Publisher's Weekly Review
In this fierce memoir, Fair recounts his career in the Army and the police force, as well as his experiences working as an interrogator for a private contractor in Iraq in 2004. There he participated in "enhanced interrogation" techniques in Fallujah and Abu Ghraib, and he was present during the torture, beatings, and sleep deprivation of Iraqi prisoners. He committed some of these same acts, but his conscience began to gnaw at him. Some colleagues tortured enthusiastically; others shared his discomfort. Fair is unflinching in his narration and his prose: his voice is strong, forthright, and sometimes full of rage. It is clear that he harbors deep regret about what he did in Iraq, but the emotion that comes through most clearly throughout the vocal performance is anger. He is angry with CACI (the private contractor that hired him) for its incompetence and the glib lies it told new recruits. He is angry with God, whose presence was often invoked in war but almost never experienced. And most of all, he is furious with himself, not only for participating in torture but for not quitting when he had the chance. Those listening to this stirring performance will likely have more compassion for Fair than he seems to extend to himself. A Holt hardcover.(Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Fair was interrogating prisoners at Abu Ghraib just before the Iraqi prison became a household name. In this no-holds-barred memoir of his time working as an interrogator and Arabic linguist in the early years of the Iraq war, the army veteran and former police officer and seminary student takes an unflinching look at the challenges faced by the contractors working alongside the military. His two tours in Iraq, one as a civilian contractor and the other as an intelligence analyst with the National Security Agency, took him from the plywood interrogation booths at Abu Ghraib to Fallujah and Baghdad. He recounts the incompetence and disorganization he witnessed during that time, particularly with the private contractors, who sent their employees into a war zone with slow-to-materialize promises of armor and weaponry. Told with the dispassionate candor of a police report, Fair's experiences offer a harsh critique of American efforts in Iraq, particularly when it comes to torture. He came home haunted by the memories and ashamed of his actions, trying to find solace through sharing them. Important reading for anyone who is following the continuing reports on our misadventures in Iraq.--Thoreson, Bridget Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
HE WAS A QUIET INTERROGATOR. From 2003 to 2004, he served as a civilian contractor in Iraq, trying to obtain information from detainees who were held at Abu Ghraib and other prisons. At various times, his colleagues pushed, beat and mistreated the detainees in small rooms. He waited outside in a place where he couldn't hear the disturbing sounds. But when Eric Fair was conducting interrogations, he made sure that his subjects could hear them. Afterward he felt guilty for what he'd done: Besides forcing detainees to listen to people being hurt, sometimes he shoved them around himself. Once, as he recalls, a colleague treated a detainee in a particularly horrific manner - and left him gasping for air. Fair did nothing to stop the incident, "a man being tortured," as he describes it, and neither did his friend Ferdinand Ibabao, a former police officer from Guam who was also there. Feeling heavy with guilt, they walked to a dining hall, listening to the sound of enemy fire on their way. Ibabao held his hands in the air as if he were a baseball player trying to catch a fly ball. He told Fair that if he managed to grab a mortar bomb, "it would be a mercy killing." The two men are like catchers in the rye. Instead of standing in a field of grain, though, they're walking through a makeshift base in Iraq. During the war, Fair says, it was a place where blood didn't soak into the dirt but "settles in bright red pools, like spilled paint." In "Consequence," a disturbing twist on a coming-of-age story, Fair learns about his own life and about his country - and also about the desire to hurt and humiliate other people. Shortly after he leaves Abu Ghraib, photos of a prisoner on a leash and a human pyramid with naked men appear in the news media. Fair never worked in "the hard site," a section reserved for so-called high-value detainees and also the site of the pyramid. But he had visited the place and wasn't surprised by what he saw in the pictures. This sparsely written and moving book is about silence. Fair expresses regret for the times when he didn't speak out, allowing detainees to be abused. He also writes about the moments when he used to sit quietly in a pew in First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem, Pa., carrying on a family tradition. One of his relatives, Annie Campbell, the daughter of a minister in the late 1800s, said she was supposed to be a model child but that she was hardly perfect. "We were just human kids," she told Fair's grandmother. Fair and other Americans were sent to the Middle East to act like model soldiers and help the Iraqis. Many of the Americans who served in Iraq, whether honorably or otherwise, returned home and continued with their lives - without night terrors. But not everyone came out O.K. Ibabao was killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq in October 2004. Others were haunted by memories. In the final section of his memoir, Fair asks for forgiveness not for what he did during the war - he doesn't expect to receive any - but for the fact that afterward he thought about killing himself. As he writes, "I am just a human kid." TARA McKELVEY, the BBC's White House reporter, is the author of "Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War."
Kirkus Review
A candid and deeply unsettling account of the author's work as a government contractor in Iraq charged with interrogating detainees in Baghdad, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib. A devout Presbyterian who grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, attended Gordon College, a Christian school, and earned a degree at Boston University, Pushcart Prize winner Fair enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1995 out of a desire to protect people. After learning Arabic, he was deployed to the Middle East as a linguist but found Army life monotonous. Torn by conflicting impulses (two psychologists deemed him unstable), he served briefly as a police officer but felt destined to become a minister. In 2003, he signed on as an interrogator with CACI International. The author relates his experiences in a low-key, matter-of-fact manner that nonetheless makes palpable his confusion about his life and goals. His disquiet became intolerable during his interrogations of Iraqi prisoners of war, which involved sleep deprivation, stress positions, isolation, and other forms of officially sanctioned torture. "I shouldn't be here," he writes. And: "I've done things that cannot be undone." Feeling guilty and ashamed, Fair realized he had sinned: "There is to be no redemption for me in Iraq." Eschewing abstract discussions of torture and the war, the author offers a beguiling personal narrative that forces readers to share his pain and uncertainty over his circumstances. "I cannot ask God to accompany me into the interrogation booth," he writes. Told against the background of his failing heart (he required a transplant), his failing hometown (Bethlehem Steel went bankrupt), and his war-strained marriage, his affecting narrative points up the larger failures of interrogators like himself to prevent abusive acts and of the country to end its endorsement of torture. Fair recounts his drinking and horrible nightmares, friendships with fellow contractors, and encounters with Iraqis suspected of anti-coalition activities. Some sections of the book have been redacted. A startling debut from a haunted individual who wishes he had left Iraq earlier "with my soul intact." Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
An interrogator with a private contractor in Iraq shares his experiences and lessons learned. Fair's recollections of his time and his actions in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison are indeed haunting; revealing what happened to him and to those he dealt with shows a side of him that isn't pleasant. The author provides listeners with a glimpse into his childhood and education, army life, romantic interludes, and family. Religion takes up a central place and colors all he does. While the memoir is recommended, the narration by Fair is a bit monotone and depressing. Verdict The overriding sense of pessimism that permeates this book complements the author's sense of guilt from participating in "enhanced interrogations." This story is uncomfortable, but hearing about the experiences of Fair and others like him is essential to the healing process of a nation that has endured a lengthy war.-Scott R. DiMarco, Mansfield Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.