Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights (Hardcover)

~ Trevor Paglen (Author), AC Thompson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Shows just how far two guys without any highplaced government contacts can go in blowing open a story of global import." -- The San Francisco Chronicle

"The cool, almost dispassionate tone.... makes their book all the more disturbing." -- The Washington Examiner

"The logistics of torture, and the public's role in the brutal business.... the book excels at filling in blanks." -- TIME OUT Chicago

"The real thing... and not on the evening news. Go figure." -- New York Times

Review

“The book shows just how far two guys without any high-placed government contacts can go in blowing open a story of global import.”
—The San Francisco Chronicle

“What Paglen and Thompson offer here is a glimpse at the logistics of torture, and the public’s role in the brutal business of the CIA…. the book excels at filling in blanks, painting a mysterious and frightening picture of our ‘wartime’ actions.”
—TIME OUT Chicago

“The cool, almost dispassionate tone taken by Trevor Paglen and A.C. Thompson makes their book all the more disturbing…. Their conclusion is that the end of this story is not yet written.”
—The Washington Examiner

“Torture Taxi describes something a lot like the creation of a CIA airline…. Paglen and Thompson do an admirable job of synthesizing it and decoding it… terrifically fascinating.”
—The Pittsburg Post Gazette

"The first book documenting the US government practice of extraordinary rendition."
—Amy Goodman, Democracy Now

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Melville House (October 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933633093
• ISBN-13: 978-1933633091
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #211,882 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good overview (and nothing more), January 18, 2008

By	Siriam (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

The book is an easy read (though not very enjoyable given its subject matter) of how the current situation of numerous unlawful kidnappings of different countries citizens in the names of the US war on terror has come to pass and the potential consequences.

The overall style is investigative reporting but this is no Woodward/Bernstein style opus because the writers have no important inside sources spilling the beans. Instead what you get is a good trail of all the historical evidence, how the position grew under prior US presidents but always with the ability to disclaim knowledge until "Dubya" proved to be the post 9/11 president who wanted to show hands on involvement, and a post 9/11 turf war which the FBI lost and the CIA under George Tenet has probably taken too far in the adverse consequences for that organisation and the US government.

The book is heavy on facts (especially how the global hobby of plane spotting and flight tracking proved the undoing of and publicising of the CIA's secret programme) but poor on analysis. There is for example minimal understanding conveyed of how many governments (such as Sweden and Germany) that had been against the US war on Iraq proved such willing accomplices and without which the US rendition programme would never have worked.

What is clear is that the programme has had minimal success with a great number of irrelevant or innocent operatives having been subject to different forms of imprisonment and torture and in turn the way the programme has been operated making it impossible to bring any proven cases to trial. The end victim is US credibility in many countries though the current US policy hold of not being weak on terrorism has probably obfuscated that immediate impact.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Primer on the U.S.'s "Extraordinary Rendition" Program, November 26, 2006

By	Michael D. Rose "100% Disabled American Veteran" (Washington State, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Trevor Paglen and A.C. Thompson have written a good primer on the U.S.'s "Extraordinary Rendition" Program. For those who don't know, our proxies in the CIA and the military have quietly kidnapped hundreds of "enemy combatants" and detained them in prisons throughtout the world. They are often tortured, or disappear altogether. For a more detailed account see Stephen Grey's GHOST PLANE: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program, and Chris Mackey's THE INTERROGATORS: Inside the Secret War Against Al Qaeda.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb book, Gripping read, March 19, 2007

By	Robert Crayhon (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a must read for anyone who cares what our government is doing with people they don't like--which soon might be you and me. Concisely written, part decective story and part horror story, this book is an unforgettable account of torture of men who, curiously, are rarely of any danger to the country. This should be on the evening news, but isn't, as the newspaper reviews say.