This is a work of nonfiction: that is to say, an account of true events based on the subjective perspectives of multiple actors complexly implicated in the events, as synthesized by an outside party complexly implicated with the actors. Diligent efforts have been made to represent all this as fairly and accurately as possible.
Most interviews were recorded, but no tape recorder was permitted inside USP McCreary, so the dialogue between Elliott Sommer and myself was reconstructed from notes. Certain interviews conducted across multiple sessions, particularly those with Alex and Norm, have been condensed into one. In a very few cases, I have presented interviews in different order than they were conducted in real life in order to preserve thematic coherence. One introductory monologue from the Dr. Phil episode has been transposed into a different section. Certain quotes have been condensed, trimmed, or lightly edited for clarity, particularly Luke Elliott Sommer’s speech to Bruce Singer about alleged war crimes, because its forcefulness would have been lost if it were presented at full length. All such choices were made with the intent of filtering out as much noise as possible so the music could be heard, but of course the judgment of what is music and what is noise is at heart a subjective one. I have tried to be true to the spirit of everyone who has been gracious enough to speak to me about their story.
The most difficult choices involved disagreements between interview subjects on factual details. I have allowed some of these contradictions to sit in the text, inviting readers to draw their own conclusions about when and how the truth has been distorted, but in other cases I have relied on those accounts that I judge most credible. I was not always able to verify or disprove certain family anecdotes, but because of their significance to those who related them to me, I decided to include them anyway. They should be interpreted as family lore, a genre closely akin to mythology. Certain characters—Tigra Robertson, Chad Palmer, Scott Byrne, and Bruce Singer most prominently among them—declined to speak with me. I have had to rely on external sources in telling their stories.
The extended excerpts from Alex’s prison manuscript about his training, Breaking Point, appear here largely intact. However, after Alex confessed to me that he had exaggerated certain details for effect—principally the durations of “smoke sessions”—I decided that the need to avoid misrepresenting army and Ranger training outweighed the need for fidelity to Alex’s original text. I have worked with Alex to bring all such details back within the realm of factual accuracy. In addition, the introductory and concluding essays have been lightly condensed to remove repetitions.
The names of four minor characters have been changed: “Don Keegan,” “Kathleen,” “Amy,” and “Marcus Cobb.” Any similarity between their fictitious names and the names of persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
In grappling with Alex’s story, I have come to believe that although reality itself may lie eternally beyond our comprehension, there is nothing more important to reach for. I do not pretend to know the full truth about the bank robbery that upended the lives of so many of the people I have spoken to, but I have aspired to put more of it in this book than has ever been told before. As Adrienne Rich puts it in her brilliant essay “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying,” “Truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity.”