking, and if we allow it color our profile and the arrest falls apart, we'll be a stain on the Bureau.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Okay, so, what, we just... we just back off on Melissa?

  Emily Prentiss : No. We back up our profile. You have a theory, Tara. Now prove your results.

• Dr. Tara Lewis : No, that's not the only thing. The podcast. She... she had us right where she wanted. She could have posted the audio of our conversation to prove we were trying to cover this up, but instead she deleted it. Which she only would have done if she had revealed herself somehow.

  Jennifer Jareau : She didn't say anything incriminating when I talked to her.

  Emily Prentiss : Me, neither.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Then it was me. She let something slip, something she doesn't want me to remember. So... what?

  [flashback] 

  Melissa Miller : Aurora, Orlando, Sandy Hook. The United States government shot up a bunch of empty buildings and then gathered everything up and traded it amongst themselves, because that's how plausible deniability works.

  [return to real time] 

  Dr. Tara Lewis : She traded it.

  David Rossi : Traded what?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : The bullet and the shell casing. She took the evidence and she gave it to someone else.

  David Rossi : And you know this because...

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Think about a conspiracy theory like a pathology. What... what disgusts her, what she fears most in other people, that's the action she'll copy to justify her own belief system.

  Emily Prentiss : So who has the bullet?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Who else?

• Emily Prentiss : The unsub we've been looking for is Melissa Miller, and we think she's made one of you an accomplice to her murder of Carl Lee.

  David Rossi : An unwitting accomplice.

  Jennifer Jareau : We aren't keeping you in custody. Anyone who wants to leave can, and everyone that wanted representation has a lawyer present. All we want is for you to listen to our theory.

  Matt Simmons : After Carl Lee's murder, Melissa approached one of you and she told you that the U.S. government was gonna frame both Bryan and Carl's murder on the truthers. Right on cue, we showed up.

  Luke Alvez : So she gave you a box or bag, told you not to look inside, said it was all part of our cover-up.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : What she gave you was material evidence of Carl's murder. Now, you can think what you want of us. We are not here to frame anyone. We are not the murderers. She is.

  Emily Prentiss : Did anyone accept something like this from her?

  [silence; after a moment, Tara notices Gary confer with his lawyer] 

  Gary Hiles : [stepping forward]  I did. It's... it's at my house.

• Dr. Tara Lewis : [closing quotation]  "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

• Melissa Miller : Can I go home now?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : No. We're holding you and your friends for twenty-four hours. You're all persons of interest in a murder investigation.

  Melissa Miller : Murder? What, Doug killed himself.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : True. But there are still two other victims to account for. Now, normally, when there's a public suicide, it's because the suspect is the serial killer and he's killed himself out of guilt. But we can't prove that yet, so our investigation is still open.

  Melissa Miller : He said this whole thing was a false flag, which means he thought you were trying to frame him.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : I know what a false flag is. The FBI doesn't frame people.

• Dr. Tara Lewis : You know, all of your friends have lawyered up, called us Nazis, or both. But you haven't.

  Melissa Miller : So?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : So that tells me you want to get to the bottom of this just as much as we do.

  Melissa Miller : Do you know what a podcast is?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : I do.

  Melissa Miller : Well, I have one. So if we're actually gonna do this, you give me back my phone and I record our conversation for my podcast, 'cause I'm not talking to you without documenting everything.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : You want this on the record?

  Melissa Miller : Of course. I want this on the record. Otherwise I'm lawyering up with all my friends. So what do you say?

• Emily Prentiss : The answer's no.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : I think we should consider it.

  Emily Prentiss : No. She will control the audio. She can twist your words, edit them to make the Bureau look bad.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : We already look bad. The brass is gonna want to know how and why Doug killed himself in front of us.

  Emily Prentiss : Yeah, and that's my ass, but I'm not making this situation worse than it already is.

• Luke Alvez : Garcia, have we confirmed that this truther's even legit?

  Penelope Garcia : Of course I've confirmed that, and she is. Melissa Miller has a pretty popular truther podcast, especially around Roswell. She promotes all kinds of conspiracies, but her cause celebre is staged shootings.

  Matt Simmons : So she thinks the reason we have gun violence, it's been faked by the government as a pretext to revoke the Second Amendment. Nice.

