Los Angeles nuclear attack conspiracy

During the Los Angeles nuclear attack conspiracy of Day 2, a cabal inside the US federal government (including NSA Director Roger Stanton, Michigan senator Bruce Gluck, and Colonel Ron Samuels from Fort Benning) allowed terrorist group Second Wave to smuggle a nuclear bomb into the United States. The terrorists planned to detonate it over downtown Los Angeles, but before they could do that, the conspirators would dispatch a black ops unit to locate and secure the bomb at the last possible second. This was all in an effort to radically change the David Palmer administration's defense policy.

However, this was only part of a larger plan orchestrated by a consortium of oil industrialists (which included Max, Alexander Trepkos, and Peter Kingsley), who had their mole in the black ops unit kill all the members of the team, thus ensuring the detonation of the bomb. The conspirators also forged evidence that implicated three Middle Eastern countries in the attack. This would prompt a US military retaliation, which in turn would quadruple the value of the consortium's oil holdings in the Caspian Sea.

The US was moments away from launching an attack on the Middle East when CTU agent Jack Bauer managed to produce evidence that absolved the three countries.

Dissident faction
Just over a year after President David Palmer's taking office, there were already members within his administration who were allying against him. Among them was NSA Director Roger Stanton, who was formulating a plot to impose his own policies. For six months prior to Day 2, Stanton and ex-wife of Palmer, Sherry, have been communicating by phone, email, and even face-to-face meetings at a hotel in Hilton Head. Stanton sought her help with identifying like-minded individuals within the administration that could be recruited into his conspiracy. Still resentful of her and David's divorce a year earlier, Sherry agreed to help him.

Some time later, Stanton came into contact with businessman Peter Kingsley. Kingsley was well aware of a Second Wave plot to detonate a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles, and both he and Stanton planned to use this to their advantage. They, along with Senator Bruce Gluck, Colonel Ron Samuels, and Sherry Palmer, conspired to allow the terrorists to not only smuggle the bomb into the US but also attempt to detonate it. However, an NSA-funded, covert task force at the conspirators' command—Coral Snake—would be monitoring the terrorists' every move. Then, moments before its detonation, the commandos would move in and secure the bomb without incident, for which the conspirators would receive all the credit. This supposedly would have led to a paradigm shift in US defense policy, underscoring the need for more resources to better combat terrorism.

Cyprus recording
Although Kingsley assured his co-conspirators that the bomb would never go off, he was actually working at the behest of an oil consortium which included himself, German arms dealer Max, and his intermediary, Alexander Trekpos. Their true goal was to start a war between the US and the Middle East, which would greatly increase their oil interests in the Caspian Sea. To achieve this, Kingsley hired computer programmer Alex Hewitt to forge an audio recording of Second Wave's ringleader, Syed Ali, conspiring to bomb Los Angeles with high-ranking government officials from three Middle Eastern countries. Kingsley also had Hewitt create recordings of a number of his phone conversations, including those he has with Sherry Palmer. Four months before Day 2, Kingsley had Jonathan Wallace, the Coral Snake captain in his employ, infiltrate Ali's safe house in Cyprus and plant the recording. The safe house would inevitably be raided during the day of the attack, and upon discovery of the recording, the US would have no choice but to declare war on the three countries.

Wallace, who led the unit that would track and later intercept the bomb, was also tasked with ensuring its detonation by any means necessary. As an insurance policy, he planted a data chip—which contained proof that the Cyprus recording was fake—in his skin, unaware that Kingsley's men had placed a tracking device on it.

Resurrection of OPCOM
A month prior to Day 2, Roger Stanton issued an eyes only order that the NSA reactivate OPCOM, an old CIA backchannel communications network, over twenty years after it was shut down. Stanton used this to secretly communicate with Colonel Samuels, who commandeered the Coral Snake unit out of Fort Benning.

Bomb enters the United States
Just weeks before Day 2, Second Wave initiated its plot to bomb Los Angeles. Stanton deliberately allowed the terrorists to sneak the bomb through customs; he also made sure they could operate freely on US soil. At the same time, a seven-man Coral Snake detachment, led by Captain Jonathan Wallace, was shadowing the terrorists from the moment they entered the country. Their orders were to intercept the bomb at the last possible moment, but Wallace—who was secretly working for the oil consortium—planned to turn on his men and kill them in order to ensure its detonation.

Search for the bomb
At 8:02am, the CIA learned that a rogue nuclear device would be detonated in Los Angeles by the end of the day. President David Palmer was immediately pulled from a fishing trip with his son, Keith, and was moved to the Northwest Regional Operations Complex to be briefed on the situation. NSA was heading up the search for the bomb and was coordinating with CTU Los Angeles, DoD, CIA, FBI, and local police. NSA Deputy Director Eric Rayburn ordered CTU to bring in former agent Jack Bauer—who was once undercover with a domestic terrorist cell connected to Second Wave—to assist in the search.



At 12:07pm, Roger Stanton arrived at the OC following Rayburn's dismissal for insubordination. In an effort to ensure that the Coral Snake commandos would be the ones who intercept the bomb, Stanton made several attempts to impede the government's search operation.

