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 (123)

RelevanceDateRelease Date
Nov. 30, 2001 | OLC | ACLU-RDI 6827
November 2001 memo from Yoo and Delahunty to Gonzales summarizing treaties and laws applicable to the conflict in Afghanistan and to the treatment of persons captured by U.S. Armed Forces.
Dec. 15, 2009
Legal Memo
John C. Yoo
Alberto R. Gonzales
Alberto R. Gonzales, John Yoo, Robert J. Delahunty, George W. Bush
Jan. 22, 2002 | OLC | ACLU-RDI 6568
This Jan. 22, 2002 memo from Jay Bybee (OLC) to Alberto R. Gonzales (Counsel to Pres. George W. Bush) and William H. Haynes II (General Counsel of the DOD) responds to a request for advice on the effect of the War Crimes Act and the Geneva ...
Aug. 31, 2016
Legal Memo
Jay S. Bybee
Alberto Gonzalez | William J. Haynes, II
Alberto Gonzalez, William J. Haynes, II, Jay S. Bybee, George W. Bush
June 07, 2006 | ACLU-RDI 6551
This document is an email sent on June 7, 2006, from [redacted] to [redacted] regarding Dr. Mitchell's 7 June Meeting with the DCI. In the previous release of this document (on June 13, 2016), the name "Dr. Mitchell" was also redacted in the ...
Sept. 30, 2016
Email
James Mitchell , George W. Bush, Michael Hayden
Stress positions, Other Humiliation
June 07, 2006 | ACLU-RDI 6500
N/A
June 13, 2016
Email
George W. Bush, Michael Hayden
Stress positions, Other Humiliation
June 20, 2014 | Legislative | ACLU-RDI 5937
This document expresses the minority views of Vice Chairman Chambliss and Senators Burr, Risch, Coats, Rubio, and Coburn written in response to the full Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program. ...
June 20, 2014
Oversight Report
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
John A. Rizzo, Steven G. Bradbury, George W. Bush, Ali Soufan, Pasquale D'Amuro
Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Jose Padilla, Hassan Ghul
EIT, Use of water, Waterboarding, Physical assault, Threat, Cramped confinement, Sleep deprivation, Isolation, Dietary manipulation, Environmental manipulation, Nudity, Other Humiliation
Mar. 18, 2003 | WH | ACLU-RDI 5885
This DOS Cable to the US Mission, Geneva, Switzerland outlining the US position concerning the care, treatment & transfer of detainees captured and detained in the War on Terror and are in US custody.
Oct. 28, 2011
Cable
Kim R. Holmes
Kim R. Holmes, George W. Bush
June 26, 2004 | CIA | ACLU-RDI 5094
CIA copy of a transcript of George W. Bush's speech on the U.N. International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, emphasizing the conviction that "Torture is wrong no matter where it occurs" and that the United States must lead the fight to ...
Mar. 15, 2013
Other
George W. Bush
May 07, 2003 | WH | CIA | ACLU-RDI 5058
Press release from the White House affirming the Bush administration's belief in the Geneva Convention, but noting that Taliban detainees are not entitled to POW status and that members of al-Qaeda are not covered by the Convention.
Other
George W. Bush, Ari Fleischer
May 05, 2004 | ACLU-RDI 5057
This article describes the government's criminal investigations into the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan following the Abu Ghraib scandal. The report describes ongoing investigations by the CIA's Inspector General and ...
Mar. 15, 2013
Other
George W. Bush, Antonio Taguba, Janis Leigh Karpinski, Abdul Basat Al-Turki, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, John Warner, Edward M. Kennedy, Carl Levin, Geoffrey D. Miller
Abed Hamed Mowhoush
May 24, 2004 | ACLU-RDI 5047

This May 24, 2004 Newsweek article discusses the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. It describes legal justifications for the Bush administration's interrogation program.

Mar. 15, 2013
Other
George W. Bush, Jane Harman, Lindsey Graham, Larry DiRita, Donald H. Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Cofer Black, Colin L. Powell, John C. Yoo, William Howard Taft, IV, Alberto R. Gonzales, Rick Baccus, Richard B. Myers, William J. Haynes, II, Geoffrey D. Miller, Stephen A. Cambone, William G. Boykin, Janis Leigh Karpinski, Paul Wayne Bergrin, Ricardo Sanchez
Physical assault