Incarceration and Torture
Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program
by Stephen Grey
Widely featured in the UK's and America's leading media, investigative reporter Grey here spotlights America's extraordinary rendition and torture-by-proxy operations. He's not the first to do so, but his access to principals gives him a leg up on others. Grey says of the terrorists that America is ostensibly targeting with such practices,
They want us to torture. They want us to take oppressive acts, because that wins recruits to their causes. It's an old lesson of -- an old method of terrorists. Take a small minority extremist group, how do they win support? How do they turn themselves into a mass movement? [ ¶ ] The answer is, cause a terrorist action, kill an innocent people, provoke an enormous reaction which rounds up people who are innocent, causes people to want to take revenge for what's happened to their families. And this is what's happened. There's been a massive reaction. There are people who have been turned into terrorists, as a result of some of the repressive actions that have taken place. And rendition is one of those repressive actions.
Grey spoke with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air.
Ghost Plane ... published October 17, 2006 by St. Martin's Press
Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights
by Trevor Paglen and A. C. Thompson
An award-winning journalist and an expert on secret military installations investigate America's extraordinary rendition program -- by which terror suspects are kidnapped, flown to black locations around the world, and tortured. As is becoming increasingly clear, though, many of those being tortured (such as Khalid El-Masri) are innocent. The authors use various creative techniques -- such as mining data collected by plane-spotting hobbyists -- to uncover details about how, exactly, the CIA transports its detainees and where, specifically, it takes them. Perhaps the ugliest aspects of this deeply disturbing web of U.S. criminality is the cooperation and active assistance that many ordinary Americans of diverse backgrounds are knowingly giving this horrifying enterprise. Among the CIA-front civilian companies involved is Aero Contractors, based in Smithfield, N.C. - where local citizens understand what's going on -- and approve of it.
Torture Taxi ... published September 24, 2006 by Melville House
Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo,
Bagram, and Kandahar by Moazzam Begg and Victoria Brittain
Though he somewhat coyly denies it, it appears likely that former U.S. detainee Moazzam Begg at least skirted the worlds of Islamist terrorists. Either way, his American captors put him through hell, here recalled, for three years. Whatever one believes about this fascinating man's affiliations, there's no doubting his assertion that,
In a world where the growing chasm between Islam and the West perpetuates animosity on a daily basis, even my habitual optimism is waning. The simple and sad fact is that we are spiraling towards more serious confrontation, while people in positions of responsibility offer justifications for themselves and those who serve them act with impunity in the name of national and global security, instead of looking objectively at the reasons for the growth of anti-western, anti-American attitudes.
Enemy Combatant ... published September 11, 2006 by New Press
Inside: Life Behind Bars in America by Michael G. Santos
Convicted at age 23 of involvement in a major cocaine distribution network, Santos was sentenced to 45 years in prison, despite the facts that it was his first offense and there were no weapons charges involved. He's used his first 19 years in prison (he's hoping for a 2013 release) to earn bachelor's and master's degrees, but he's been prevented from pursuing a PhD on the highly dubious grounds that it would involve security risks. He's also become a reasonably polished writer (he maintains a website with dozens of his articles) and here he uses that skill to illuminate life inside America's federal prison system. Unsurprisingly, the system he presents via many dramatized anecdotes is very violent. What is somewhat surprising, though, is the corruption that permeates the institutions, and how easily Santos corroborates his own stories with those of mainstream (i.e., non-convict) sources. Taxpayers are getting stiffed, we see, by officials focused almost solely on maintaining order in prisons, rather than returning useful, non-recidivist human beings to society.
Inside ... published August 8, 2006 by St. Martin's Press
Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power by Joseph Margulies
The lead lawyer in Rasul v. Bush writes of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and the staggering incompetence and barbarity that the Bush administration has fostered there. Margulies also shows that even more heinous atrocities are now being perpetrated around the world as part of BushCo's "war on terror." In addition to examining the legal issues involved, Margulies also recounts the experiences of individual detainees. These are particularly wrenching, as it's been widely reported that many of them have no connections whatever to al Qaeda or any other terrorist entity, but were simply innocent stooges, turned over to U.S. authorities by those hoping to collect bounties for fingering "terrorists." Nevertheless, the abuse at Guantánamo continues today, as does the expansion of comparable facilities at Bagram Air Base and elsewhere. Shortly after the decision in Rasul, Margulies published "A Prison Beyond the Law" in the Virginia Quarterly Review -- highly recommended.
Terry Gross interviewed him on NPR's Fresh Air.
Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power ... June 27, 2006 by Simon & Shuster
Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror by Steven Miles
A University of Minnesota medical prof, bioethicist and practicing physician saw the Abu Ghraib photos and wondered where the U.S. medical personnel had been. To find out, he reviewed thousands of pages of documents acquired via the Internet, FOIA and other sources. These included trial testimony, autopsies, and findings of army and FBI investigators. Miles published the initial reports of his findings two years ago, first in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and then in the medical journal The Lancet. In sometimes excruciating detail and with copious sourcing, he shows that many U.S. government and military personnel (including physicians) are deeply complicit in the commissions of war crimes. Further, it's clear that some of the abuses -- including numerous murders and the anal rape of children -- have been even more bestial than the most commonly circulated Abu Ghraib photos might lead one to believe.
Oath Betrayed ... published June 27, 2006 by Random House
A Question of Torture by Alfred McCoy
The notion that the U.S.-inflicted torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay deviated from what America's been doing for decades is, at the very best, childishly naive. Human rights monstrosities such as the Phoenix Program and the School of the Americas are widely reported from time to time, but the American citizenry has consistently shown very limited interest. Says McCoy, whose book explores 50 years of U.S. torture,
[A] search for the roots of Abu Ghraib in the development and propagation of a distinctive American form of torture will, in some way, implicate almost all of our society -- the brilliant scholars who did the psychological research, the distinguished professors who advocated its use, the great universities that hosted them, the august legislators who voted funds, and the good Americans who acquiesced, by their silence, whenever media or congressional critics risked their careers for exposés that found little citizen support, allowing the process to continue.
A Question of Torture ... published January 10, 2006 by Metropolitan Books
Inside the Wire by Erik Saar and Viveca Novak
Former U.S. Army sergeant Erik Saar was as an Arabic translator at the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from late 2002 until mid-2003. His collaboration with Time magazine reporter Viveca Novak recounts the inept management, flexible interrogation guidelines, beatings and sexual humiliations that he witnessed -- and in some cases participated in -- during his just over six months at Gitmo.
The book's strength lies in the great diversity of voices Saar and Novak bring the reader: those of many other soldiers and civilian personnel working at the base, as well as of those of the detainees. Saar's attitudes about Gitmo, the Army, and the United States changed as a result of his tour, and he now fears that U.S. human rights abuses such as those he saw are creating more terrorists, not fewer. Many on the Right have attacked Saar and his book for being unpatriotic and opportunistic, but it's hard to explain away his myriad anecdotes that provide a substantial, if partial, picture of what's gone on at Guantanamo Bay.
Inside the Wire ... published May 2, 2005 by The Penguin Press HC
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