A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (American Empire Project) | 
 enlarge | Author: Alfred Mccoy
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 324582
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0805082484
Dewey Decimal Number: 363
EAN: 9780805082487
ASIN: 0805082484
Publication Date: December 26, 2006
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Product Description
“An indispensable and riveting account” of the CIA’s development and use of torture, from the cold war to Abu Ghraib and beyond (Naomi Klein, The Nation)
In this revelatory account of the CIA’s fifty-year effort to develop new forms of torture, historian Alfred W. McCoy locates the deep roots of recent scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo in a long-standing, covert program of interrogation. A Question of Torture investigates the CIA’s practice of “sensory deprivation” and “self-inflicted pain,” in which techniques including isolation, hooding, hours of standing, and manipulation of time assault the victim’s senses and destroy the basis of personal identity. McCoy traces the spread of these practices across the globe, from Vietnam to Iran to Central America, and argues that after 9/11, psychological torture became the weapon of choice in the CIA’s global prisons, reinforced by “rendition” of detainees to “torture-friendly” countries. Finally, McCoy shows that information extracted by coercion is worthless, making a strong case for the FBI’s legal methods of interrogation.
Scrupulously documented and grippingly told, A Question of Torture is a devastating indictment of inhumane practices that have damaged America’s laws, military, and international standing.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
Decent Book With Surprises May 20, 2008
This is the second book I have read by Alfred McCoy- the first being The Politics of Heroin. I think it was a decent read. However, I enjoyed his first book much more- perhaps, because I have already read several books that delve into torture by the CIA and military. I think the book is very informative and delineates for the reader the origins and history of torture in the United States leading up to present day psychological (with some physical) interrogation techniques. He argues, backed up by various professional military and FBI sources, that torture does not work and actually leads to more conflict. Furthermore, using such brutal methods of interrogation does not provide the necessary intelligence that establishment sources desire and makes the terrorist threat larger by enraging those who are part of it- directly or indirectly. I think he is spot on in this matter and does a good job of presenting the facts of torture that haunt the military endeavors in Afghanistan and Iraq.
However, I am a bit surprised to find out that Milgram was funded by the CIA (so said according to McCoy). I would definitely would like to know how he was able to come up with this information- is there a source or evidence? It just seems far fetched. However for the time being, I will keep an open mind and wait for a second edition (which I am sure will come eventually) to find out if he details his proof. Recommended but keep in mind that one should take the Milgram piece with a grain a salt until further evidence is available.
 Why do we torture? March 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Professor McCoy has done research all over the world, and is the definitive voice on this subject. This book is shocking and disturbing and absolutely essential to an understanding of what should be a major issue in our nation and the world. We should be above such ugly, inhuman tactics - but are we?
 Principled but profoundly naive August 9, 2007
2 out of 18 found this review helpful
I read this book on the recommendation of a liberal friend whose views I respect, and with whom I've had many civil arguments about the subject of interrogation of known terrorists who neither have the rights of U.S. citizens nor those of genuine POWs (i.e., they weren't captured in uniform, they don't take direction from a centralized authority that recognizes the rules of warfare, etc.). So it's fair to say that I started off as a skeptic.
But this book utterly failed to persuade me of much of anything I hadn't already either accepted or known. Mr. McCoy is hopelessly naive and lacking in a sense of genuine moral, political, or social proportionality.
For instance, he writes in the introduction: "Compared to weighty matters of state raised by Abu Ghraib, Watergate, narrowly construed, seems little more than the failure of one man's character; Iran-Contra an isolated albeit intriguing incident at the sunset of the Cold War; and above all, l'affaire Monica Lewinsky sad, sordid, and forgettably partisan." If you are the sort of person who can swallow that sort of ridiculous hyperbole -- i.e., someone who thinks anything that happened to in one foreign prison can genuinely compare to what was quite literally (not just metaphorically) the threatened destruction of representative democracy and the Rule of Law (if Nixon had continued to defy the judicial and congressional branches) -- you'll enjoy this book.
Mr. McCoy also relies extensively on value judgments on extremely subjective matters from "experts" whose expertise is nonexistent. For example:
"Although seemingly less brutal than physical methods, no-touch torture leaves deep psychological scars on both victims and interrogators. One British journalist who observed this method's use in Northern Ireland called sensory deprivation 'the worst form of torture' because it 'provokes more anxiety among the interrogatees than more traditional tortures, leaves no visible scars and, therefore, is harder to prove, and produces longer lasting effects.'"
One wonders whether this "expert," this "British journalist," had the opportunity to observe Iraqi parents as their children were fed through chipper-shredders like tree limbs by Saddam's secret police. That's a "no-touch torture" that I, albeit as ANOTHER non-expert, would consider to be quite a bit worse than any sensory deprivation imaginable.
I do not doubt Mr. McCoy's patriotism, but rather his wisdom. I do not doubt his sincerity, but rather his judgment. There is a certain type of idealist who believes in absolutes, who judges everything and everyone who falls short of perfection to be utterly ruined, and who will follow the internal logic of his positions into ridiculous extremes. I'm afraid Mr. McCoy proves himself to be such an idealist through this book.
