Tine in Boston: the security crisis and the president with no N.S.A.

The federal framing pickup 12 lands: the samizdat is handled as a national-security emergency, but "President Gentle has no N.S.A. as such" — the Clean-U.S. regime tore up the old security architecture, so the crisis falls to Rodney Tine's Office of Unspecified Services by default. Tine is in Boston "because of the N.S. implications" of the Entertainment, which makes U.S.O.U.S. — an intelligence bureau, not a public-health one — the organ that must contain a lethal film. The scene shows the O.N.A.N. state discovering it has no proper machinery for a threat this size and improvising with its spies.