A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror

Have you wondered why the USA kept prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo naked and forced them into stress positions for long periods in rooms that were either excessively cold or hot? As Professor Alfred McCoy demonstrates in his book A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror, these and other forms of torture are not new USA interrogation techniques. They date back to the 1950s and have been the subject of "scientific study" and refinement by the CIA and the USA military for decades. The torture researchers found fairly early on that psychological torture was more effective at gaining reliable information than physical torture. To be more precise, they discovered that sensory deprivation and self-inflicted pain produced more "actionable intelligence" than, say, beating someone. McCoy writes: "Dr. Donald O. Hebb of McGill University [Canada], a brilliant psychologist, had a contract from the Canadian Defense Research Board, which was a partner with the CIA. In this research, he found that he could induce a state of psychosis in an individual within 48 hours. It didn't take electroshock, truth serum, beating or pain. All he did was have student volunteers sit in a cubicle with goggles, gloves and headphones, earmuffs, so that they were cut off from their senses, and within 48 hours, denied sensory stimulation, they would suffer, first hallucinations, then ultimately breakdown. . . .Now, then, the second major breakthrough that the CIA had came here in New York City at Cornell University Medical Center, where two eminent neurologists under contract from the CIA studied Soviet KGB torture techniques, and they found that the most effective KGB technique was self-inflicted pain. You simply make somebody stand for a day or two. And as they stand -- OK, you're not beating them, they have no resentment -- you tell them, "You're doing this to yourself. Cooperate with us, and you can sit down." And so, as they stand, what happens is the fluids flow down to the legs, the legs swell, lesions form, they erupt, they separate, hallucinations start, the kidneys shut down." Reading these words I saw a black-hooded figure, standing with his arms akimbo, with electrodes dangling from his fingers and I saw orange-suited Guantanamo detainees kneeling in a yard, hunched over because of their chains, wearing "ear muffs," "goggles," and gloves. They are examples of "tried and tested" torture techniques used by the USA that are excruciatingly painful to endure both physically and psychologically and hardly the "torture-lite" depictions one reads from the apologists of the USA's treatment of its "enemy combatants." Read McCoy's book. It is the smoking gun that demonstrates that the USA has followed a deliberate plan to torture its detainees during the current "war on terror." It's a plan that employs torture techniques that were mastered and honed decades in advance.

Alfred McCoy, a distinguished professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, has long been a thorn in the side of the CIA. In the pages of this brief book McCoy traces the history of modern torture techniques as developed and used by the CIA. The book demonstrates that the Abu Ghraib abuses have roots far beyond the Bush years. The techniques used there are standard operating procedure. Sensory deprivation, self-infiction of pain, and assault on the cultural mores of the victim are the hallmarks of the techniques. Read this book and then take one look at the infamous Abu Ghraib pictures and you will understand with certainty that the responsibility goes well beyond Lynndie England and the prison guard grunts. They did not come up with these techniques. McCoy briefly relates that the US historically engaged in systematic torture in the Vietnam Phoenix program and taught Central American governments the CIA methods, to name just two examples. This history was largely ignored in discussions of Abu Ghraib as some commentators simply refused to believe that Americans would do such things. But does torture work? And if it does, should we use it? With respect to the efficacy of torture, McCoy quotes a 4th century C.E. Roman legal scholar Ulpian: "the strong will resist and the weak will say anything to end the pain." McCoy also destroys the silly hypotheses about the atomic bomb in Times Square used to justify torture. McCoy has explained why we, in whose name this torture is performed, should oppose it: "There's an absolute ban on torture for a very good reason. Torture taps into the deepest recesses, unexplored recesses of human consciousness, where creation and destruction coexist, where the infinite human capacity for kindness and infinite human capacity for cruelty coexist, and it has a powerful perverse appeal, and once it starts, both the perpetrators and the powerful who order them, let it spread, and it spreads out of control." Highly recommended.

A Question Of Torture is a penetrating study of fifty years of United States involvement in torture research, practice, and propagation. Dr. McCoy, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, isn't neutral on the subject. But his book isn't a doctrinaire rejection of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Nor is it a compendium of tragic personal case studies. Instead, he takes advantage of his misgivings about torture to delve into its history, the whys and wherefores of state-sponsored torture, and the demonstrable results of these practices. The work he has produced is as illuminating as it is easy to read. And, supported by sixty pages of sources and notes, the book should prove useful to readers with academic interests as well. McCoy, whose previous works include a landmark study of the heroin trade, begins with an overview of torture and its usages through the past two thousand years. Then he takes us to the early days of the Cold War and a concerted US attempt to increase intelligence yields through mind control techniques. Early on, the emphasis was on electroshock, hypnosis, psychosurgery, and drugs, including the infamous use of LSD on unsuspecting soldiers and civilians. But the results were disappointing. Researchers soon learned that sensory disorientation (hooding, manipulation of sleep, etc.) and "self-inflicted pain" (for example forcing an uncooperative subject to stand for many hours with arms outstretched) were more effective means of breaking prisoners. Augmented by fears of physical abuse, sexual humiliation, and other psychological attacks on personal and cultural identity, our government produced exactly the system on display in the Abu Ghraib abuse photographs. But Iraq is hardly our country's maiden voyage into the application of torture on an industrial scale. During the Vietnam War, Project Phoenix, a joint CIA and Vietnamese counter-insurgency operation, resulted in the torture of tens of thousands of suspected Viet Cong and sympathizers and caused the deaths of more than 26,000 of them. In Latin America, US operatives trained and abetted right-wing military and paramilitary personnel during the dirty wars of the 1970s and 80s. We also shared our expertise with the shah of Iran's secret police and the Filipino military during the Marcos years. McCoy reports that Philippine officers trained in these "extralegal" methods, went on to lead RAM, one of the more persistent groups to seek the violent overthrow of Marcos and also his successor, Corazon Aquino. McCoy recounts the political moves that paved the way for prisoner abuse to become US policy during the war on terror. And he documents the inability or failure of judicial, military, and congressional authorities to hold high-ranking personnel in the executive branch, CIA, military, or behavioral sciences accountable. In such an environment, he believes we should expect a continuing series of revelations concerning direct and indirect US sponsorship

By providing a historical context for understanding recent revelations of U.S. government-perpetrated atrocities, McCoy convincingly unmasks the lie that Abu Ghraib is a mere aberration. In doing so, he shows that those in the United States who are serious about human rights have to address the ugly essence of U.S. foreign policy and practice rather than problems misperceived as short-term and exceptional. The evidence McCoy presents is overwhelming, and his analysis insightful.