Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation by Alfred W. McCoy (review)

In Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation Alfred W. McCoy once more impresses the necessity of a critical reevaluation of the United States government’s policies on the use of torture to address its security needs after 11 September 2001. The sequel to the author’s A Question of Torture (2006), Torture and Impunity probes the historical involvement of the US government in the development and practice of torture from the Cold War to the present and the social cost of the utilization and institutionalization of torture. McCoy stresses that coercive investigation is not just ineffective and contrary to international laws and conventions on torture, but also creates a moral conundrum for American society, whose awareness of the inhumanity of torture clashes with its justification through the rhetoric of national security.

At a glance the work appears as a linear presentation of the historical narrative of US involvement in torture, starting from the participation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Cold War research and application of mind control, the revival of coercive methods during the War on Terror, to what McCoy calls the stage of impunity (6). But there are also several underlying themes in this book. McCoy analyzes the global impact of the US government’s institutionalization and support of torture, as it resulted in the use of torture by a number of its allied regimes and the perpetration of human rights violations beyond US borders. He also probes the sociopolitical costs of the US government’s policies on torture and impunity, particularly the erosion of the moral authority of the US and the compromising of American social values and institutions.

The book begins with an overview of the US government’s involvement in torture through the sixty-year history of the CIA. McCoy argues that, despite the substantial resources the US invested in torture research and its engagement with domestic and international stakeholders to legalize torture, the use of torture has proven ineffective in gathering crucial intelligence from torture victims. To illustrate this point, McCoy cites the case of Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda leader captured in March 2002 and interrogated in a CIA black site in Thailand for intelligence gathering in connection with the War on Terror. Zubaydah was one of the few prisoners of the US who had the unique experience of being subjected to the conflicting interrogation methods of the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and his case resulted in a well-publicized debate between the FBI and CIA on the efficacy of aggressive interrogation. The CIA used “enhanced interrogation” methods, which consisted of psychological assaults and “waterboarding,” but the agency did not obtain the desired information. In contrast, the FBI used empathetic interrogation and noncoercive interview methods and succeeded in obtaining “actionable” intelligence from Zubaydah, such as the roles played by key terror suspects (36–37).

McCoy also explores how US policies on torture compromised important institutions such as the scientific community and the mass media. Through various fronts and dummy corporations, the CIA covertly funded researches on drugs, pain, and behavioral control and influenced medical professionals and researchers to betray the Hippocratic oath by engaging in questionable and unethical researches on sensory deprivation, mind-influencing drugs, and infliction of pain. Government intrusion, however, went beyond utilizing science to perfect torture, for it enlisted psychologists to facilitate aggressive interrogation in detention sites such as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. The US mass media played a crucial role as well in building the culture of impunity and desensitizing American citizens by presenting a highly erotic and seductive perception of torture, which intelligence officials had utilized to justify its use for national security. Instead of serving as an independent democratic institution with a critical stance toward torture, the US media glorified the infliction of pain on perceived enemies of the state in the guise of protecting US citizens.

The media and the scientific...