This week, I’m going to be discussing Audible’s production of Mark Fallon’s Unjustifiable Means – the inside story of the shadowy dark side of the US intelligence community which emerged in the aftermath of September 11, 2001.
Unjustifiable Means
In June, 2019, I attended a conference in London entitled ‘Physical and Psychological Torture: Multi-disciplinary approaches to a global problem’ and one of the speakers on ‘coercive investigation methods’ was Mark Fallon, the author of the book I’m going to be discussing in this blog, Unjustifiable Means.
The Author
Mark Fallon is a leading national security expert, whose CV is extraordinary. In 30 years of US government service, his posts have included NCIS Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism and Senior Executive with the Department of Homeland Security. Fallon has investigated some of the most significant terrorist operations in US history, including the first bombing of the World Trade Centre and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole.
Finding himself deputy commander of the Criminal Investigation Task Force, charged with bringing suspected terrorists to justice in the so-called ‘War on Terror’, Fallon was at the heart of America’s descent into darkness, in the pursuit of justice.
9/11
September11, 2001, profoundly shocked the Americans – it was clear that this was a new type of enemy and there was enormous pressure on the President and on his staff to ‘take the gloves off’. Fallon found himself deputy commander of the newly formed Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF), created to bring terrorists to trial. Fallon, an experienced interviewer, was determined to do things the right way but Unjustified Means records his horror at the rise of a push to use ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’.
In the wake of 9/11, Fallon alleges that the US government set aside its own laws and international covenants to become a nation that tortured. Fallon argues that this was sanctioned by the highest-ranking members of the Bush administration.
Psychologists
The harrowing thing for me, as both a former advanced ABE interviewer and current Masters student of Forensic Psychology, is the complicity of a few key psychologists, who advocated the violation of human rights, despite such tactics having consistently proved ineffective and counterproductive.
Where were the voices saying, ‘torture does not work’? As a community, psychologists must do everything they can to counteract the media’s perception that torture is ever an effective means of gaining information. 24’s Jack Bauer, as much as I enjoyed every series, has a lot to answer for in its depiction of enhanced interrogation techniques and in convincing the public that torture is ever justified.
Conclusion
The fact that a ‘civilised nation’ such as America, despite laws and covenants, was so easily able to introduce torture is nothing less than terrifying. Also, we have to consider what sort of message it sends to more brutal regimes if a country such as America employs such brutality. Yet far from anyone having been condemned or censured many of the perpetrators remain in positions of power and Trump said recently that ‘torture works’ and ‘I would bring back waterboarding’.
Unjustified Means is a brilliant exposé of a dark period in America’s history and I commend it to you wholeheartedly.
If you want to see the horror of waterboarding, watch how long the brilliant journalist, Christopher Hitchens, coped with the experience in the video below and consider letting the current President know what you think about its reinstatement.