10-13-09 Reckoning with Torture: Memos and Testimonies from the “War on Terror”

You can watch this event on video by clicking here.

With Matthew Alexander, Jonathan Ames, K. Anthony Appiah, Paul Auster, Ishmael Beah, David Cole, Don DeLillo, Eve Ensler, Nell Freudenberger, Jenny Holzer, A.M. Homes, Jameel Jaffer, Susanna Moore, Jack Rice, George Saunders, Amrit Singh, and Art Spiegelman

Before the September 11 attacks, the United States condemned torture, protested secret tribunals, decried disappearances, and challenged secret and arbitrary detentions. This event presents evidence that details the sadistic treatment of detainees in the Bush administration's "War on Terror."

Writers and artists take the stage with lawyers, a former military interrogator, and a former CIA agent to read from texts that have brought these abuses to light. Interspersed between readings, never-before-seen video interviews with former Guantánamo detainees put a human face on the torture program. Artist Jenny Holzer's imagery incorporating U.S. government documetns provides a backdrop to the readings.

Collectively, these documents and testimonials make undeniably clear that prisoners were tortured, abused, and in some cases even killed in U.S. custody, and that those at the very highest levels of our government authorized, encouraged, or tolerated the mistreatment.