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 (19)

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An OLC memo from Bradbury to Rizzo addressing whether the combined use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (including waterboarding) violates the prohibition on torture. The memo concludes that it would not violate the torture statute if used ...
A letter from the CIA to OLC requesting that the OLC reaffirm its analyses in several previously issued memos relating to interrogation. The letter states that "we rely on the applicable law and OLC guidance to assess the lawfulness of detention ...
This National Security Council memo summarizes the OLC's three May 2005 opinions for the CIA on the legality of its interrogation techniques.
An OLC memo addressing whether certain enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA are consistent with the United States's obligations under Article 16 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading ...
This document is the CIA's response to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program. "The comments presented in this paper on The Senate Select Committee on ...

A State Department memo addressing whether Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture applies to the CIA's interrogations in foreign countries. The State Department determined that the prohibitions against torture do apply, despite its ...

A letter from the CIA to OLC requesting that the OLC reaffirm its analyses in several previously issued memos relating to interrogation.  The letter states that "we rely on the applicable law and OLC guidance to assess the lawfulness ...

A background paper on the CIA's combined use of interrogation techniques, addressed to Daniel Levin, Acting Assistant Attorney General. The document states that "Effective interrogation is based on the concept of using both physical and ...

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