NCIS does chlorine and Fritz Haber on January 8, 2019

In an episode first airing on 8 Jan. 2019, titled “Toil and Trouble,” Agent Leroy Gibbs (Mark Harmon) and his team are getting some negative, threatening commentary from United States Secretary of Defense Wynn Crawford (Mitch Pileggi), which episode concludes ominously with Crawford asking a CIA contact for information on Leon Vance.

In between, there is a plot line on chemical warfare agents, specifically chlorine. Chlorine has been around for a long time, and was named by Sir Humphry Davy around 1810. Chlorine is used in the manufacture of many products.

NCIS mistakenly asserted that chlorine was discovered by Fritz Haber in 1915.

Coincidentally, this NCIS episode of January 8, 2019 is eleven years after an episode on Law & Order, which also mentioned Fritz Haber and chemical warfare. As posted on IPBiz in Patents and Fritz Haber in Law & Order on 9 Jan 08 , Haber won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1918, three years after the use of chlorine in World War I, and Haber's wife committed suicide because of his work in chemical warfare.

Returning to "Wynn Crawford," the plotline suggested that Crawford owned stock in the company featured in the story, which company apparently had unaccounted stock of chlorine, and which had been getting contracts to destroy chemical warfare agents.

Going to "60 Minutes" on January 7, 2019, one recalls the parade of former cabinet secretaries who were backing Xyleco.