Author(s): Philippe Sands

Politics

In 2002 Donald Rumsfeld signed a memo that authorized the controversial interrogation practices that later migrated to Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere. From a behind-the-scenes vantage point, Phillipe Sands investigates how this memo set the stage for a divergence from the Geneva Convention and the Torture Convention and holds the individual gatekeepers in the Bush administration accountable for their failure to safeguard international law. Cited in Congressional hearings, "Torture Team" is the "rigorous, honest, devastating" (Vanessa Redgrave) account of high ranking members of the Bush administration's involvement in authorizing torture and subsequent attempt to cover their tracks.