A Question of Torture

"From the start of the Cold War to the early nineteen-sixties, the C.I.A. spent billions of dollars developing psychological tools for interrogation. The agency cast a wide net, funding a Canadian study that involved administering electric shocks to subjects in drug-induced comas, and recruiting people like Kurt Plotner, a Nazi scientist who, in his search for a truth serum, had tested mescaline on Jewish prisoners at Dachau. The eventual conclusion was that cheap, simple methods (for example, enforced standing) worked best, and were also more acceptable to the public than outright physical violence. McCoy skillfully traces the use of these methods from the Phoenix program in Vietnam—which was designed to ferret out high-level Vietcong, although of the more than twenty thousand people it killed most were civilians—to the actions of agency-trained secret police in Honduras in the nineteen-eighties, and the treatment of hooded detainees at Abu Ghraib."—The New Yorker

"This is a worthwhile book, one well worth reading . . . And, for once, a reviewer can't complain about a lack of sources and sloppy research. There's a ton of interesting stuff here . . . A fascinating narrative."—The New York Observer

"There comes a moment in reading A Question of Torture when you put the book down and wonder if, perhaps, the author might just be insane. That judgment is unfair. McCoy is a calm and scrupulous chronicler or recent 'improvements' in the art of torture . . . the value of McCoy's retelling comes from his willingness to do a bold thing—to state the obvious, that these techniques are in no meaningful sense less inhumane than anything practiced in a medieval dungeon."—Scott McLemee, Newsday

"As we stand at the edge of a great moral abyss . . . Professor McCoy's book is an invaluable addition to this vital public discourse."—New York Law Journal

"Examines how physically brutal torture methods were augmented by the work of American and Canadian psychologists in the 1950s and 1960s . . . Such social scientists unwittingly paved the way for what McCoy calls a 'distinctively American form of torture,' relying primarily on psychological assaults, which would be used extensively by the CIA and its proxies during the latter half of the 20th century . . . According to McCoy, U.S. agents at Guantanamo Bay have created a 'de facto behavioral-research laboratory' that goes beyond using psychological stressors by attacking 'cultural sensitivity, particularly Arab male sensitivity to issues of gender and sexual identity.'"—Roberto J. Gonzalez, San Jose State University, The Chronicle of Higher Education



"McCoy proceeds in the venerable tradition of exposing and shaming . . . He is justifiably hailed as a champion of antitorture activists."—American Psychological Association


"A Question of Torture penetrates the historical amnesia and offers a corrective to the government record of denials and misrepresentations about the participation of the U.S. military in torture. The book demonstrates that U.S. security forces used torture long before Abu Ghraib, and that it formed an integral part of how U.S. power was projected abroad. McCoy traces the development of CIA torture techniques in the 1950s and examines their application in places such as Vietnam, Latin America, Iraq and Afghanistan, and he makes a persuasive case that torture does not work because most of the information coerced from prisoners is worthless . . . A Question of Torture raises questions about the widespread impunity within the United States that has allowed the CIA to remain unreformed and that has permitted high-ranking perpetrators of human rights crimes to remain unaccountable. The lack of justice and accountability within the U.S. intelligence community imperil democracy at home and abroad, and this book is must reading for anyone concerned with these issues."—Lesley Gill, American University, Contra: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America



"McCoy argues persuasively and clearly . . . [and his] writing effectively leads the reader through the presentation, using precise clear examples . . . This is a disquieting read, the kind of reading more Americans should partake of to understand how their country is really working."—Jim Miles, Palestine Chronicle


"The history of American torture research is elegantly laid out in Alfred McCoy's book . . . [He] shows how the use of isolation, standing, exposure to hot and cold, light and dark, noise and silence, sleep deprivation, hooding and stress positions creates a total assault on all senses and sensibilities."—Jonathan P. Baird, The Concord Monitor

"Readers interested in learning about America's involvement with torture owe it to themselves to read this book. It serves as a flashlight beaming into the dark closets of government."—Associated Press

"This book is unique . . . in connecting the dots all the way back to early cold war mind-control research, reminding readers that the CIA has been an innovator in modern torture methods. Incorporating simple yet brutally effective techniques of psychological manipulation involving isolation, disorientation, and destruction of personal identity, McCoy argues, the modern CIA interrogation manual is premised on university and army research into the psychology of coercion. As in his earlier work on CIA complicity in the global heroin trade, McCoy is adept at tracing the inertia of government practice; his research on the effect of torture on the Philippine armed forces likewise shows policy in practice and demonstrates that psychological torture is at least scarring as thumbscrews. Timely and compelling."—Brendan Driscoll, Booklist


"A sober inquiry into the flaws and evils of torture . . . strongly recommended."—Library Journal