When you look at the big issues post-9/11 in the United States

Host: The night pressed against the windows like a held breath. In a bar just off Fleet Street — a haunt for lawyers, journalists, and ghosts of old truths — the air was thick with smoke and memory. A single lamp cast a muted gold glow over the table where Jack and Jeeny sat, their faces half-lit, half-lost to shadow. Outside, sirens murmured in the distance, swallowed by the endless rain that fell like static.

On the table, between an untouched glass of whiskey and a folded newspaper, lay the quote that neither of them could look away from:

“When you look at the big issues post-9/11 in the United States — whether it's waterboarding, warrantless wiretapping, surveillance, Gitmo, black sites rendition — all of those have been legal. Nobody has gone to jail for those programs.”
— Matt Apuzzo

Host: The words sat there like evidence at a trial, and the jury was just the two of them — two weary souls arguing over whether the law still had a pulse.

Jack: “That’s the whole point, isn’t it?” he said, his voice low, husky, steady. “Everything that shouldn’t have been legal — was. Everything that broke the moral spine of a nation — signed off, stamped, and archived. No handcuffs, no guilt, just procedure.”

Jeeny: “You sound like you’re surprised.”

Jack: “I’m not. Just… tired. Tired of watching law become a language for crime.”

Host: Jeeny leaned forward, her dark eyes shimmering beneath the soft light. Her hands were still, but her voice carried a quiet heat, the kind that can burn slowly through even the coldest logic.

Jeeny: “But that’s the tragedy, Jack. The law doesn’t have a soul. It never did. It’s a tool. It can justify anything — torture, secrecy, silence — if the right people write the rules.”

Jack: “Then what’s left, Jeeny? If the law isn’t moral, and morality isn’t legal, what the hell are we even defending?”

Host: The clock behind the bar ticked softly, a heartbeat in the silence. Raindrops traced slow paths down the window, distorting the streetlights into trembling streaks of gold.

Jeeny: “We defend what’s left of conscience. Even if it’s just a whisper under a mountain of paperwork.”

Jack: “A whisper doesn’t stop a drone, or a black site, or a judge who’s afraid to say the word wrong.”

Jeeny: “Maybe not. But it can remind someone that right still exists — even if the law forgot it.”

Host: Jack leaned back, his chair creaking. The smoke from his cigarette curled upward, thin and ghostly, as if it wanted to escape the conversation.

Jack: “You know what Apuzzo’s really saying? That legality has become the new morality. If you can find a loophole, you can find forgiveness. It’s not about justice anymore — it’s about permission.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe justice has to live outside the law now.”

Jack: “You realize what that means, don’t you? That’s anarchy, Jeeny.”

Jeeny: “No. That’s humanity — the kind that still knows pain when it sees it.”

Host: The rain intensified, beating against the windows like a soft interrogation. Outside, the reflections of headlights slid across the pavement, like fleeting truths trying to reach the surface.

Jack: “Do you remember when we believed in the system?”

Jeeny: “You believed in it. I just believed we could fix it.”

Jack: “And now?”

Jeeny: “Now I believe it was never broken. It was built this way.”

Host: Jack’s jaw tightened. He turned the glass in his hand, watching the light catch on the amber liquid. His reflection in it looked older, tired — as if the years had been measured not in time, but in compromise.

Jack: “After 9/11, we rewrote everything — laws, morals, even language. We didn’t ‘torture,’ we ‘interrogated.’ We didn’t ‘kidnap,’ we ‘renditioned.’ And when people asked, we told them it was legal. Do you know what that word means now?”

Jeeny: “It means nothing — and everything. It’s the most dangerous word in the world. It turns sin into policy.”

Jack: “And no one went to jail.”

Jeeny: “Because law is written by survivors, not victims.”

Host: The truth of that statement lingered like smoke, hanging low and heavy. The rain began to slow, and the faint rumble of distant thunder filled the spaces between their words.

Jack: “Sometimes I think justice died that day — not in the towers, but in the courtrooms that followed.”

Jeeny: “Justice didn’t die. It just lost its voice under all the applause for security.”

Jack: “Security — the god we all agreed to worship.”

Jeeny: “And like all gods, it demands sacrifice. Privacy, freedom, truth — we offered them up like offerings and called it patriotism.”

Jack: “You make it sound like a faith.”

Jeeny: “It is. The faith of fear.”

Host: A long silence fell. In it, you could almost hear the hum of hidden servers, the click of digital chains, the whisper of every secret being filed away forever.

Jack: “So what do we do, Jeeny? Just sit here and talk about how broken it all is?”

Jeeny: “We remember. We teach. We refuse to call it justice when it isn’t.”

Jack: “You think words can undo torture?”

Jeeny: “No. But they can refuse to call it legal.”

Host: The lamplight flickered. For a brief moment, their faces looked like two halves of the same truth — one scarred by reality, the other kept alive by hope.

Jack: “You still believe in hope after all this?”

Jeeny: “Hope isn’t a belief, Jack. It’s an obligation. If we stop hoping, we become the law we hate.”

Jack: “You think that’s enough?”

Jeeny: “It has to be.”

Host: He looked at her then — really looked. The woman who refused to yield to the cold logic of his world, who still spoke of truth as if it were something alive, not archived. Outside, the rain had ceased, leaving the streets glistening like memory.

Jack: “You know what’s funny? The lawyers who wrote those torture memos — they slept like babies. Because everything they did was, in their words, ‘within legal parameters.’”

Jeeny: “And yet not one of them ever faced a mirror without a shadow.”

Jack: “You think shame is punishment enough?”

Jeeny: “No. But it’s the only sentence left when the law refuses to convict.”

Host: The rain began again — softer this time, like the city was weeping for what it had once believed in.

Jack: “Maybe Apuzzo’s right. Maybe the problem isn’t what’s illegal — it’s what’s allowed.”

Jeeny: “And maybe the solution isn’t to rewrite the law, but to rewrite what we call acceptable.”

Host: She reached across the table, her hand brushing his — a simple, human gesture in a world that had forgotten what that meant. For the first time that night, Jack didn’t pull away.

Jeeny: “The law will always lag behind the truth, Jack. But as long as someone still questions, still argues, still feels, it’s not completely lost.”

Jack: “And if that someone disappears?”

Jeeny: “Then the truth waits — quietly — for someone new.”

Host: The camera would pull back now — through the window, out into the wet streets where neon reflections bled into puddles. Somewhere, the world continued — a machine humming with legality and denial.

But inside that small bar, two voices still echoed — one forged in logic, the other lit by conscience — holding the law to the light, asking it to see itself again.

And as the rain fell softly over London, the words of Matt Apuzzo lingered like a verdict whispered to history itself:

“All of it was legal. And that’s what makes it unforgivable.”