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And yet another thought about Arvin Sloane: he's an effective leader. I'd be tempted to say, "organizational genius," in fact. In the very first episode, Jack tells Sydney that the Alliance was formed "about ten years ago"; Sydney was recruited to SD-6 seven years ago. Which means that in three years, or even less if he wasn't one of the founding members of the Alliance, Sloane built an organization which could deceive some very intelligent people. Most of the original recruiting must have been done personally, by him, which also indicates that he's very good at spotting talent and putting it to use.
If this time-scale is correct, it also indicates that Sloane's interest in Rambaldi pre-dates his departure from the CIA. I think I had assumed that in any case, but I wonder if it was his interest in Rambaldi which brought him into contact with the Alliance; the fact that he's not on the "inner council" indicates to me that Sloane wasn't a founding member of the Alliance.
This may all be blindingly obvious to everyone but me.
If this time-scale is correct, it also indicates that Sloane's interest in Rambaldi pre-dates his departure from the CIA. I think I had assumed that in any case, but I wonder if it was his interest in Rambaldi which brought him into contact with the Alliance; the fact that he's not on the "inner council" indicates to me that Sloane wasn't a founding member of the Alliance.
This may all be blindingly obvious to everyone but me.
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IRINA: I did not see that fourth man. If you hadn't fired... I remember the first time you introduced me to Sloane. You were both working at the CIA, he came to the house for dinner. You were true friends.
JACK: Yes. We shared a similar unsentimental patriotism... and a devotion to our wives. But Sloane changed and... it was Rambaldi that did it. I'm not sure what it is -- he never told me -- but Sloane has a personal connection to Rambaldi.
IRINA: I lived for years with the same obsession, to find a higher meaning in Rambaldi's work. I never understood how you managed to avoid getting caught up in it.
JACK: I had something neither of you did.
IRINA: (nods) Sydney.
Anything Irina says to Jack is suspect, of course. I guess I assumed from "you were both working at the CIA" that it was about this time when both Rambaldi and Irina came into the picture for Sloane, and that this juxtaposition is maybe not fortuitous. Could it be Irina who introduced Sloane to Rambaldi's work?
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Now that's an interesting thought. Of course it begs a set of larger questions about Irina's history with Rambaldi--how did she find out? Perhaps from her superiors, the same way Sydney did, all unknowing, at first, of her special position?
Although there's also the mad monk to consider--that conversation between him and Sloane has a time-reference, doesn't it? I'll have to look it up when I get home.
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CONRAD: Arvin Sloane.
SLOANE: That's right, you son of a bitch.
CONRAD: Your search for Rambaldi... has frustrated you.
SLOANE: Frustrated me? You mean that meaningless quest that you sent me on thirty years ago that made me abandon the CIA and betray everyone I ever loved?
CONRAD: Your wife has been killed.
SLOANE: How did you know that?
CONRAD: Put away the gun. There is something I must show you.
So no mention of Irina--which still doesn't put the idea out of school, IMO.
And Sloane's mention here of abandoning the CIA suggests that Jack's description (as we learn in "The Telling") of Arvin as "disgraced, abandoned, alone" (misquoting) was Arvin's cover story for his exit from the CIA?
And where the hell, by the way, did the NSA get two dozen Rambaldi artifacts (vide The Telling)? Not simply in the course of the struggle with SD-6, surely. They've been Rambaldi collectors too?
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And why the time lag--if he learns about Rambaldi thirty years ago but leaves the CIA only about ten? (To be honest, I'd prefer a longer time-frame for the existence of the Alliance: ten years just doesn't seem long enough for the organization we see in S1. I may have to re-check the DVD to make sure that I didn't mishear Jack's explanation.) Unless, of course, the CIA was at one point interested in Rambaldi, but (perhaps due to an administrative change) abandoned the project, making Sloane decide that he'd work mnore effectively on his own?
And where the hell, by the way, did the NSA get two dozen Rambaldi artifacts (vide The Telling)? Not simply in the course of the struggle with SD-6, surely. They've been Rambaldi collectors too?
