I never thought I would read a war memoir. In fact, if it wasn’t for my government class, I probably never would have. But How to Break a Terrorist reads less like an autobiography and more like a psychological thriller. The true story details the interrogations of several Al Qaeda insurgents by Matthew Alexander (a pseudonym) in Iraq in 2004. The interrogation team’s eventual goal was to track down the leader of Al Qaeda at the time, Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

Alexander is a new breed of interrogator, who shuns the brutal force-on-force methods employed by places like the infamous Guantanamo Bay. Instead, he becomes the suspect’s best friend. He gains the respect and trust of the detainees through his knowledge of Islam culture. He constructs a doppelganger (as he calls it), becoming whatever the prisoner wants him to be. A sympathetic ally. A means of escaping imprisonment. A confidante and true friend. Through expert manipulation he convinces the terrorists to spill their deepest secrets, and in the process, saves hundreds of civilian and military lives.

I found the book to be a fascinating read. For one thing, it’s peppered with considerable amounts of blacked out blocks of texts, containing material censored by the Department of Defense. But what shocked me most was the insights into the terrorist’s point of view. I had always viewed the members of Al Qaeda as brutal, emotionless terrorists whose radicalism hurt everyone around them. But Alexander slapped a face to the terrorists, and the face was startlingly human. Suddenly, they were fathers. Husbands. People who cared deeply about their family and kept their secrets to protect them. People who were in such dire economic conditions that the terrorist organization was their only means of living. The “Kool-Aid drinking Al Qaeda member” (as Alexander puts it) is actually few and far between. Ironically, this humanity is what enables Alexander to wedge inside their conscience and manipulate them into confessing their secrets.

How to Break a Terrorist offers an incredible insight into the flip side of the war against terrorism. I would definitely recommend it to anybody.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars