Lynn McGill

Lynn McGill was a staffer at Division who was called in to supervise at CTU during the crisis depicted in Season 5. He is known as a control freak who sees 20% of his staff resign or get fired within days.

Although he appears as if he is going to impede the rescue of hostages at Ontario International Airport, he actually saves the lives of a team of CTU agents when he recognizes a duress code in Jack Bauer's communication with CTU that the others on the team had missed. The recognition of this duress code made CTU realize that Jack was under the control of hostiles and that they had to act contrary to what he was telling them to do.

Little is known about Lynn's personal life outside his sister Jenny is a drug addict who regularly shakes her brother down for money in order to get drugs. Indeed, shortly after Lynn's first appearance on the show, he is lured outside of CTU and literally robbed by his sister and her junkie boyfriend, complete with them stealing his CTU keycard. Because of the scandal that revealing the loss of his keycard would cause, Lynn has remained silent about the incident to the people at CTU.

The loss of the keycard, combined with Jack Bauer defying Lynn and the President's order that he allow the murder of innocent civilians so as to track down a group of Russian terrorists who possessed biological weapons, have caused Lynn to show signs of losing his collective cool and become a much more anal-retentive and micromanaging supervisor.

When he learned that several members of CTU defied his order to take Jack Bauer into custody for disobeying his direct order regarding the murder of innocent civilians, Lynn had Bill Buchanan (who stood up for Bauer and for the other CTU employees helping Jack) taken to holding for insubordination. Lynn's control of CTU comes to an end when Curtis Manning invokes Article 112, which enables a ranking agent to remove a director that is unfit for duty.

Lynn is taken to a holding cell, where he calls his sister to request the return of the keycard. Later, after being informed of her murder, he finally confesses to Bill about the theft of his wallet, including the keycard. The stolen card was reprogrammed by Ostroff and used to infiltrate CTU and release a canister of Syntox gas, killing roughly 40% of CTU staff and subjecting CTU to an emergency lockdown.

Lynn was contained in a sealed holding room during the lockdown and was saved, but then sacrificed his life to clear CTU of the Syntox gas before the protective seals around the safe zones were corroded.

Memorable Quotes

 * Lynn: (to Audrey) If your father wasn't the Secretary of Defense I would have you thrown out of here. (looks at Bill) I don't have that problem with you.


 * Lynn: Damn it, Jenny, this isn't a laundry room. This is a secure government building.