Torture

Ali Soufan investigated terrorism cases and opposed the CIA's use of torture following the Sept. 11 terror attacks. After a legal battle, the redacted material in his 2011 memoir, Black Banners, has been restored.

When Jason Rezaian moved to Tehran to pursue journalism in 2009, he knew he was taking on a certain amount of risk.

Kathryn Bigelow's film tells the story of the U.S. hunt for the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks. Critic David Edelstein says the film presents itself as a work of journalism, but that there's no doubting its perspective: It's the story of America's "brilliant, righteous revenge."

The Inquisition revolutionized record-keeping and surveillance techniques that are still used today, says Cullen Murphy. His new book God's Jury draws parallels between some of the interrogation techniques used in previous centuries with the ones used today.

African journalist Peter Godwin returned to his native Zimbabwe in 2008 to follow the presidential election. He writes about President Robert Mugabe's refusal to give up power -- and Mugabe's torture campaign against opposition supporters -- in The Fear.

Time has run out for special agent Jack Bauer, the hero of Fox's real-time drama, 24. Executive Producer Howard Gordon reflects on the past eight seasons -- explaining how the show became more politicized and why Jack Bauer never once went to the bathroom.

In his new book, Torture Team, international lawyer Philippe Sands argues that the Bush administration's interrogation policy constitutes a war crime.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews the new documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, which sounds like a horror film — and in some ways, Edelstein says, actually is. It's been nominated for an Academy Award.

Journalist Scott Shane writes for The New York Times about terrorism and the CIA's interrogation techniques. His article "Soviet-Style 'Torture' Becomes 'Interrogation'" describes how the United States has adopted interrogation techniques that it decried when they were used by the Soviet Union.

Author Tara McKelvey interviewed former prisoners from Abu Ghraib for her book Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War McKelvey is senior editor at The American Prospect and a research fellow at the NYU School of Law's Center on Law and Security.

British journalist Stephen Grey writes about security issues and Iraq. His work appears in The Sunday Times of London, The New York Times, the Guardian, and The Atlantic Monthly. He says that dozens of terror suspects are still being held in secret prisons and interrogated by the CIA despite President Bush's declaration that the CIA is no longer doing so. Grey's new book is Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program (St. Martin's Press).

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg considers how we talk about torture.

Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch. He says the Justice Department's decision not to have the Geneva Conventions apply to Taliban and al Qaeda detainees has opened the door to the abuse of prisoners elsewhere.

A new book compiles U.S. memos and reports on the interrogation and treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib was edited by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel.

Nunberg considers the word "torture."

Helen Bamber is the founder and director of the London-based Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. A biography "The Good Listener: Helen Bamber, A Life Against Cruelty" by Neil Belton has just been published. (Pantheon) When Helen Bamber was a little girl growing up in 1930s England, her father read her sections of Mein Kampf to inure her to the evil in the world. In 1945, at the age of 19, she traveled to the former concentration camp at Belsen to help with the physical and psychological recovery of Holocaust survivors.