  Emily Prentiss : It's another reason not to do this.

  Jennifer Jareau : Or it's the exact reason to do this. What was tonight, other than a staged shooting, and why is she the only one willing to cooperate?

  Luke Alvez : Unsubs like to insert themselves into the investigation. Profile skews male, but she could be a partner.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Okay, then if she isn't involved, I can get her to talk. I'm a forensic psychologist. I'm trained to outwit and outsmart clinical psychopaths far more dangerous than her.

  Emily Prentiss : But if we're wrong, she's going to post her podcast. Then what? Then we're the next example of fake news.

• Melissa Miller : Say something. We need to make sure the levels are good.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : I'm Dr. Tara Lewis of the BAU...

  Melissa Miller : No, no. Say something interesting. Tell me how you really feel about truthers. My audience could use a sense of the FBI's bias against us.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : I got my PhD by taking a theory, testing it, and then proving my results. Now, proving my results means that I take those results and I turn them over to other scientists to see if they can replicate them, and if they can't, then my theory was wrong. See, that's science. A consensus of evidence that we call truth. What you do is different.

  Melissa Miller : No, it's not.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Yes, it is, because your theories are unprovable. Give me one.

  Melissa Miller : Uh... President Obama wasn't born here. He was born in Kenya.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Perfect. That's perfect. So, I show you his long-form birth certificate, and then you would respond that it's been faked because that's how deep the conspiracy goes. And then that becomes your argument against any evidence that I provide. It's a cognitive trick that keeps you from having to admit that life is messy. It's random. Not everything fits the easy explanation that a conspiracy gives you.

• Melissa Miller : Back up. What was that term you used? Equivocal something?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : An equivocal death investigation. It's an investigation where we consider all options. It could be a murder, but it could also be a suicide or an accident, or even natural causes.

  Melissa Miller : Are you saying these murders weren't murder? Is that the FBI's official position?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : I'm saying we let clues guide us to a deduction. We don't jump to conclusions. But as we were flying here, our technical analyst uncovered something unusual.

  Melissa Miller : Right. Your technical analyst. That would be Penelope Garcia?

  [Tara is surprised] 

  Melissa Miller : Yeah. I looked up your whole team before coming in here.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Why did you do that?

  Melissa Miller : Because I'm a naturally suspicious person who wanted to get a feel for your methods. Specifically the illegal surveillance that the FBI is willing to resort to to frame innocent men and women.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : As I said, the FBI doesn't frame anyone. And we certainly don't do anything illegal.

  Melissa Miller : Well, I guess that depends on what Garcia found and how she found it. So what did she find?

• Matt Simmons : So, we went through Carl's meticulous log of his hardware, and the missing gun that should be here is a Bodyguard 380. Now, if the unsub found this in a secret compartment, then he knows Carl, probably very well. And based on the fortress that Carl lived in, it'd probably be another truther. No one else could get that close.

  Jennifer Jareau : And that would explain why there was no forced entry at Bryan's, either.

  Luke Alvez : So when Carl said "I'm close to finding out who it is", he wasn't talking about some secret cabal, he was talking about a friend.

  Emily Prentiss : Someone he was willing to call the cops on. We should bring all the truthers in for questioning.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : No. No, that won't work. They won't cooperate under coercion. Look, I say we lay all our cards out on the table. Let's deliver our profile to them.

  Emily Prentiss : Oh, that's risky.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : But worth it. Either one of the truthers points us to the unsub... or he shows up himself.

• Dr. Tara Lewis : Ballistics confirmed that the gun that killed Carl is the one that Doug used on himself. All the evidence points to Doug Downey as our killer, except...

  Melissa Miller : Except you don't have anything tying Doug to Bryan's drowning.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Melissa, I've been as transparent as I can possibly be. Is there anything we've missed?

  Melissa Miller : One thing. But you didn't miss it, you covered it up. Specifically, that the sheriff made us all walk through a metal detector.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : What?

  Melissa Miller : [sardonic laugh]  Don't pretend you didn't know that. And don't pretend you don't know why. Someone in law enforcement planted a gun on Doug. Because what was that he was saying earlier tonight?

  Doug Downey : [flashback]  What did you put in my pocket?