It's well and good -- indeed, it's critical -- for us to continually remind ourselves of the need to adhere, as a society, to the strictures of civilization that distinguish us from the barbaric enemies who would ritually rape and mutilate our daughters before beheading them for wearing eye shadow or a two-piece bathing suit. But I do not believe that Mr. McCoy grasps that there are GENUINELY, indisputably EVIL men who, by their conduct and their dogma, have knowingly and deliberately done everything possible to forfeit their rights to be considered part of humanity. For my daughters' sakes, and for Mr. McCoy's (if he has any), I'm perfectly happy to forfeit Mr. McCoy's regard: He can call me a barbarian if it makes him feel smugly superior, but by and large, I support the official policies that the Bush-43 administration has promulgated.
I can and do draw practical, moral, and legal distinctions between, say, crushing a testacle on the one hand, and playing loud rap music while humiliating someone with fake menstrual blood on the other hand. I weep NO tears at all for someone "tortured" in the latter ways -- none. And this book gives me no reason why I should.
This quote is variously attributed to Churchill, Orwell, and others, but it's true: "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." I am grateful for them; Mr. McCoy, I think, would have us put THEM in prison, and have the rest of us surrendered over to those who would gladly slit our throats precisely BECAUSE of our "civilized [Western] attitudes." I'm glad he's not in charge.
 Misrepresentation of the Legacy of Donald O. Hebb June 15, 2007
9 out of 16 found this review helpful
I am a retired neurosurgeon and quite familiar with the life and works of Donald O. Hebb.
I have just read Chapter 2 of the recently published book by Alfred McCoy, "A Question of Torture."
The chapter makes very interesting reading, but I am chagrined by the number of factual errors contained in this work regarding Dr. Hebb's alleged role in the development of methods of "psychological torture."
Dr. McCoy's most egregious error, in referring to the sensory deprivation experiments conducted at McGill by Dr. Hebb and his colleagues, is the assertion that, "In silent, sadly eloguent testimony to the corrupting influence of this research, it is ironic that Hebb .........should be best remembered today for the work that made him, perhaps unwittingly, the progenitor of psychological torture". It is regrettable that McCoy published this silly statement for public consumption. Clearly, Dr. Hebb is not best remembered for that reason.
At the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in London, Ontario (into which Dr. Hebb was inducted several years ago) there is an exhibit which cogently displays his major contribution to the field of psychology, that is, the publication of "The Organization of Behavior" which has been compared in its biological significance to Darwin's, "Origin of Species". Dr. Hebb proposed in this book, for the first time, that psychological functions such as memory and learning may be explained on the basis of neural activity. Any knowledgeable psychologist would remember him primarily for this achievement.
Further, Dr. Hebb was nominated for the Nobel prize, became the President of the American Psychological Association and achieved a "distinctive place in the history of twentieth-century psychology", not because of the sensory deprivation experiments but because of his distinguished career launched by his seminal theories proposed in "The Organization of Behavior".
Finally, to refer to Dr. Hebb as a colleague of Dr. Cameron is a real stretch. There was absolutely no collaboration between the two. In fact it is well known that Dr.Hebb had nothing but contempt for Dr. Cameron's work.
It is clear from the report of George Cooper to the Canadian Ministry of Justice that the purpose of the sensory deprivation experiments was to try to understand the methods the communist forces were using to "brain wash" UN solders during the Korean War. Hebb's experiments provided that understanding. Dr Hebb had nothing to do with subsequent decisions by others to incorporate some of the general conclusions of these experiments into interrogation techniques.
It is unfortunate that Dr. McCoy has so distorted the significance of the contributions of this distinguished scientist in order to dramatize his incorrect conclusions that Dr. Hebb was the father of "psychological torture". Dr. Hebb can no more be considered the father of psychological torture than the discoverers of the germ theory of disease can be considered the fathers of biological warfare.
The gross inaccuracies in this chapter of the book must raise questions regarding the bias and accuracy of the research incorporated into the remainder of the book.
Why do we allow such barbarism in our name? February 13, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Halfway thru this book, I found myself asking --- how is it possible that W., Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft are not, right now, serving life sentences in jail? There is something HORRIBLY wrong, bordering on psychotic, with an America where such sick, evil, barbaric acts - from people WE voted into office - people who claim to be deeply religious - can go unpunished.
Human beings were beaten over the course of several days, hooded, until dead while in US custody. This went on for years. The only crime of one of those murdered in our custody was that he went to the Americans to find out the status of his son who we also had in custody.
Dr. King, you sacrificed so much for us. But, we have so quickly gone back to our old ways. Instead of lynching negroes in the south, we now murder muslims in the east - but only after torturing them for days, weeks, sometimes even years.
We hide behind our leaders, who order such horrible acts of beastiality, and we pretend we do now know. Just protect us - we tell them. Protect us -- but don't let us know how you do it. Just do it.
We are no better than the monsters who took down the twin towers.
The abuses described in this book are too well detailed and footnoted to pretend the author is lying or confused. He did his research well and provides ample references for anyone wishing to fact check him.
Why do we allow this? Why do you allow it? Why do I allow it?
We are a lost nation. An empire already beaten by its own excesses.
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