Torture Team

After 9/11. George W. Bush's administration declared that they were going to have to work through 'the dark side'. And they did: they turned their backs on international law and on America's history of respecting human rights. They wanted only legal advice that made it okay to torture, and they made sure they got it. Voices of dissent were sidelined, while low level officials brainstormed interrogation techniques and took their lead from Jack Bauer in 24. In Torture Team, Philippe Sands tracks down and interviews those responsible, and makes a compelling case that, in an ugly blotch on Americda's recent past, war crimes were committed for which no one has yet been held to account.

The shocking revelations of the men and women who adopted and enforced Rumsfeld's 2002 memo that paved the way for the inhuman interrogation practices at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. On December 2, 2002 the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed his name at the bottom of a document that listed eighteen techniques of interrogation--techniques that defied international definitions of torture. The Rumsfeld Memo authorized the controversial interrogation practices that later migrated to Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, as part of the policy of extraordinary rendition. From a behind-the-scenes vantage point, Phillipe Sands investigates how the Rumsfeld Memo set the stage for a divergence from the Geneva Convention and the Torture Convention and holds the individual gatekeepers in the Bush administration accountable for their failure to safeguard international law. The Torture Team delves deep into the Bush administration to reveal: - How the policy of abuse originated with Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, and was promoted by their most senior lawyers - Personal accounts, through interview, of those most closely involved in the decisions - How the Joint Chiefs and normal military decision-making processes were circumvented - How Fox TV's 24 contributed to torture planning - How interrogation techniques were approved for use - How the new techniques were used on Mohammed Al Qahtani, alleged to be "the 20th highjacker" - How the senior lawyers who crafted the policy of abuse exposed themselves to the risk of war crimes charges

What happens when lawyers do politicians' bidding? In the style of the best investigative journalism, international lawyer Philippe Sands uncovers the story behind the human rights abuses that the US government sanctioned and the terrible consequences of their actions. Who were the lawyers, military personnel and politicians who constructed the policy and provided the rationale for the one page memorandum signed by Donald Rumsfeld on 2 December 2002 authorising interrogation techniques forbidden under the Geneva Convention? Torture Team traces the origins of the memorandum through interviews with the key figures speaking out for the first time. A chilling and compelling story of men and women corrupted by power and the few who bravely stood out against them.

In the past three decades, international and regional human rights bodies have developed an ever-lengthening list of measures that states are required to adopt in order to prevent torture. But do any of these mechanisms actually work? This study is the first systematic analysis of the effectiveness of torture prevention. Primary research was conducted in 16 countries, looking at their experience of torture and prevention mechanisms over a 30-year period. Data was analysed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. Prevention measures do work, although some are much more effective than others. Most important of all are the safeguards that should be applied in the first hours and days after a person is taken into custody. Notification of family and access to an independent lawyer and doctor have a significant impact in reducing torture. The investigation and prosecution of torturers and the creation of independent monitoring bodies are also important in reducing torture. An important caveat to the conclusion that prevention works is that is actual practice in police stations and detention centres that matters - not treaties ratified or laws on the statute book.

On April 16, 2009, the Justice Department released never-before-seen secret memos describing, in graphic detail, the brutal interrogation techniques used by the CIA under the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” Now, for the first time, the key documents are compiled in one remarkable volume, showing that the United States government’s top attorneys were instrumental in rationalizing acts of torture and cruelty, employing chillingly twisted logic and Orwellian reasoning to authorize what the law absolutely forbids. This collection gives readers an unfiltered look at the tactics approved for use in the CIA’s secret overseas prisons—including forcing detainees to stay awake for eleven days straight, slamming them against walls, stripping them naked, locking them in a small box with insects to manipulate their fears, and, of course, waterboarding—and at the incredible arguments advanced to give them a green light. Originally issued in secret by the Office of Legal Counsel between 2002 and 2005, the documents collected here have been edited only to eliminate repetition. They reflect, in their own words, the analysis that guided the legal architects of the Bush administration’s interrogation policies. Renowned legal scholar David Cole’s introductory essay tells the story behind the memos, and presents a compelling case that instead of demanding that the CIA conform its conduct to the law, the nation’s top lawyers contorted the law to conform to the CIA’s abusive and patently illegal conduct. He argues eloquently that official accountability for these legal wrongs is essential if the United States is to restore fidelity to the rule of law.

In Torture, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak recounts his experience visiting countries, reviewing documents, collecting evidence, and conducting interviews with perpetrators, witnesses, and victims of torture. His story offers vital insights for human-rights scholars and professionals.

Moving past theoretical critiques of human rights, this book considers how we might translate situational analyses of torture into effective strategies for preventing it.

This is the most comprehensive, and most comprehensively chilling, study of modern torture yet written. Darius Rejali, one of the world's leading experts on torture, takes the reader from the late nineteenth century to the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, from slavery and the electric chair to electrotorture in American inner cities, and from French and British colonial prison cells and the Spanish-American War to the fields of Vietnam, the wars of the Middle East, and the new democracies of Latin America and Europe. As Rejali traces the development and application of one torture technique after another in these settings, he reaches startling conclusions. As the twentieth century progressed, he argues, democracies not only tortured, but set the international pace for torture. Dictatorships may have tortured more, and more indiscriminately, but the United States, Britain, and France pioneered and exported techniques that have become the lingua franca of modern torture: methods that leave no marks. Under the watchful eyes of reporters and human rights activists, low-level authorities in the world's oldest democracies were the first to learn that to scar a victim was to advertise iniquity and invite scandal. Long before the CIA even existed, police and soldiers turned instead to "clean" techniques, such as torture by electricity, ice, water, noise, drugs, and stress positions. As democracy and human rights spread after World War II, so too did these methods. Rejali makes this troubling case in fluid, arresting prose and on the basis of unprecedented research--conducted in multiple languages and on several continents--begun years before most of us had ever heard of Osama bin Laden or Abu Ghraib. The author of a major study of Iranian torture, Rejali also tackles the controversial question of whether torture really works, answering the new apologists for torture point by point. A brave and disturbing book, this is the benchmark against which all future studies of modern torture will be measured.