The struggle to find and reveal the truth about a secret torture training center at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA).
In the documentary Father Roy Bourgeois--a Vietnam war hero--meets three men, each from a different Latin American country, who link SOA to torture training. Two were taught torture techniques at SOA. The third, a victim of that training, found an SOA teaching manual on torture.
In 1996 the White House Intelligence Oversight Board confirmed the explosive charges revealed in this documentary and the Secretary of Defense at the time declared torture training would never happen again. In 2016 Donald Trump called for the return of waterboarding torture as a part of American military intelligence practices.
Under its new name, Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, SOA continues. So does the growing campaign by tens of thousands of college students and others to close it down.
AMPAS, The Motion Picture Academy, declared Father Roy: Inside the School of Assassins was one of the outstanding documentaries of the year it was released. A fictional adaptation of this factually dramatic documentary is in development.
Book the filmmaker with this or other of his films by emailing [email protected]. Robert Richter has appeared with his work at over 50 universities and colleges.