BACK TO THE TSARS

Newsweek reports that the CIA carried out mock executions of prisoners in order to get some to talk. Perhaps they were trying to create another great author:

On April 23, 1849, he and the other members of the Petrashevsky Circle were arrested. Dostoyevsky spent eight months in prison until, on December 22, the prisoners were led without warning to the Semyonovsky Square. There a sentence of death by firing squad was pronounced, last rites were offered, and three prisoners were led out to be shot first. At the last possible moment, the guns were lowered and a messenger arrived with the information that the tsar had deigned to spare their lives. The mock-execution ceremony was in fact part of the punishment. One of the prisoners went permanently insane on the spot; another went on to write Crime and Punishment.

SOURCE:

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. (2009). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 22, 2009, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://search.eb.com/eb/article-59052