Why not tell them


Why not tell them that it was a small child that hinted that her mother was working for the government and was recently in Venezuala? I mean they can't realistically punish a child to any extent and surely the worst that would happen to Erica would be a demotion of some sort?

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Exactly. It brought the principle of protecting ones source completely into disrepute.

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who knows what would happen to Wife and Father, and even the kid
maybe the same destiny that happened to both families ?

wife killed, father too probably, and her kid alison to some
foster care

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It doesn't matter who the source is. That was the point. Whether it be a small child, adult, someone on their death bed etc. It's the principle of the right to not have to divulge that information, regardless of the fallout or lack thereof. If she had divulged the information then that kid grows up eventually realizing she was inadvertently responsible for her mothers death, she grows up being at the centre of such a scandal. And if that doesn't cut it, then think about it as simply as that the journalist was asked to keep a secret, and she did that.

It's still a great night! Still a great night.

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Then, Semi, you presuppose that Rachel, our protagonist, could have foreseen Van Doren's death. In fact, van Doren's death might have been prevented if Rachel had revealed her source to begin with. Van Doren would have been dismissed as an agent, debriefed, sworn to secrecy again, and end of that story. Van Doren died because someone suspected she was a TRULY bad apple, a double agent, not just a mother of some little kid with long ears.

I agree with the posters who disapprove of Rachel. She shouldn't have used the information in the first place. She betrayed government secrets, and such offenses may lead to people getting killed, in the US as everywhere else. Just look at the trail of blood after the Cambridge Five in England.

But apart from that - what kind of a lousy agent was van Doren in the first place? The interview at the cemetery where she completely fails to appreciate that, as an agent, she is privy to classified information and therefore a liability, and she actually threatens to expose more secrets? Come on! Are we to believe that the CIA recruit their agents from "Desperate Housewives"?

I believe that scene was located at the cemetery to remind us of the casualties of national interests - the buried soldiers fought and died for that cause, and here are Rachel and Van Doren feeling personally offended because they are treating these matters as a scoop or a minor faux pas.

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