The Interrogator's War: Breaking Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan - Couverture souple

The methods of the US military's War on Terror have come under intense international scrutiny. But much remains unclear about realities on the ground, in those cramped cells in the midst of combat zones where terrorist suspects and interrogators come head-to-head. Now, for the first time, the inside story is uncovered by Chris Mackey, a senior US Army interrogator in Afghanistan, who interviewed thousands of Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects, many of whom went to Guantanamo Bay.

In Afghanistan the interrogators faced an enemy who, with tactics like sleeper cells and suicide bombers, were unlike any other. Working round the clock, Mackey and his team had to evolve breakthrough psychological strategies and complex mind games. But the interrogators too were under immense pressure; relentlessly pitching their wits against suspected fanatics, ever fearful that their prisoners might know of another 9/11, but constrained from unleashing their tempers by the Geneva Convention, it was not always just the prisoners who cracked.

The pressure-cooker atmosphere which built up under the relentless Afghan sun gives a troubling insight into the temptations in the path of sound military judgement. But it is also a testament to the strength of character of the many interrogators who remained rational and played by the rules.