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 (48)

A letter from Jack Goldsmith to Scott Muller regarding the CIA Inspector General's Special Review of the CIA's interrogation program.  The letter expresses concern at the fact that, according to the Special Review, aspects of the CIA's ...

Aug. 24, 2009
Letter
Jack L. Goldsmith
Scott W. Muller
Jack L. Goldsmith, Scott W. Muller, John L. Helgerson, John A. Rizzo
EIT, SERE, Use of water, Waterboarding

This letter from Jack Goldsmith to Scott Muller relates to Muller's request that OLC "reaffirm three pages of bullet points" titled "Legal Principles Applicable to CIA detention and Interrogation of Captured Al-Qa'ida ...

Aug. 24, 2009
Letter
Jack L. Goldsmith
Scott W. Muller
Jack L. Goldsmith, Scott W. Muller

This letter from Jack Goldsmith to Scott Muller relates to Muller's request that OLC "reaffirm three pages of bullet points" titled "Legal Principles Applicable to CIA detention and Interrogation of Captured Al-Qa'ida ...

Aug. 24, 2009
Letter
Jack L. Goldsmith
Scott W. Muller
Jack L. Goldsmith, Scott W. Muller

This letter from Goldsmith to Director Tenet requests that the CIA Inspector General’s report be returned to the IG so that edits may be made to the report’s summary of the Attorney General’s statements at a July 2003 meeting ...

Aug. 24, 2009
Letter
Jack L. Goldsmith
George Tenet
Jack L. Goldsmith, George J. Tenet, John D. Ashcroft, John L. Helgerson, Scott W. Muller

This letter from Scott Muller explains that Jack Goldsmith's letter to George Tenet, Director of the CIA, was forwarded to the Inspector General and that his office would decide whether the suggested changes to the Special Review would be ...

Aug. 24, 2009
Letter
Scott W. Muller
Jack L. Goldsmith
Scott W. Muller, Jack L. Goldsmith, George J. Tenet, John L. Helgerson
Abu Zubaydah
EIT

This letter from John Helgerson, Inspector General of the CIA, to Jack Goldsmith of the OLC addresses the DOJ's proposed modifications to the IG report. Helgerson writes, "we have carefully reviewed the comments of the [DOJ] regarding the ...

This letter from Goldsmith to Muller addresses the use of interrogation techniques on a certain high-value detainee and is a follow-up to 2 previous memos approving 33 techniques (an OLC memo approved 9 and a memo from Secretary Rumsfeld ...

Aug. 24, 2009
Legal Memo, Letter
Jack L. Goldsmith
Scott W. Muller
Jack L. Goldsmith, John A. Rizzo, Scott W. Muller, John A. Rizzo, Jay S. Bybee, John D. Ashcroft, James B. Comey, Donald H. Rumsfeld
EIT

An OLC memo from Daniel Levin (Acting Assistant Attorney General) to John Ashcroft (Attorney General) and James Comey (Deputy Attorney General), updating them on the status of interrogation advice. The letter contains sections for general ...

An OLC memo from Jack Goldsmith to John Helgerson, the CIA's Inspector General, expressing disagreement with the Special Review's representation of OLC opinions on two points -- whether John Ashcroft (Attorney General) authorized ...

Aug. 24, 2009
Legal Memo, Letter
Jack L. Goldsmith
John L. Helgerson
Jack L. Goldsmith, John L. Helgerson, John D. Ashcroft, John A. Rizzo, George J. Tenet
Abu Zubaydah
EIT, Waterboarding, Use of water