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Torture debate gets injection of new details

By Mark Obbie

Author and journalism professor Mark Danner points out in his newly published New York Review of Books article that American journalists have written often of the existence of "black sites" -- secret overseas prisons -- and of associated controversies over "extraordinary rendition" of terror suspects and the use of torture, by U.S. officials or their foreign proxies. Endless tales of waterboarding have informed Americans of some of what the debate is about.But what Danner now brings to those debates is testimony -- detailed allegations -- about a broad range of harsh treatment of detainees. The details come from a Red Cross report that Danner obtained, and writes about in the April 9 issue of the Review of Books. The Red Cross interviewed 14 "high-value detainees" about their stories of torture in the underground CIA prisons. Danner, in the Review piece and an adaptation of it in today's New York Times, assesses the credibility of the testimony, based on the Red Cross' methods and the details related by the detainees. Otherwise, he is essentially piggybacking on the Red Cross' original fact-gathering. This is no piece of straight reporting. Danner, author of the book Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror, seethes with rage in his account of officially sanctioned torture, especially in the longer and more personal Review of Books version. The act of scoring a copy of the report, and extensively mining it for shocking detail, is what will give Danner's reporting lasting impact.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on March 15, 2009 (boomark / email).