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SECOND WEEK

First Historical Subject (and Master Narrative):

George Anderson

Dear David Kallen,

Let me now begin again. I hope you will not reject my request for a time and place to meet and speak with you in person. We share the same history. Our personal histories entitle us to positions of comfort and rule. I am an expert by formal training in our national narrative. Over my long career as editor I helped regulate a bourgeois ethical monopoly over the words by which we know ourselves and understand others as universal democratic citizens sharing a modern and Humanist historical good faith.

Who were you when you gave the signal that stopped the trainers at Fort Bragg from torturing you any further? Your action was brave beyond those of anyone else in your or any similar position within the Executive Branch of the American government.

You called torture by its name with the knowledge and authority your body gave you. You wrote a draft of an official finding, writing as acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel whose words had the force of law. You ruled torture to be illegal under U.S. law and treaty obligations no matter what was claimed by historical actors of the executive branch to be the requirements of empire. You then added a footnote—was it forced on you? If so how was that order enforced?—that undid your memorandum’s asserted intention to withdraw legal protection from the torture that had been inflicted for years on persons within the control of the U.S. government and, in secret, had been made official policy in August 2002.