The Real Question..Or Maybe I Just Missed It..

He kept messing up, he became a liability to them. They told him to chill, covered him when he killed the Koreans, when he shot Washington, while he investigated himself and pressured people. Then he went and gave the video to the widow which showed massive corruption and would get them in trouble, he went and killed two of their main people with which they dealt heroin/cocaine.

Too far of the edge and they let go.

Not sure why at the start, telling him that Washington was selling him out would set him off and they knew it.. 'shrugs' A test maybe, that one I don't get.

When Wander decided to kill Washington the moment Washington went clean, he decided to *use* - not frame - Ludlow in setting up Washington for death.

The reason why Wander chose Ludlow was because a) Ludlow and Washington were former partners who fell out with each other after Washington developed a conscience, and b) Wander knew Ludlow well enough to predict his potential reactions. Ludlow was the "shoot now, ask later" type.

At a celebratory party (after the Korean showdown) Wander and his men told Ludlow that Washington had been telling the Internal Affairs about Ludlow. What Ludlow didn't know at this time: Washington was in fact telling the IA about the "cookie jar" (involving Wander), not Ludlow himself. They did this because they knew Ludlow would work himself up into going after Washington with a punch or two to teach him a lesson.

Why did they need him when they could just sic the undercover cops on Washington without involving Ludlow? Again, they knew him well enough to know he would investigate the shooting of Washington. Like it or not, Washington was still his former partner.

By putting him there at the shooting and then helping him out (hiding the video CD and recovering the stray bullet), they assumed Ludlow would sit down and shut up from there on. Like, keeping him on short leash. They were wrong.

When Ludlow investigated for the real identities of the undercover cops, they finally decided to frame him by sacrificing all - Ludlow, Disco, the undercover cops, the widow and Ludlow's girlfriend - to pin all their deaths on Ludlow, dead or alive, because Ludlow was destroying all their efforts to make Washington's murder part of of a simple robbery gone wrong.

What triggered their decision is that Ludlow was finally discovering what Washington had known all along and trying to tell the IA about -- the cookie jar. The undercover cops were the key (they had been selling police-confiscated drugs and collecting money from people for Wander and his men's "cookie jar"). Ludlow wasn't supposed to know. He was just Wander's wild dog who took illegal short cuts in the name of justice, which helped to further Wander's career.

So yeah, they figured that the moment Ludlow learned the truth about what Washington was trying to do, he had to be framed then die.

EDIT: Ludlow was willing to take illegal short cuts because a) he was grateful to Wander for 'saving him' from himself, b) he believed in justice, and c) he was an emotional wreck (wife's adultery, her death, his alcoholism, etc). Otherwise I don't know why.

What doesn't make sense to me is that, if Ludlow was the worst, most corrupt cop on the force, why was he apparently the only one who didn't know about the Cookie Jar? All along? For years?

In addition to what's already been written above I'd like to clarify something that at least was my impression. Ludlow was NOT DIRTY. That is, he was not corrupt as his captain and other members of his squad. He was merely a tough cop who not always played by the rules - probably a bad thing in itself sure, but not in the sense that he wanted to profit from his work. Thus, one could say that he was "honest" and the others managed to frame him because of it.