I like to think he got away with everything that he did. What are they going to do, pull him in for a congressional hearing? They already announced Bishop had been dead for a while. I think everyone's gonna be hush hush about the whole situation.
shareI like to think he'd just disappear if he needed to, go off the radar sort of thing. Having the experience from his job.
shareYa I think that is why he signed the "non disclosure agreement" so quickley when he left.
shareI don't think the CIA would want to admit that they had been had like that. I think the best thing for them to do would be to "admit" that they planned the whole thing from the beginning. Better to be the good guys who bent the rules and put politics and economics aside to run a precision op to save one of their own than the bumbling idiots that got played by an old fossil of an agent. Really, a room full of the worlds best spies got played by this old guy on his way out the door? He manipulated the entire CIA? Which would you rather defend before congress? Heck, Muir should file an expense report and get reimbursed. How could they deny it? It's like President Nemerov in The Sum of All Fears - it's better to pretend that you ordered it and seem in control than to deny it and seem an impotent fool. Heck he could probably get reimbursed AND get a medal.
Yeah, the only person who was pissed off was Harker, who thought he had him on the hook only to watch him wriggle off. Why would there be an investigation of a military op which recovered one of our assets and a foreign national from a Chinese prison? Medals would have been given.
Internally and militarily, he could be hung (metaphorically speaking) only for forgery and issuing of orders without authorization (yeah, he could be reprimanded for "using company assets" to take satellite photos of the Bahamas, I suppose). But since the operation was a success, who cares? He's signed the non-disclosure agreement, so it all stays in-house. And he's now "off the reservation". Should he ever disclose that info, they've got him by the short hairs. But he simply wants to get as far away from the life as his Porsche 912 will take him (that's the significance of the last scene).
Also, some have wondered whether he embezzeled the money that he had for the Bahama house. Probably not. That wasn't all that much money for a CIA agent to save over the years. HOWEVER, I suspect that he had squirreled away other funds funneled from ops that WERE "embezzeled" or skimmed off from operations. That's why he could give up the $282,000 - it was money that could be accounted for, all in one place. I'm sure that he had a nest egg hidden away. Obviously, it undermines the premise that he broke his own rule but he's shown to be a "grey" sort of character who's willing to kill and let be killed, so it keeps the ending from being totally "Hollywood" without being explicit.
I like to think that he and Bishop (and "the girl") open up a tourist operation in the Bahamas ala Jason Bourne <kidding>.
The Chinese aren't going to make a big stink because they don't want to be embarrassed by their inability to keep two prisoners. They will be rewarded with a better bargaining position in the trade talks. The US isn't going to do anything because they don't want to be embarrassed by two of their agents going off the reservation, and they've already declared one of them as dead. Everyone will quietly move along, business as usual.
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