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 (6709)

This CIA cable describes the CIA Counterterrorism Center (CTC)'s contract with Mitchell, Jessen & Associates (MJA), a company started by psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. The cable states that Mitchell and Jessen were "instrumental" ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Cable
Bruce Jessen, James Mitchell
This 2002 chronology of events details Gul Rahman's time at COBALT including the assessments and interviews conducted of him and the interrogation techniques he was subjected to, according to cable reports and visits. It also lists the dates ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Chart/List
James Mitchell , Bruce Jessen
Gul Rahman
Sleep deprivation, Environmental manipulation, Temperature, Nudity, Other
This Statement of Work is a revised version of Mitchell, Jessen & Associates' Technical Proposal included in the June 15, 2005 Statement of Work.
This document is a memorandum from the chief of the Counterintelligence Evaluation Branch of the Counterespionage Group in the Counterintelligence Center about an interview conducted with John B. Jessen regarding the death of Gul Rahman.
This memo sets forth the reasons why the CIA granted Mitchell, Jessen, and Associates (MJA) a "sole source contract" to support the Counterterrorism Center's rendition, detention, and interrogation program, and describes the type of support that ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo
Bruce Jessen, James Mitchell
This OLC summary contains advice to the Counsel to President, CIA, and DOD on the use and legality of interrogation techniques in the war against terrorism.
This paper written by James Mitchell and John Jessen discusses interrogation resistance techniques described in Al Qaeda training documents, how to recognize when these techniques are being employed, and strategies for developing countermeasures.
Sept. 26, 2016
Non-legal Memo
James Mitchell and John Jessen
James Mitchell , Bruce Jessen
This memorandum from Assistant Attorney General John Bybee to John Rizzo provides the Office of the Assistant Attorney General's view on whether certain proposed conduct during the interrogation of al Qaeda Operative Abu Zubaydah would violate ...
This memorandum from Steven Bradbury to John Rizzo analyzes whether certain enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA in the interrogation of high value al Qaeda detainees would violate US law under Article 16. The memorandum concludes ...
This legal memorandum from Steven Bradbury to John Rizzo analyzes whether particular conditions of detention at certain CIA facilities overseas are consistent with the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. The memorandum concludes that conditions at ...