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    Consequence: A Memoir
    Consequence: A Memoir
    Consequence: A Memoir
    Audiobook7 hours

    Consequence: A Memoir

    Written by Eric Fair

    Narrated by Eric Fair

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Named one of "8 Books You Need to Read" by Vulture

    A man questions everything--his faith, his morality, his country--as he recounts his experience as an interrogator in Iraq; an unprecedented memoir and "an act of incredible bravery" (Phil Klay, author of Redeployment).

    In 2004, after several months as an interrogator, Eric Fair’s call to serve his country has led him to a dark and frightening place. By the time he leaves Iraq after that first deployment, Fair will have participated in or witnessed a variety of aggressive interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, diet manipulation, exposure, and isolation. Years later, with his health and marriage crumbling, haunted by the role he played in what we now know as “enhanced interrogation,” it is Fair’s desire to speak out that becomes a key to his survival. Spare and haunting, Eric Fair’s memoir urgently questions the very depths of who he, and we as a country, have become.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateApr 5, 2016
    ISBN9781427268068
    Consequence: A Memoir
    Author

    Eric Fair

    Eric Fair, an Army veteran, worked in Iraq as a contract interrogator in 2004. He won a Pushcart for his 2012 essay "Consequence," which was published first in Ploughshares and then in Harper's Magazine. His op-eds on interrogation have also been published in The Washington Post and The New York Times. He lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

