After September 11, 2001, U.S. officials authorized the cruel treatment and torture of prisoners held in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, and the CIA's secret prisons overseas.

This database documents the U.S. government's official experiment with torture. At present, the database contains well over 100,000 pages of government documents obtained primarily through Freedom of Information Act litigation and requests filed by the ACLU, and through litigation of Salim v. Mitchell, a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of the survivors and the family of a dead victim of the CIA torture program. To learn more about the database, please read the About and Search Help pages. If you're a developer, you can also access this data through our API.

Search Result (62)

This document, prepared by the Chief of Medical Services, summarizes and reflects upon the rendition, detention and interrogation program. The findings include that in a particular no evidence was found that the use of waterboard produced ...
This cable provides a report of day 5 of the cycle of interrogation carried out on detainee Abu Zubaydah on August 8, 2002. It includes details of interrogators using a combination of waterboarding, walling, cramped confinement, and hooding in ...
This cable provides a report of day 6 of the cycle of interrogation carried out on detainee Abu Zubaydah on August 9, 2002. It includes details of interrogators using a combination of waterboarding, walling, cramped confinement, and hooding in ...
This cable describes the enhanced interrogation techniques that interrogation teams can employ, pending approval and sets forth federal law which limits the use of these techniques by U.S. government personnel and requires that interrogation ...
This is a moderately redacted cable which summarizes the mechanics and legal basis for use of enhanced interrogation techniques on detainees. The cable states that "our attorneys have presented our legal analysis to the legal adviser to the NSC, ...
This CIA list includes Abu Zubaydah's reported terrorist activity, injuries at the time of capture, highlights from reporting, legal authority for interrogation techniques used, and interrogation techniques used on Abu Zubaydah.
This July 2002 cable is a request for guidance from headquarters on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. The cable expresses hesitation about using these techniques on subjects being held in solitary confinement without legal ...
This cable includes the bios of the detainees and lists the EITs they were subjected to while they were in CIA custody. It is redacted almost in full with the exception of information on the following three detainees: Suleiman Abdullah, Gul ...
This document, prepared by the Chief of Medical Services, summarizes and reflects upon the rendition, detention and interrogation program. The findings include that in a particular no evidence was found that the use of waterboard produced ...