We are told it's about getting information, but I think it's more than that-I think it may also have had to do with trying to build a model country, about erasing people and then trying to remake them from scratch.' So I say this instead: 'I recently traveled to Iraq, and I am trying to understand the role torture is playing there. I want to talk to you because you are by my estimation among the most shocked people alive, being one of the few living survivors of the CIA's covert experiments in electroshock and other ‘special interrogation techniques.' And by the way, I have reason to believe that the research that was done on you in the 1950s at McGill University is now being applied to prisoners in Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.' And then how people who dare to resist this shock politics are, if necessary, shocked for a third time-by police, soldiers and prison interrogators.

And then how they are shocked again-by corporations and politicians who exploit the fear and disorientation of this first shock to push through economic shock therapy. About how countries are shocked-by wars, terror attacks, coups d'état and natural disasters. The truth seems so bizarre: 'I am writing a book about shock. How do I explain what I want from Gail Kastner, the journey that brought me to her?

I figure I have about twenty seconds to make my case, and it won't be easy. And then a tiny window: 'What do you want?' 'I don't talk to journalists anymore,' says the strained voice at the other end of the phone.

The shock doctrine book