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From surveillance to torture: The evolution of US interrogation practices during the War on Terror

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Abstract

The war on terrorism weakened the distinction between observing suspicious bodies and torturing them. This article examines ‘enhanced interrogation’ (or torture) practices developed after 9/11 and considers that techniques used overseas by the United States may be applied domestically. The role of the FBI is highlighted since it now has assumed the central authority to interrogate all terrorist suspects held by the United States. Although enhanced interrogation no longer is permitted, the conservative perspective still views it as legitimate conduct and ignores the victimization of innocent people misidentified as terrorists.

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Notes

  1. Thanks to Lama Abu-Odeh, Julie Rajan, Jeannette Gabriel and Susan Maret for commenting on an earlier draft of this article.

  2. During the early Cold War, the US intelligence establishment developed torture techniques, but limited their use to US military soldiers undergoing ‘torture-resistance training’ in the event Communist enemies captured them. In overseas military conflict during the twentieth century, US armed forces and the CIA did not torture captured enemy soldiers. But, the notorious Phoenix Program developed by the CIA during the mid-1960s targeted thousands of Vietnamese civilians sympathetic toward the communist Vietcong through torture and killing. See Otterman, 2007; Doyle, 2012; Harbury, 2005.

  3. The number of female prisoners held at Abu Ghraib is unknown, but several sources (including the Taguba Report), reference their rape by US prison guards and naked videotaping of them. See Danner, 2004, p. 292; and Wilkinson, 2004.

  4. I obtained the declassified FBI file (2739 pages) on this program under the Freedom of Information Act. See Greenberg, 2012, pp. 286–295.

  5. In 1939, the FBI unilaterally established the Custodial Detention List, later replaced by the Security Index and the Administrative Index (ADEX), providing for a legal detention system that identified as many as 26 000 people. Unlike the current detention provision, Congress never directly sanctioned these efforts, which occurred in the context of the Cold War.

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Greenberg, I. From surveillance to torture: The evolution of US interrogation practices during the War on Terror. Secur J 28, 165–183 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/sj.2015.7

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