Perhaps the NSA were involved in the FBI group that investigated Sydney in S1? We might expect that group to have an interest in Rambaldi prior to the formation of SD-6, and it's possible that they were collecting Rambaldi artifacts, which then somehow ended up in NSA hands--inter-agency divisions being rather blurry in the Alias universe.
I fear that attempting to trace the Rambaldi plot will only lead to madness and confusion, but it does interest me.
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Too late. For me, anyway. Here's one more snippet, from "A Free Agent":
SLOANE: Mr. Caplan, my name is Arvin Sloane.
MR. CAPLAN: Where's my family?
SLOANE: They're alive. And if you cooperate, you'll be reunited soon enough.
MR. CAPLAN: Where am I?
SLOANE: Years ago, I was with the army corps of engineering. They wanted me to study this.
(He opens a leather satchel.)
SLOANE: That manuscript is 500-years-old. Those sketches were drawn by a man named Milo Rambaldi. You will see that Rambaldi prophesied scientific principles centuries ahead of his time. Protoypes of his designs have turned up all over the world. For the past thirty years, I've been collecting them.
MR. CAPLAN: I don't understand. Why do you want me? I'm nobody.
SLOANE: You're going to help me put them together because, you see, Mr. Caplan, I know that you feel like you're only a hostage right now. But I assume you became a scientist to discover what secrets the universe has to offer. Believe me, when we're done here, you'll be thanking me for giving you the answer. So why don't you go ahead and take a look?
So if Sloane isn't lying, and if he means Army Corps of Engineers, then it seems that he came upon Rambaldi *before* he joined the CIA? Which suggests that the US government is involved. And where the US is, there's the Soviet Union, right?
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So it sounds like Sloane was with the corps of engineers in... let's see, roughly 1970, maybe a little earlier. Interesting. He's given the Rambaldi material to study and figures out what's going on, becomes fascinated by it. I wonder if his superiors expected either of those things to happen. I wonder if he was hand-picked to study this material by someone who saw and recognized tha kind of potential he had, or if the Army had just happened upon the document and it was sheer luck that Sloane ended up looking at it.
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That snippet was from "A Free Agent," in which Derevko and Sloane send Sark to kidnap the husband of a covert KGB operative, which husband has specialized knowledge of importance to the Rambaldi puzzle, or a piece of it.
That man just happens to be a covert operative of ... the NSA.
Uh?
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I've been questioning this as well. Remember beginning of season one? K-Directorate had been after Rambaldi artifacts, too. And K-Directorate was not destroyed like FTL was, was it? And so it still should be in posession of some of the artifacts.
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And speaking of K-Directorate, whatever happed to Anna Espinosa, anyway? (I've just misspelled that, haven't I?)
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*facepalm* Ah, you're right! That's what happens when you overanalyze.
whatever happed to Anna Espinosa, anyway? (I've just misspelled that, haven't I?
That's a million dollar question I'm afraid and the answer I'll offer is: She left to fly on a space ship called Firefly. *g* Or live in a city deep in the bowels of the Earth. And you spelled it right.
Perhaps with Sark's assasination of the K-Directorate leader, there were some changes administered in the organization. Perhaps Anna wasn't happy with them. I know one thing - there would be a girly scream of happiness if she ever came back.
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When you ask this question, do you open up the possibility that perhaps Irina revealed herself as a KGB agent in performing that introduction to Rambaldi? Or that she met up with Sloane later, after her return to the KGB? I ask because this is giving me story ideas.
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Seriously, though--I don't know what to think. The snippet I just posted above, from "A Free Agent," suggests that Sloane knew about Rambaldi very early, that he was, possibly, introduced to his material by the US military. That still doesn't preclude the possibility of Irina having been involved. It is certainly possible, IMO, that Sloane and Derevko have been associated for a very long time. From before Jack, in fact. There's nothing in canon that forbids that, is there?