Murder of foreign ambassador
At 12:21pm at his presidential retreat, President Palmer, along with his advisor Lynne Kresge and Roger Stanton, met with an ambassador and a high-ranking security officer from one of the Middle Eastern countries where Second Wave was known to operate. Shareef expressed his country's desire to assist in preventing the attack, and he and Salim requested that the president share with them any intelligence documents pertaining to suspected terrorism in their country.

Stanton was openly opposed to this, stating that sharing such information would expose their own agents in the region, but Palmer insisted that the country could prove helpful in stopping the attack. He then had any information in the files that would expose their agents removed and passed the revised documents off to the ambassador; he also ordered NSA to monitor how the country uses their intelligence. However, Stanton had one or more of his co-conspirators sabotage the ambassador's helicopter before it left the retreat. Shortly before 12:57pm, the chopper carrying Shareef and Farhad Salim crashed in an apparent accident, killing everyone on board.

None of the files were found among the wreckage. Palmer ordered an independent investigation to be set up, believing someone on the inside to be behind the crash.

Military evacuation of Los Angeles
At around 12:23pm, Roger Stanton ordered an evacuation of all military personnel and resources out of Los Angeles, knowing such an order would start a panic and in turn hinder the government's search efforts for the bomb. Sherry Palmer arrived at the retreat at approximately 1:04pm to inform her ex-husband of the order for the evacuation. David had Lynne look into the matter, and she later found out that there indeed was an order and that it was issued by Stanton. When David confronted him about this, he claimed that he was only acting on information given to him by Eric Rayburn and that he assumed that David had authorized it. After apologizing for his "mistake," Stanton was ordered by the president to assist Lynne in calling off the evacuation.

David would meet with Sherry again at 1:35pm; it was then that she warned him of a cabal inside his administration that was conspiring to take control of his presidency. She offered her assistance in finding out who was involved, to which David acquiesced. However, Sherry was secretly in league with Stanton and his co-conspirators; she was only helping the president so she could gradually regain his confidence, which the conspirators would then take advantage of.

Ron Wieland's release
Earlier that day, national affairs correspondent Ron Wieland learned that President Palmer had raised the alert level and was operating out of the OC; he was scheduled to give a live report about a potential terrorist threat at noon. Palmer, believing such a rumor would create mass hysteria, met with him at 9:54am and asked him to hold off on the report. Although Wieland said he would consider it, the president had one of his Secret Service agents, Richard Armus, escort Wieland to a holding room where he was detained indefinitely.

Unbeknownst to Palmer, Armus was also in league with the conspirators. At approximately 3:38pm, he, under orders from Roger Stanton, released Wieland. The journalist would then go public with the terrorist threat as well as the president's having him detained. Secret Service attempted to locate Armus following his treachery, but to no avail. Palmer was then convinced that whoever was conspiring against him was determined to prevent him from finding the bomb in time.

Downing of Jack Bauer's flight
While undercover with Joseph Wald's terrorist militia, Jack Bauer uncovered a link between the Second Wave terrorists and Nina Myers, the CTU mole who murdered his wife. Nina, now, in prison for her crimes, was brought into CTU for questioning. After successfully negotiating for a presidential pardon, she gave CTU the whereabouts of one of the key orchestrators of the attack, Mamud Rasheed Faheen. Jack, along with Nina and a team of CTU field agents, flew to Visalia and apprehended Faheen. On the flight back, Nina managed to get the location of Second Wave's ringleader, Syed Ali and, by extension, the bomb out of Faheen. Meanwhile, Roger Stanton, who had access to the plane's flight plan, ordered a Coral Snake detachment to shoot it down and kill any survivors. At 3:59pm, the plane carrying Jack and Nina was hit by a surface-to-air missile and crashed into a remote area minutes later. The only survivors were Jack, Nina, and Rick Phillips.

At 4:31pm, a team of Coral Snake commandos arrived at the crash site and began searching for survivors. Jack witnessed the team's leader executing Phillips and subsequently killed one of the soldiers with a flare gun. Jack then grabbed the commando's rifle and several magazines; with Nina spotting for him from a vantage point and tossing him ammunition, Jack was able to hold off the soldiers until a TAC team arrived and neutralized the remaining hostiles. After the incident, Jack recognized a tattoo of a coral snake on the arm of one of the soldiers.

Roger Stanton's arrest
Jack called President Palmer and told him the tattoo on the commando's arm was the signature a special forces unit based out of Fort Benning, which was commandeered by Colonel Ron Samuels and funded by NSA. He also told him that their attackers having access to their flight plan meant they were being aided by someone on the inside. Palmer would later meet with Roger Stanton about this, who denied knowing of a Colonel Samuels or any paramilitary group in NSA's budget. Palmer suspected he was hiding something and had his chief of staff, Mike Novick, and Sherry look for a connection between Stanton and Samuels so he could draw up an arrest warrant.

Zero hour
Between 5 and 6pm, the Coral Snake unit that was shadowing the Second Wave terrorists followed them to a hangar at Norton Airfield. There, the terrorists planned to load the bomb onto a plane, fly it above downtown Los Angeles, and then detonate it in mid-air. The commandos then stationed themselves at a building in close proximity to the hangar and subsequently went dark, not making any communication with the outside until the bomb was secured. Jonathan Wallace used this an opportunity to make his move; he killed three of his men before they had time to react and killed the remainder in an apparent struggle. With the bomb's detonation now imminent and his mission complete, Wallace fled the area.