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'NCIS: Los Angeles' Season 12 Episode 2: Why does Sam and Callen's main witness lie about Argento's War Crime?

Sam and Callen find themselves in a new mess when their prime witness against a war criminal lies and changes his testimony last minute

Spoilers for 'NCIS: Los Angeles' Season 12 Episode 2 'War Crimes'

The second episode of 'NCIS: Los Angeles' puts agents Sam and Callen in a bit of a tight spot. With just one day in hand to overturn witness testimony against presumed war criminal Thomas Argento, our NCIS officers aren't quite sure why their prime witness, Malcolm Kendricks, would change his testimony last minute on the stand after he has been sworn in. But while Kendricks is leading everyone to believe he is the killer and not Argento, there's reason enough to question his new claims.

According to the official synopsis of the episode titled 'War Crimes', “The NCIS team is called to help find the missing star witness after the trial of a Chief Petty Officer begins.” The petty officer in question here is Thomas Argento, who's accused of killing an innocent, unarmed man in Taliban. All of Argento's crew, including Kendricks, had testified against the man, claiming he was the killer. The prospect of testifying against Argento as the people who arrested him was also quite exciting for Sam and Callen and they were quite looking forward to it. The president was tweeting about the big trial, thus shedding a lot of media attention on the official hearing, which is why, when Kendricks totally goes opposite his initial testimony, things get more than just a little bit difficult for our NCIS agents.

There's the possibility of Kendricks' family being threatened by Argento at the last minute. Agents Deeks and Kensi reach out to Kendricks' wife and the moment they arrive at his house, they are greeted by deafening screams from inside before they can even meet her. Back in the NCIS headquarters, Fatima looked into Argento's personal life and relationships and found out nobody from his family visited him in prison, which seemed odd if one were to go by the false witch hunt narrative that Kendricks and Argento were trying to portray here with the changed testimony. And this leaves to have left both fans and viewers in a perplexed state of confusion.

While some fans on Twitter are of the opinion "You don’t know that Kendricks wasn’t threatened," others would also like to refute the argument saying "If Kendricks was threatened then he wouldn’t tell his family." The question, labeled by fans as a giant 'twist' in the story, remains "is Kendricks really the killer, or is he perjuring himself to protect Argento?" Some fans liked to explain their view of Argento threatening Kendricks noting "I mean obviously he’s been threatened or something, no one just changes their story (that is quite truthful) unless something like that happens."

The answer comes right at the end of the episode when new agent Roundtree is able to hunt down their second witness in Argento's trial - Moffat. This man runs the moment he sees Roundtree approaching, but he can't run for long. Eventually, he is caught and forced to spill the truth about his family being targeted by Argento's men. Turns out, Moffat was being blackmailed with threats to his family, and Kendricks was lying to save the other witness. In the end, both men testiify and Argento is finally prosecuted.

'NCIS: Los Angeles' Season 12 airs on Sundays at 9 pm on CBS.