How Was Bester So Sure That Garibaldi Will Be Hired By William Edgars?

I've been thinking about that for some time.There's no way that Bester could know that William Edgars will hire exactly Garibaldi and not someone else from B5's security.He could have bribed some of the Security Guards who work in customs and easily smuggle any pakage he wants.There's also another possibility-Garibaldi could have refused to work for Edgars and keep running his own company.

Well, Bester probably subconciously told Garibaldi to accept the job... but my question is, how was Bester so sure Edgars would approach him?

Of course, Lise knew Garibaldi, and Edgars was probably keeping a quiet eye on his wife's old flame just in case. Maybe Bester discovered that Edgars was having Garibaldi surveiled, and took a gamble that if Garibaldi quit Edgars would move in. This, however, is no more than unsubstantiated guesswork.

KoshFan said:

but my question is, how was Bester so sure Edgars would approach him?

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I suspect that Bester got lucky. Originally Bester may not have known that Edgars was involved, just some unknown Mr Big. Bester's plan could have been to have Babylon 5's head of security (Garibaldi) order his men to investigate the smugglers, possibly even head the investigation. This plan failed when Garibaldi resigned. However when the teep haters recruited Garibaldi Bester probably thought Christmas had arrived early.

I don't remember all the little details (even though I've seen this show like, what, a bazillion times?) but the way I remember it, A M Swallow has it right. Bester, in general, is the ultimate opportunist- he may not have planned everything for Garibaldi, but he just took advantage of Garibaldi falling into his lap, figuring that it would just be nice to have him as his personal zombie, and to turn him against Sheridan.

That's a good point. Also, we have no idea how many "Garibaldis" were out there. Perhaps this was more a network of subconscious spies who might never know they were captured and recruited if they never found information that would pay off. Only those with certain parameters triggered would click into the "report back" mode, possibly. It's possible, I think, that Garibaldi was simply the lead that paid off the most, quickly.

What y'all need to do is find that (awesome) scene in the train thingy where Bester explains everything to zombified Garibaldi right before he releases him. I'm too lazy, though.

Yeah, but I don't recall him going into exhaustive detail, though. He kinda glossed over some stuff.

I'm too lazy, too.

My memory may be a bit fuzzy concerning the conversation on that train ride, but I think I remember him stating something to the effect that Bester never intended for Garibaldi to get involved with Edgars. It just happened to be shear luck that he fell into Edgar's lap. The conditioning that the Bester et. al. gave him (questioning authority, etc.) made him more likely to get involved with him, but I don't think there was ever any specific intention on Bester's part regarding Edgars hiring him.

I'm lazy, too, but it's easier to pull down a script than fire up a DVD so...

The way Bester explained things, the Shadows knew that if they killed Sheridan, others would take his place. They figured that the three most likely would be Delenn, Ivanova and Garibaldi. Given his record, the Shadows figured that Garibaldi would be the easiest to turn to their cause and so he was picked up by the Shadows while Sheridan was on Z'ha'dum.

Bester knew that they'd infiltrated the Corps so he was able to intervene when Garibaldi was brought in for 'adjustment'. He claims to have known by then that telepaths were a threat to the Shadows (Did he? My memory's foggy on that part) and so he had them accentuate Garibaldi's rebelliousness and suspicious tendencies, knowing that Garibaldi was already very good at sensing conspiracies and tracking them back to their source.

That Garibaldi quit as head of security and thereby became a good prospect to be contacted by William Edgars seems to have been a fortuitous accident.

Jan

Jan said:

He claims to have known by then that telepaths were a threat to the Shadows (Did he? My memory's foggy on that part)

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Well, Garibaldi figures out the telepath weak point in "Ship of Tears," but I don't think they share that with Bester. On the other hand, a lot of the clues were at Bester's disposal already -- he saw the teepsicles too, and he was there when the Shadow ship backed off. A little extra evidence (from the Narns) was all Garibaldi needed to put the pieces together; Bester may have picked up a little extra data somewhere else, and figured it out on his own. In fact I suspect he did, and made sure no more of "his telepaths" got sucked away to fight for the Shadows. Since having those teeps as their ships' CPUs would have made the Shadows much less vulnerable, I bet we can thank Bester for saving their butts on that one.

Garibaldi was captured in episode "Z'ha'dum" after lots of telepaths were used in the big Army of Light Vs. Shadows battle in "Shadow Dancing". Bester could have picked up on the recruitment and use of the telepaths.

Hah, yes. Good point. He probably would have noticed a buch of telepaths getting recruited.