Reviews
The Black Banners (Declassified): How Torture Derailed the War on Terror After 9/11 by Ali H. Soufan
piacostello's review
2.0
It’s really on me that I even started reading a book about the Taliban written by an american intelligence officer in the first place, but given the current circumstances that’s probably the last thing anyone should be reading right now. literally what was i thinking.
mpop's review
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.5
The content of this book was interesting, but it was very hard to get into it initially. The narrative arc didn't really get going until the USS Cole investigation, and dropped off again pretty quickly after 9/11 - the beginning and ending of the book were the slowest parts. I also got a bit confused by all the names, but that's true of other books I've read about the complex situations in the Middle East (Black Flags and Directorate S).
Learning about how the FBI's investigations work, and Soufan's experiences in the Middle East - particularly his interactions with terrorists - was interesting, and the information about the incredible failure of cross-agency information sharing was so frustrating to read about. The title felt a bit misleading because the effect of torture on post-9/11 information gathering didn't come up until about 60% of the way through, but the earlier parts of the book did serve to establish the idea that they were able to get very useful information from people through techniques the FBI had already developed (which did not involve torture), making the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by the CIA even more egregious in terms of blatant ineffectiveness (not to mention the horrific moral and ethical violations). The failures in communication and appropriate leadership decision-making were not surprising, but were upsetting. I hope intelligence agency and military leadership gleaned a lot of lessons learned from this book and from reports, but I don't think they actually did.
Learning about how the FBI's investigations work, and Soufan's experiences in the Middle East - particularly his interactions with terrorists - was interesting, and the information about the incredible failure of cross-agency information sharing was so frustrating to read about. The title felt a bit misleading because the effect of torture on post-9/11 information gathering didn't come up until about 60% of the way through, but the earlier parts of the book did serve to establish the idea that they were able to get very useful information from people through techniques the FBI had already developed (which did not involve torture), making the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by the CIA even more egregious in terms of blatant ineffectiveness (not to mention the horrific moral and ethical violations). The failures in communication and appropriate leadership decision-making were not surprising, but were upsetting. I hope intelligence agency and military leadership gleaned a lot of lessons learned from this book and from reports, but I don't think they actually did.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Police brutality, Violence, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, War, and Torture
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