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    Reviews for Consequence

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    • 5/5
      Eric Fair's memoir as an interrogator in Iraq is a difficult book to read at times, due to the subject matter, however it is one I would definitely recommend to those who enjoy non-fiction, memoirs, and to book discussion groups.
    • 3/5
      This memoir about torture is unsettling for two reasons. First, Fair’s narrative is filled with so many examples of cognitive dissonance. He was raised as a devout Christian and adhered to its basic tenants, but willingly participated in behaviors that he knew were not Christ-like. “I cannot ask God to accompany me into the interrogation booth.” “I am not disgusted by my actions…I am disgusted by how good it felt to wield power.” He had a life-threatening heart condition, but consistently acted against medical advice through his alcoholism, stressful exercise and especially by working in a warzone. He was patriotic and felt a need to participate in the war. “I grow up learning that I come from a long line of Presbyterians who valued their faith and marched off to war.” However, his military experience was unsatisfying mainly because of flaws he perceived in the chain of command. Despite his negative experiences, Fair still felt compelled to volunteer as a civilian contractor assigned to interrogate Iraqi detainees. There, he viewed and even participated in atrocities that he considered torture. Instead of refusing or just walking away—which as a civilian he could have easily done—he fixated on issues of mismanagement by his company, CACI. Are we left to conclude that if the military and CACI had not been so incompetent, Eric Fair would not have been enticed to become a torturer? His juvenile failure to assume personal responsibility for his actions is a repeating theme in the memoir. We see it in his marriage, his military service, his religious participation and his failure to protect his own health. On his return to the states, one might expect a reasonable man to tend to his ailing heart and marriage. Yet Fair volunteers once again for service in Iraq, this time with the NSA. Clearly the gap between his self-image and behavior caused Fair much anguish and could be blamed for his alcoholism, nightmares, and marital tensions, as well as his doubts about his own religious beliefs and patriotism. Yet writing seems somehow redemptive for him. Fair’s personal confession of complicity in torture took courage, but the details were not particularly revealing for anyone who was paying attention at the time. With regard to the Iraq war in general and torture in particular, it is tempting to extrapolate Fair’s behavior to that of the Bush administration. We like to think of ourselves as the “good guys” and that our “war on terror” was noble and ample justification for invading a sovereign country and torturing its people. Like Fair, many of us lived with that dissonance at the time.The second unsettling feature of this memoir is the writing itself. It lacks emotional highs and lows. Fair’s flat and matter-of-fact delivery of everything leaves the reader wondering just what actually moved him. Is he really religious? He seems to have had a type of faith as a young man, but his dropping out of the Princeton Theological Seminary leaves one wondering how deep that was. Is he patriotic? Fair’s willingness to return again and again to the warzone even in the face of a threatening health issue and strains on his marriage suggests a high degree of patriotism. Yet he participated in actions that he came to reject. Once again one wonders whether a desire to not “want to be seen as the type of people who aren’t cut out for doing their part” can be viewed as adequate justification for the inhumane treatment of people. There are no highs and lows in tone despite remarkable extremes in the facts. Fair’s matter-of-fact delivery is the same whether he is tell us of his life threatening heart condition or standing in line for a burger in Iraq. His witnessing was quite strong, but seemed somehow muted by a lack of any personal interpretation. One wishes he included more personal reflections like his wish to have left Iraq earlier “with my soul intact.”
    • 4/5
      This is a book about Moral Injury to The People of the United States, really. But it's presented as a memoir. It's not really about one guy's memoir. Even so, this memoir reminds me a lot of the confessions of St. Augustine except that where Augustine was reared up in a pagan household, Fair grew up in the Presbyterian Church, and so his upbringing and descriptions of the moral and theological underpinnings of what that was like were very familiar to me. Fair will probably be the first to tell you he's the last candidate for sainthood and believes he may never be forgiven because he believes he does not deserve to be forgiven. This is certainly as devastating a memoir to read as it must have been to write, and the impression that this is a man whose Soul twists on a spit every day is present from first to last. It's certainly the first time I've ever read a book with whole pages of blacked-out redacted text. Sere and spare as a parson's visage, Fair lays it our for us in first person prose, short sentences, and clear language as he takes us from his childhood in Bethlehem, PA and the insecurities that led him down the rabbit hole to his own personal Hell and thence to the moral blast furnace of Iraq and Abu Ghraib prison. There, he found himself at the epicenter of the torture policy and practices carried out by his employer, the private contracting firm CACI, as well as the Army on, what the American public eventually learned, were the orders of Vice President Dick Cheney. The next phase of the book takes us through his flounderings with to heart failure both physically and morally, his post-CACI employment with the NSA, two abortive attempts to attend seminary, alcoholism, suicidal ideation and his desire to find a way back to Life. I had to digest this book in small bites and put it down frequently for three