Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation

By: Alfred W. McCoy

Narrated by: David Halliburton

Many Americans have condemned the "enhanced interrogation" techniques used in the War on Terror as a transgression of human rights. But the United States has done almost nothing to prosecute past abuses or prevent future violations. Tracing this knotty contradiction from the 1950s to the present, historian Alfred W. McCoy probes the political and cultural dynamics that have made impunity for torture a bipartisan policy of the U.S. government.

During the Cold War, McCoy argues, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency covertly funded psychological experiments designed to weaken a subject's resistance to interrogation. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the CIA revived these harsh methods, while U.S. media was flooded with seductive images that normalized torture for many Americans. Ten years later, the U.S. had failed to punish the perpetrators or the powerful who commanded them, and continued to exploit intelligence extracted under torture by surrogates from Somalia to Afghanistan. Although Washington has publicly distanced itself from torture, disturbing images from the prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are seared into human memory, doing lasting damage to America's moral authority as a world leader.

The book is published by University of Wisconsin Press.

©2012 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System (P)2014 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"A fascinating and disturbing book, providing the most authoritative account of torture yet available and conforming to the best traditions of scholarship." (Richard Falk, Princeton University)

"This book gives the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about the use of torture by the United States intelligence service." (Jennifer Harbury, author of Truth, Torture, and the American Way)

Terribly depressing

As a starting point, this book is absolutely one-sided. I would have loved to have heard some counter-points and arguments as it progresses. That said, if 1% of the allegations set forth in the book are true then American policy is pointing us to be no better than another totalitarian state.

I thought the specific examples were very good, if chilling. I also thought the mostly chronological telling lent itself well.

It is a very depressing book and, while I did enjoy it and it was informative, I'm glad it's over. I withheld 5 stars overall because there was no counter-point to the arguments of the author and because the narrator seemed to have an unusual number of mis-pronunciations.

No surprise that leaders all over the world use torture as a tool against evil.

It is one thing for government leaders to use torture as a war tool but another to lie about it. This is a great book covering the evil and unfortunate need to capture and torture. May God forgive us all.

very PG13

seemed to avoid discussing, describing or providing insight from either side into what it would be like to have to withstand the unimaginable. the book repeats itself several times and felt like the author was trying to fill pages as if it were a book report. I have listed to 150+ books this is my first bad review