  Matt Simmons : Gun! Drop it!

  Dr. Tara Lewis : [return to real time]  Melissa, that doesn't make any sense.

  Melissa Miller : You tell me what's more believable: a missing gun in a wacky compartment, or the police planted a Bodyguard 380, a very popular firearm in law enforcement, on Doug. Then they call their friends all the way in Quantico and you guys get on your fancy jet and come out here to make sure that the cover-up's complete.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : That's not what happened.

• Melissa Miller : Am I your unsub? Yes or no.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : You are a person of interest, just like every other truther in this building tonight.

  Melissa Miller : That's a yes. Which is why I'm recording all of this; to show the world exactly how far the FBI is willing to go to cover up the truth.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Okay. Let's... let's take a moment. I think we've gotten off track.

  Melissa Miller : No, no. No, we're, uh, we're right where we need to be. See, I wanted the brilliant science of behavioral profiling to provide an answer for all this. I really did. But right now, from where I'm sitting, this crazy conspiracy theorist is the only one making any sense.

• Emily Prentiss : So this is the metal detector you had at the legion hall?

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : Mm-hmm.

  Emily Prentiss : And you made all the truthers walk through it.

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : Yep.

  Emily Prentiss : And then after that, you brought it back here to the police station, you haven't touched it since?

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : Mm-mm.

  Emily Prentiss : Sheriff, why didn't you tell us you were gonna do that?

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : You told us you didn't want to spook the truthers. You also told us the killer might show up, so this was for our protection. Can you tell me I was wrong?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : No, Sheriff, you weren't wrong, but it does beg the bigger question: how the hell did Doug get a gun through that thing?

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : I was hoping you could answer that. You all being the geniuses with this investigation.

• Jennifer Jareau : No, that's not right.

  Luke Alvez : What do you mean it's not right? It's right here.

  [as they pass through the metal detector, Emily and Tara notice it doesn't go off] 

  Jennifer Jareau : No, that's not what I saw.

  Emily Prentiss : Did that just...?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Yeah. Yeah, it did.

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : What is it?

  [Tara walks through the metal detector, which doesn't beep] 

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : How in the world could that happen?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : I think I might know.

• Melissa Miller : Bull crap. Bull. Crap. You know, I would use stronger language, but I don't want this podcast to get an "explicit" rating.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Well, it's the truth. Metal detectors require precise calibration. Otherwise, they're susceptible to all kinds of interference. Photocopiers, Bluetooth, even fluorescent lighting. The sheriff was in such a hurry to get it set up down at the legion hall that he assumed it would work the same way it always had, but it didn't.

  Melissa Miller : I still don't buy it.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Do you know why?

  Melissa Miller : Why what?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Why you don't buy it. I can tell you. It's called proportionality bias. You see, it's our natural human instinct to assume that big events have big causes. We don't want to believe that a lone gunman killed JFK with a rifle he bought for $19.99, or that hijackers brought down four planes using only box cutters. I mean, there has to be a better explanation. We need an answer that's more satisfying, but sometimes it just isn't. You know? Machines break down. Systems don't work. Life is messy. It's random.

  Melissa Miller : Fine. Let's just test your version, shall we?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Let's.

  Melissa Miller : You're saying that Doug snuck a gun through a metal detector, a metal detector he would have no way of knowing was broken, is that your story?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Well, why don't you tell me a better one.

  Melissa Miller : Not my job. What my audience wants to hear, however, is how well your team does yours.

• Melissa Miller : Wow.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Does that mean something to you?

  Melissa Miller : [scoffs]  Of course that means something to me. "Catcher in the Rye"'s been linked to multiple killers since it was first published. And when Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon, he said "Read 'Catcher in the Rye'. That's my statement." It was found on John Hinckley's bookshelf after he shot Reagan. Oswald, Manson, Robert Bardo, they were all obsessed with it. It was the original brainwashing tool of the United States government.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : I wouldn't call it that.

  Melissa Miller : Of course you wouldn't. Because then you'd have to admit how sophisticated the whole-scale duping of this nation has become.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : I'm not following you.

  Melissa Miller : Aurora, Orlando, Sandy Hook. The United States government shot up a bunch of empty buildings and then gathered everything up and traded it amongst themselves because that's how plausible deniability works.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Sandy Hook was staged?