reasons: I saw myself in it (though I've not tortured anyone), at many points I became sure that this is man who will eventually eat his gun, and because I began to wonder if this was a backward apology for the use of contractors in these wars and we should just all feel sorry for them. In the first instance, anyone who has done things out of insecurity will see themselves and have a "There but for the Grace of God go I" moment.In the second instance, I came across this book when I saw an interview with Eric Fair on CSPAN-2 Book TV. He's very photogenic and gives off a very calm demeanor; too calm. In the third instance, this memoir eventually gives you a sense of watching one of the flagellotti staggering through the streets of some Medieval city in Europe during the Black Plague, flailing himself with no governor. Fair doesn't give us a lot of details of the horrible things he says he's done, not about what he saw or did at Abu Ghraib or Fallujah, nor about what he gave as testimony to Army CID and the Justice Department (other than naming names) during his attempted seminary days. Perhaps those details are still classified. A great deal of the memoir about his work for the NSA are pages of blacked-out redaction. But the one really detailed gorey description is of what he, and any of us, might consider a good deed. Why in a confessional is there great detail there but not otherwise? Fair calls himself a torturer and makes it clear that he is writing this memoir as a means of approaching those he's wronged and intends to do so as many times as it takes to be forgiven. I don't know if he intends this to be published and distributed in Iraq or not, so perhaps he means that he's wronged the American people instead. And indeed, he has, as an agent for CACI and ultimately Dick Cheney. But indulging in shame as a permanent penitent is itself an exercise in the Mortal Sin of Pride, and can very easily devolve into a masturbatory one at that. Fair lays some of the blame for his bad actions on the decisions he made, and some of it on his Presbyterian upbringing which stressed rules; he says "Presbyterians like rules." Well, one of those rules is : "It's a sin to believe you cannot be and/or don't deserve to be forgiven." And that's a rule every Presbyterian learns in Sunday school. I know - I learned it in my Sunday school. Because you see, that's Prideful and manipulative. In point of fact, those things are part of the alcoholic complex from which he suffers.So he may be blind to it, as well.I came to the conclusion, after reading this book, that one of the reasons contractors were used in these wars, instead of ginning up a draft and engaging the full war-machine potential of the United States was, because the Powers That Are were not certain the military people would follow those kinds of orders to torture prisoners. Civilian employees, being paid much more money, tax-free, and not subject to the UCMJ's moderating influences - might be more malleable and amenable. That indeed, seems to have been the case.
    • 5/5
      The heartfelt and thought provoking memoir of a man on the front lines of the war in Iraq. Mr. Fair was one of the people charged with gaining information from prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other locations through various means. It was difficult for him then and he still continues to struggle with it in his personal life now. Also hanging over his head was a major heart disorder that could have been terminal at any point. The book is honest, gritty and hard to read in parts as a man tries to make sense out of his life experiences.
    • 4/5
      Raw, brutal, honest, soul-baring. Eric Fair was a contractor doing interrogations in Iraq – Abu Ghraib and Fallujah. Things he saw, things he did, things he didn’t do. There were consequences associated with his actions and inactions.Eric Fair was a geek in high school. It was assumed he would become a Presbyterian minister. But then he took a different direction. He decided he wanted to become a police officer. But he was told to join the Army, get preference points, and come back. So upon graduation from college he joined the Army. Aptitude testing showed that he had the aptitude for languages. He was sent to the Defense Language Institute to learn Arabic. He became very frustrated with the Army and took a discharge at the end of his enlistment period. Then he promptly enrolled for the police academy. He got a job offer from the DEA. At the physical exam for the DEA it was discovered that Eric had a heart condition that ended his dreams of being a policeman. Because of his Arabic training he found that contractors we interested in signing him up for Iraq. Thus his life took turn that totally changed his life.In Iraq he was directed to do things that he knew were wrong. He saw things that he knew were wrong so he learned to look the other way. However there were two incidents that haunted him from there on out.Fair is brutally honest about his life in Iraq and his attempts to return to normalcy upon his return to the US. He tells of the impact it has on his marriage. His raw honesty can be difficult to read – and accept. But he provides a look into the lives of our soldiers who have returned and find it so difficult to adjust. If you now a returning soldier who is struggling to adjust or you know the family of such a solider, this book is definitely worth your reading. It also presents a better understanding of the traumas of Post Traumatic Incident Disorder.
    • 5/5
