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 (6)

RelevanceDateRelease Date
Feb. 11, 2002 | DOS | ACLU-RDI 3793
State Department memo from Daveid Bowker to Beverly Holman to "Prepare ALDAC cable to NSC under cover of a Harty-Biegun memo."
Dec. 30, 2004
Non-legal Memo
Beverly S. Holman
David W. Bowker
David W. Bowker, Beverly S. Holman
Feb. 11, 2002 | DOS | ACLU-RDI 3866
DOS Memo re: Talking Points on International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) Report on the Treatment of Guantanamo Detainees. The memo is to address the question of whether the U.S. will release the ICRC report. The answer is "No" because it ...
Feb. 27, 2002 | DOS | ACLU-RDI 4132
This is a State department Talking points and press guidance memo concerning the legal basis for the U.S. holding detainees at Guantanamo. The talking points highlight that the detainees are "enemy Combatants" and not Prisoners of War (POWs) and ...
Dec. 30, 2004
Non-legal Memo
Evan T. Bloom, William Howard Taft, IV, James H. Thessin, Jonathan B. Schwartz, Edward R. Cummings, David W. Bowker, Mark F. Wong, John B. Bellinger, III, Eliana Davidson, Daniel P. Collins
Feb. 07, 2002 | DOS | ACLU-RDI 4184
The memo appears to be the Press Secretary's talking points for a press statement. The statement appears to address the President's stance on treating detainees according to the principles of the Geneva Convention.
Dec. 30, 2004
Non-legal Memo
Ari Fleischer
George W. Bush, Ari Fleischer, Charles L. Daris
Feb. 28, 2002 | DOS | ACLU-RDI 3566
State Department memo on how to address questions from the media on how the Guantanamo detainees are being treated. The memo poses potential questions and answers and states that the answers should be that the detainees are being: treated ...
Feb. 25, 2002 | DOS | ACLU-RDI 3621
State Department memo discussing a recent petition filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) against the U.S.. The CCR's petition alleges that the U.S. government's treatment ...
Nov. 23, 2004
Non-legal Memo
Otto J. Reich | Roger F. Noriega
Colin L. Powell
Colin L. Powell, Otto J. Reich, Roger F. Noriega, Frank E. Schmelzer