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 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 ...
This letter is from Jack Goldsmith to Scott Muller stating that he received a copy of the Inspector General Report on the CIA Enhanced Interrogation Program and is concerned about how these techniques are applied in practice.
This letter from Daniel Levin to John Rizzo is the Office of Legal Counsel's response to the proposed use of twelve interrogation techniques during the interrogation of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and whether or not these techniques would violate U.S. ...
This document is a letter from Daniel Levin to John Rizzo stating that the use of twelve interrogation techniques in the interrogation of Sharif al-Masri will not violate the U.S. constitution, statute, or other treaty obligation. Levin says ...
This memorandum from Steven Bradbury to John Rizzo examines whether certain interrogation techniques can be used in the interrogation of high value al-Qaeda detainees. The memorandum concludes that none of these specific techniques, considered ...
This document is a list of past OLC advice on interrogation dated October 2, 2007.
This heavily redacted memorandum states that Gul Rahman has been uncooperative in debriefing sessions and suggests that interrogators need to create a plan to best extract information.
Non-legal Memo
Gul Rahman
This June 2002 cable reports on a meeting held to discuss the next phase of the Abu Zubaydah interrogation. Attendees include psychologist James Mitchell. At the meeting, it was agreed upon that Abu Zubaydah was withholding information on direct ...
Cable
CTC/UBL
James Mitchell
Abu Zubaydah
SERE, Isolation, Dietary manipulation, Other
This Joint Personnel Recovery Agency Draft Exploitation Plan crafted by Bruce Jessen and others in 2002 proposed the creation of a secret military interrogation facility abroad. The plan details personnel requirements, strategies for ...
Non-legal Memo
Bruce Jessen
EIT, Isolation, Dietary manipulation, Environmental manipulation
Deposition transcript of John A. Rizzo for Salim v. Mitchell litigation.
Judicial (Transcript)
John A. Rizzo
EIT