      I've seen a lot of interviews with Eric Fair, or, rather, I guess I should say I've seen a lot of posts on Facebook about interviews with Eric Fair. There are inevitably dozens of comments from people who've never read this book but nevertheless have strong feelings about it. People who say that Fair, who was an interrogator in Iraq for a private company, has no remorse for what he did, or that he wrote this book just to make money off of an atrocity that he took part in. I wish those people would read this book because those people are wrong.Consequences: A Memoir is a difficult book to read. It is a very convincing and unflinching indictment of group think and of people going along with what they're told, and what other people are doing, because . . . . well, because that's what human beings do. Fair doesn't make excuses. Fair suffers long-term consequences from his actions. Fair doesn't want you to feel sorry for him. He wants this shit to stop and it's clear to me, and I can't imagine wouldn't be clear to anyone who read this book with an open mind, that he wrote this book because he wants this shit to stop. He wrote it because he wants the American public to know what is being done in our name. This is one of the frankest, most brutally honest books I've read in my 36 years. I wish Mr. Fair peace and I thank him for writing this book.
    • 5/5
      There is no salvation or redemption for Eric Fair’s mind. He went to war in Iraq, and like thousands of others, he is tortured by what he lived, what he did, his inability to make up for it, to address it, live with it, or get past it. He is a changed man, and none of it for the better. All he wanted to do was be a policeman.The way he sees his pre-Iraq life now is a slow, frustrating deterioration, losing his religion, his values and his self-respect. A high paying job in Iraq seemed just the ticket to escape himself. After all, the Army had made him an Arabic expert. Once back in the US, Iraq seemed the only place he could hide his shame. He is wracked by guilt and humiliation. As is so typical of veterans, he is subject to recurring, worsening nightmares and vicious fits of uncontrollable anger, triggered by little or nothing. Alcohol becomes his constant companion. He works hard to push his wife away.So he goes back to Iraq, getting horrible advice from his supervisor at the NSA: “You were born for this war.” It was not true but it has become his reality. It is either Iraq or suicide, and he hopes Iraq will take care of that, too. When he comes home, his faulty heart catches up with him, and still in his thirties, has to undergo a heart transplant. This is of course the most stressful thing you can imagine, which only makes the Fairs wonder if there actually is a bottom anywhere. He has survived to write this memoir.Fair’s writing is all in the present tense. He has relived these events so many times, they seem crystal clear in front of him. His sentences are all short, declarative, and active voice. There are not a lot of color and few adjectives. His memories unroll before us as if they belonged to someone else. He seems to have no actual feelings about them. What I don’t know is if this is Fair’s natural way of communicating, or if this what has become of him. By the end, you are worn out.The last hundred pages (around chapter 10) of my review copy were heavily censored, including several whole pages – there, but blacked out. It is our reality too.David Wineberg
    • 5/5
      Eric Fair was a nice boy, a good boy, raised in a typical American family in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He did well in school, attended church regularly and was close to his grandmother. He toyed with the idea of becoming a pastor but instead served in the military and then became a cop. His law enforcement career ended with the discovery of heart disease. However, this did not stop him from returning to Iraq as a contractor, although it should have. Fair describes what he saw and what he did while overseas, things he is not proud of. He also describes how it has affected him, his family and his relationships with others for the rest of his life. His is an incredibly brave account of a different type of casualty of these wars – the psychological damage done to those who have seen and done things they would normally never do. Fair provides a very different look at what going to war means to many who serve.
    • 3/5
      This is an incredibly difficult book to read. Not just because of the content, but also because of the writing style – a series of short, blunt sentences entirely in the present tense, which drive every word like a hammer blow. It is the perfect medium for the story, because the reader has no chance to lose themselves in the words, which also makes it hard. The book reads like a confession which seeks no forgiveness. It reads in the tone of someone who believes they cannot atone for what they have done, but whose remaining fragments of self-preservation drive them to take what steps down that road they can, because that is the only thing that keeps them human.This is an important story, as an account of how a not-intrinsically-evil person was numbed and twisted by the US Military and its operations in Iraq, as well as the suffering that occurred when the numbness went away (yet the effects of the twisting remain). War has been doing this to people, in varying forms, as long as there has been war, so I expect it will have few new ideas or experiences for anyone who has interacted with human beings identified as “the enemy”, but for the rest of us I think it can help give some answers to questions, ones starting with “why” and “how.” And as always, for those who may already know the land this book covers it can still be good to know you are not alone.
    • 5/5
