A Question of Torture

By Alfred W McCoy,

Book cover of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror

Book description

"An indispensable and riveting account" of the CIA's development and use of torture, from the cold war to Abu Ghraib and beyond (Naomi Klein, The Nation)

In this revelatory account of the CIA's fifty-year effort to develop new forms of torture, historian Alfred W. McCoy locates the deep roots of…

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Why read it?

1 author picked A Question of Torture as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

One of the first accounts to connect the dots between the torture scandal that arose out the war on terror and the beginnings of the Cold War, when the United States first devised the interrogation techniques that became codified in the CIA’s interrogation manual KUBARK (1963), which provided the playbook for the “enhanced interrogation” of detainees in Guantanamo and elsewhere.

From Andreas' list on the history of torture.

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It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.

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Interested in torture, intelligence agency, and the Cold War?

Torture 41 books
The Cold War 264 books