BOOK REVIEW: Jane Mayer's "The Dark Side"

For years, I have been obsessed with torture. US torture of detainees, to be precise.

Of course, I have watched with amazement as the Abu Ghraib scandal unfolded, with photographs reminiscent of an amateur fetish porn site working under severe budget constrains, each reaching well into the realms of the sadistic.

By the time the story spilled all over the news like putrid water over a rotten levy, I have already heard of the Taguba report detailing the abuses from independent news sources, which naturally recalled the infamous Zimbardo prison experiment. However, my imagination paled in comparison to that array of multimedia on display.

“The pen is mightier than the sword”. Put that together with “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and a photograph becomes a weapon of mass instruction.

Since then, I followed glimpses of the new US torture doctrine (“enhanced interrogation techniques”), bits and pieces implying though never fully revealing the whole. There's the story of Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen (“illegal combatant”, because the President said so) abducted to Syria by the CIA, tortured, transferred to Guantanamo, tortured some more, and finally released to the Canadian government after several years of inhumane treatment without so much as an apology. Arar is still on the US no-fly list. There's the story of Khaled el-Masri, the German citizen abducted on his vacation by the CIA and interrogated (in an “enhanced” manner) in several secret CIA prisons long after they established his innocence. Stories of boys as young as 14 caught up in sweeps and brought to Guantanamo, of suspects disappeared based on a paid rival's accusations; rumors of the KUBARK manual describing KGB-style interrogations designed to elicit confessions from dissidents---true or otherwise---now enhanced and employed on people with no recourse and no respite.

What Mayer does in “The Dark Side” is weave her extensive interviews and sources to present a coherent picture which not only ties together all the violations that have been floating in the corporate and independent media, but also discloses their likely origins in the Bush W. administration's policies, meeting accounts, and legal memos. The book portrays a clear case of groupthink, human judgment gone incestuous, leading to such ignoble results. Mayer relates her findings professionally, with clear sources, and avoids moralizing. The result is a rich account of human drama, with some protagonists quietly standing up for principle, while others tragically mislead through fear, lack of expertise (or even recognition of that lack), and misplaced zealous convictions.

As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”