In this space in the past, you’ve seen reviews of other books by T.C. Fuller, a retired FBI agent I shot matches with back in the day. His latest is “Empathy For the Devil,” focusing on his time interrogating terrorists at Guantanamo.
The first thing you notice is that the Bureau has redacted certain things in the manuscript. Fair enough: national secrets are national secrets.
Vignettes of daily life in Cuba are interspersed with T.C.’s take on the enemies he worked with. It turns out that terrorist fanatics have some of the same ego needs as the rest of us. One of his most successful ploys was bringing things to warlords in their jail, in front of others. This gave them status: it made them look as if the Americans were doing their bidding. To keep that ego feed going, they in turn gave interrogators like T.C. the information they wanted and needed.
Obviously, he can’t reveal the subtle tricks of the trade, but he does share this: “We were allowed to segregate them from other detainees, completely control their living environment, deprive them of sleep, lie to them, threaten them, show them videos of just about any subject, promise them the world, start rumors about them in the cellblocks, bribe them, shine bright strobe lights in their faces, and just about anything else that didn’t involve physical torture.”
He notes also that most of the ruthless haters and murderers were treated better and lived better in American custody than they did in their homelands.
An excellent read. You can find it on Amazon.
What’s disgusting is that most of the terrorists were released to continue their ways and the rest have still not been tried, convicted and executed 23 years after 9/11.
I just finished this book last night. Excellent read as were Fuller’s other books.
Sounds like we killed them with kindness. One way to torture someone might be to force them to listen to Chinese opera. Their sopranos are really screechy.
“He notes also that most of the ruthless haters and murderers were treated better and lived better in American custody than they did in their homelands.”
I was afraid of that. Yes, life in an American prison is better than life in some parts of backward nations. But, skillful Communists can convince many Americans that we are an unjust, racist nation.
Look at Aurora, Colorado today. Terrorists operating with impunity. How will we treat them if they don’t have to be shot before they are imprisoned?
Free legal help, free food, free healthcare, free gym membership, and free education while in prison. I don’t know if prisoners have Internet access, but they probably have television.
Timothy McVeigh blew up a government building because he was mad at the government. Someone asked him why not blow up a federal prison, instead of a building with a bunch of innocent workers, and a nursery in it? He said prisons were too strongly built. So, we do a real good job of protecting our inmates.
Where would you rather live, in a federal prison, or North Korea? Where would you rather be in the winter, homeless in an American city, or warm in a prison or jail?
I read it a couple of weeks ago. Thought it was pretty good, but the takeaway for me was how nice and thoughtful we are as first class suckers providing better care for those bastards than we do for some of our own citizens. We seem to not care that those prisoners/detainees have sworn to murder all of us then, now, and in their future lifetimes.
Any government that redacts data is not a government to be trusted.