Coercive Interrogation Techniques

"This book focuses on the science, law and morality behind interrogational methods. It develops, for the first time, a comprehensive discussion regarding the legality of torture and the efficacy of interrogation. In other words, scientific research has concluded that torture is not effective. This then raises a natural question: What interrogational methods are effective? How does one employ those methods in way that is consistent with law and morality?"--

Many Americans have condemned the “enhanced interrogation” techniques used in the War on Terror as a transgression of human rights. But the United States has done almost nothing to prosecute past abuses or prevent future violations. Tracing this knotty contradiction from the 1950s to the present, historian Alfred W. McCoy probes the political and cultural dynamics that have made impunity for torture a bipartisan policy of the U.S. government. During the Cold War, McCoy argues, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency covertly funded psychological experiments designed to weaken a subject’s resistance to interrogation. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the CIA revived these harsh methods, while U.S. media was flooded with seductive images that normalized torture for many Americans. Ten years later, the U.S. had failed to punish the perpetrators or the powerful who commanded them, and continued to exploit intelligence extracted under torture by surrogates from Somalia to Afghanistan. Although Washington has publicly distanced itself from torture, disturbing images from the prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are seared into human memory, doing lasting damage to America’s moral authority as a world leader.

- Represents the latest advances of the role of psychological factors in inducing potentially unreliable self-incriminating behavior - Chapters are authored by a diverse group psychologists, criminologists, and legal scholars who have contributed significantly to the collective understanding of the pressures that insidiously operate when the goal of law enforcement is to elicit self-incriminating behavior from suspected criminals - Reviews and analyzes the extant literature in this area as well as discussing how this knowledge can be used to help bring about needed changes in the legal system

You hear about "waterboarding," but what exactly does it mean? This informative, and at times unflinching, collection of essays explores the radical tactics used by government-sanctioned agencies, and those used by terror groups, to ferret out key intelligence from detainees. Topics range from the Geneva Convention to the conditions at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison to the impact of the viral execution videos released by ISIS. A frank look at a difficult subject, this book is recommended for older readers who may already be studying the effects of war or current events.

On September 11, 2001 terrorism instantly became the defining issue of our age. The resulting debates surrounding the inherent tension between national security interests and individual civil rights has focused national and international attention on how post-9/11 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and around the world have been interrogated. All concerned agree that, while interrogation practices represent a crucial meeting ground between human rights and counter-terrorism measures, the limits placed on interrogators are perhaps the most difficult to define for they determine how "far" a civil society is willing to go in fighting the exigencies that terror presents. In The Constitutional Limits of Coercive Investigation, Amos Guiora offers a theoretical analysis and a practical application of coercive interrogation, and in doing so, suggests developing and implementing a hybrid paradigm based on American criminal law, the Geneva Convention, and the Israeli model of trial as the most relevant judicial regime. Guiora offers a unique contribution to the public debate by creatively utilizing a historical analysis of the system of "justice" for African-Americans in the Deep South of the past century to serve as a guide for the constitutional rights and protections which need to be granted or extended to an unprotected class. He then indicates which interrogation methods are within the boundaries of the law by both recommending protection of the detainees and providing interrogators with the tools required to protect America's vital interests.