  Melissa Miller : Sandy Hook was staged the worst. All those actors they threw in front of cameras to be grieving parents. I was screaming at my television set "You're lying!". And if the would lie about that, then they would absolutely lie about a metal detector. So let me make one thing clear moving forward. When I say "they", I mean you.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Give me one second.

  [standing to leave, she walks across the bullpen into an empty office and shuts the door] 

  Dr. Tara Lewis : SON OF A...!

  Sheriff Mike Bowman : [watching with Prentiss]  What the hell kind of outfit you running here, Agent?

• Bob Orci : Carl Lee. His name was Carl Lee. And the reason that sticks out is because he asked me to write a dedication on the inside cover of the book. It's something I add for an extra twenty bucks. You know? And sometimes I use the wild man font and the truthers all go "Oh, wow, look. He actually wrote stuff in my book."

  Emily Prentiss : [dialing her phone]  Tara, we have something.

  [cut to Tara at Carl's apartment] 

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Found it, Emily.

  Emily Prentiss : What does it say?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : "To my darling Melissa. Love always, Carl."

• Melissa Miller : We were dating. That's not a crime.

  Emily Prentiss : So why hide it?

  Melissa Miller : The truther community is small, and we're gossipy. Also, we're already convinced agents like you are watching us. So Carl and I covered our tracks. So well, in fact, that the great and powerful Garcia is not going to find them.

  Emily Prentiss : I believe you. Which is why we had to rely on old-fashioned profiling to figure out this next part. And it started with a question you asked first. Why would Doug kill himself for no reason? So, we reconstructed Doug's suicide to see what we missed.

  [dissolve to the legion hall] 

  Dr. Tara Lewis : So you were there and I was here.

  Emily Prentiss : Right.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : And then he was screaming at you, "I know a false flag when I see one, bitch", and then bang.

  Emily Prentiss : No, that's not right. He said all those things, but not to me. He was looking at you.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : No. No, if someone made eye contact with me and called me a bitch, I'd remember.

  Matt Simmons : Maybe he wasn't looking at either of you. He was looking between you.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Uh... JJ, you were posted up over there for line of sight.

  Jennifer Jareau : Yeah.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Okay, there's only one other woman in the room he would have been talking to.

• Dr. Tara Lewis : It all started with Carl's text. "I'm close to finding out who it is." He was talking about Melissa, as in "I'm close to finding out who she's cheating with."

  Jennifer Jareau : She was cheating with Doug?

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Yes. And when she found out Carl was onto her, she killed him.

  David Rossi : Whoa. Slow down there, partner.

  Dr. Tara Lewis : Think about it. It's the oldest motivation in the book: sex. Melissa is cunning and manipulative, and she is a psychopath, and a good one. I mean, she sat there while I laid out this entire case, she did not tip a thing. Now, Doug's prints were on the gun because of the suicide, but with Carl, Melissa could have used gloves, and...

  [seeing them all looking at her] 

  Dr. Tara Lewis : What? Why is everybody staring at me?

  Jennifer Jareau : Tara, I want to believe that. An arrest would relieve a lot of tension on this case, but...

  Luke Alvez : But we don't have the evidence, and without the evidence, we're no better than the truthers.

• Dr. Tara Lewis : I admit my bias, out loud, because I wasn't able to see what was right in front of me the whole time. I thought anyone who believed in conspiracy theories had to be deluded. There was no way they could outsmart me. And I was wrong. There is a conspiracy in this case. And you are at the center of it. So, allow me to be clear from this point forward. I'm gonna give you one chance to tell the truth. One. Keep in mind we are already searching your place. If you lie, if you hold back in any way, I will know about it, and I will nail you for it. All the way to a life sentence.

  Melissa Miller : Wow. What's the point of this? I guess there's just one last thing to say before I invoke my right to an attorney. Good luck.

• Dr. Tara Lewis : [showing Melissa the recovered bullet and shell casing]  You know what that is, Melissa? That is a magic bullet.

  David Rossi : [branding a pair of handcuffs]  Stand up. Melissa Miller, you are under arrest for the murder of Carl Lee. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney.