The Chief can tell Wash how things are with him, but he can't explain why. It's becoming pretty clear to him that without the latter, though, the former is an exercise in futility.

Maybe Wash is willing to tell him how his project got most of its agents killed, but that's hindsight on an acknowledged failure. The Spartan program is still regarded as a success, and has to stay that way. It was monstrous. He knows on an objective level that it was inexcusable. But he also knows that it made him into what he had to be, and he won't be the one to open the casket at the funeral.

Like any tactician who knows he's been beaten on one flank, the Chief circles to the other.

"You told me some pretty damning things about Freelancer," he says. "How did they lose so many agents? Was it all like what happened with your security specialist?"

Because the Chief remembers that conversation. He was pretty sober at the time.

Maybe it's a cheap out, and he'd admit to it. But if it will get Wash off a trail the Chief can't let him follow, he'll take it.