      ConsequenceI don’t know what I exactly I thought Consequence by Eric Fair would be about when it came in the mail. Maybe some pointed political cautionary tell about how the other side would ruin us all and lead to the unleashing of the apocalypse’s horsemen. I spent way too much time while reading the early part of the book trying to peek around the corner to finally see whatever blue or red demon I thought lay in wait. The only demons hanging about were those inside Mr. Fair and those inside me. It’s easy to look at folks at write them off, diagnosis them with whatever is needed to assure ourselves that at least we aren’t as bad or evil as that bastard. The circle of forgiveness is just big enough to cover our sins and missteps. But there is always that place inside us that knows what we can never keep covered from ourselves. I believe that is what Consequence is about. Eric Fair was given the gift early in life of know what was right, of knowing God’s love, of recognizing the need to give and receive compassion. Though he might not have understood it explicitly, he knew enough to start a quest for whatever expression of love in the world was to be his. And he knew the fear of that path, the possibility that his talents might fall short of those required to achieve it, and the discomfort of believing himself unworthy. Damnedest thing, arrogance. Externally we work to keep it at bay, or more accurately, hidden lest others think ill of us. More sinister is that subtlest voice that counsels, “just this once… it won’t hurt anyone.” Then as the evidence stacks up of our misadventure we suddenly somehow come to the conclusion that, despite our belief that God loving and capable of all things, there can’t possibly be any kind of spiritual reconciliation. Shame is the price for choosing our own way, and to compound that we take the innocent along for the ride. Parents, partners, children, and friends all get to be a passenger on the bus we are steering so recklessly. Our mantra of “what would you have me to do” is replaced by “What have I done?”A former policeman, Mr. Fair’s style is reminiscent of Dragnet’s emotionalist leader, Sergeant Joe Friday. However, the closer I got to end, the more poignant Mr. Fairs experience became. Without knowing how the reader joins path and is forced confront their own consequences. This is where the healing occurs.
    • 2/5
      Eric Fair's confessional memoir "Consequence" is hard to summarize in a simple non-professional review. On one hand, it is a fascinating look at what degradation humans will subject others too, and on the other hand, it is a confession for sins committed.The bottom line is he participated in torture and made a lot of money from it. He expresses guilt, yet he was a paid contractor VOLUNTARILY interrogating prisoners at Abu Ghraib. He was not a soldier under orders, he was getting paid six figures to commit these atrocities. The writing is simple and clean, but I call bullshit on Mr. Fair. Donate your contracting money to victims of torture and the proceeds from the book. He writes that his wife makes enough money to support them. Put your money where your mouth is, or no one will really take this work seriously.
    • 5/5
      Eric Fair's memoir, CONSEQUENCE, is a riveting and compelling read, but it is not a pleasant one. You will find yourself wincing repeatedly at his coldly matter-of-fact and unflinching descriptions of his experience as an interrogator in Iraq, working as a civilian contractor for the notorious CACI (Consolidated Analysis Center, Incorporated). Indeed the company was so secretive and unforthcoming that Fair and many of his co-workers didn't even know what CACI stood for. CONSEQUENCE is so disturbing that it is a hard book to critique. Fair, who grew up a chubby, bullied kid in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, came from a staunchly Prsbyterian family, and religion played a pivotal role in his life. He was active in church youth groups and attended a Christian college for a year before transferring to Boston U. He then enlisted in the Army, where he learned Arabic at DLIFLC in Monterey, California. Then on to Airborne and Special Ops training and a tour in Egypt. A long way from the shy kid who was mercilessly bullied. He also drifted away from his religious roots. After the army he marries and joins the Bethlehem Police force, but after a few years he learned he had a rare heart defect, which effectively ended his law enforcement career. Then, leveraging his army training and language skills, he signs on with the infamous CACI and heads to Iraq to join a growing cadre of civilian contractors. He is, from the beginning, repulsed by what he witnesses in this job, and then, gradually finds himself becoming part of it all. Remember the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, where a handful of low-ranking military types took the fall for torture and mistreatment of prisoners? Well they were merely scapegoats. The orders came from much higher up, and the civilian contractors were in just as deep. Fair also does a stint as an analyst with the National Security Agency before a return trip to Iraq. But here's the thing. I'm barely skimming the surface here with this summary. Fair recounts it all in a flat present-tense voice. It's like a recitation of sins, a confession. Is there remorse? Yes. Regret? Yes. Shame? Oh, yes. In fact, Eric Fair is filled with shame and remorse, and, his life and marriage in shambles, he is trying desperately to find his way back to the man he once was. He studies scriptures with a friend, searching for solace. He finds in Maimonides that "the transgressor is required to engage with the aggrieved persons, actively seek their forgiveness ... The remedies are often described as lifelong pursuits." Fair's change of heart and search for forgiveness brought to mind Bernard Malamud's character Frank Alpine in THE ASSISTANT. Except this is not fiction. This is a real person. And he is in real pain.In 2006 Fair published some newspaper op-ed pieces about his work as an interrogator that brought him thousands of email replies, many of them ugly hate-mails. He admits that his articles were not entirely forthcoming, saying: "I haven't yet mustered the courage to confess ..."Over the next several years, there was a brief failed stint at Princeton Seminary, he became a father, underwent a heart transplant, and thought often of suicide. In this book, Fair has finally found the courage for a full confession. "I am a torturer. I have not turned a corner or found my way back. I have not been redeemed. I have no right to expect that I ever will. But I am still obligated to try."Eric Fair is a tortured soul. He tells his story unflinchingly. He is guilty of terrible sins and he admits it. Scripture tells Fair that seeking forgiveness is a "lifelong pursuit." He is working on it.This is a memoir of war and its consequences. It will haunt you. Very highly recommended. - Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA