Alfred McCoy Discusses his book "A Question of Torture"

Alfred McCoy, author of "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror" will discuss his book at Revolution Books in Berkeley on March 9th at 7:30 PM.

Just issued in an updated edition in paperback, A Question of Torture is a chilling and gripping history of how the CIA developed torture interrogation techniques, over the course of decades and at a cost of billions of dollars, helped spread the use of those techniques to militaries and police academies in many countries who were and are allies of the U.S., and has continued to use those techniques right up to the current era in prisons such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Far from being a "few bad apples", guards and interrogators at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were following the CIA's standard torture techniques, used in Vietnam, Central America, and many other areas.

While U.S. interrogators have certainly never abandoned brutal physical methods, the CIA's preferred torture technique is primarily psychological, involving "sensory deprivation" and "self-inflicted pain", which attempt to destroy the basis of personal identity. McCoy convincingly shows how the highest levels of the Bush administration approved such methods, and the illegal global "rendition" of prisoners to countries where torture is widely practiced. Finally, McCoy convincingly argues that torture is not actually a reliable method for obtaining valuable intelligence, yet is resorted to by powerful elites in a time of crisis.

Alfred Mc Coy is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has also written The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia and Closer than Brothers: Manhood at the Philippine Military Academy .

This event is free, but donations are welcome. This event is wheelchair accessible