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 (4745)

Partially redacted press guidance for DOD release of draft military instruction, which lists/defines certain violations of laws of war and other offenses triable by military commission. The talking points instruct that if inquired about the ...
Dec. 30, 2004
Cable
Ronald W. Miller
Ronald W. Miller, Pierre-Richard Prosper
Email from David J. Tessler to Jonathan M. Crock and Joshua L. Dorosin re: News Reports from London August 5, 2004. The comment from Mr. Tessler on the email is "Good morning. Another interesting piece in London's daily brief about detainees, ...
Dec. 30, 2004
Email
David J. Tessler
Jonathan M. Crock | Joshua L. Dorosin
Jonathan M. Crock, Joshua L. Dorosin
Cover sheet, transmittal slips, blank sheet w/ handwriting "To: Don Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Andy Card, FYI"
DOS Cover Sheet re: Routing and Transmission Report re: Guantanamo Detainees. The recipients are Sec. Def. Rumsfeld, NSA Advisor Rice and Andrew Card.
Dec. 30, 2004
Letter
Colin L. Powell
Donald H. Rumsfeld | Condoleeza Rice | Andrew Card
Fax Cover sheet from Steven Schneebaum, Patton Boggs Law Firm to Secretary of State Colin Powell
Dec. 30, 2004
Letter
Steven M. Schneebaum
Colin L. Powell
Colin L. Powell
Letter from Cristophe Girod, International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), to William Howard Taft IV re: Working Paper on ICRC Sixth Visit to the internment facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, between January 26 th and March 8th 2004. Mr. ...
DOS Memo re: Talking Points on the Iraqi government taking over Abu Ghraib prison and Iraqi Governance in general post the June 30, 2004 turn-over to the Iraqis. The memo states "The Iraqi criminal justice system, including a number of courts, ...
Dec. 30, 2004
Non-legal Memo
George W. Bush, L. Paul Bremer, Mark Traecey Patrick Kimmitt
DOS interagency delivery checklist for the appropriate handling and delivery of attached documents re: Summary of Conclusions for Principals Committee Meeting on Detainees 5/12/04
This State Department memo gives the State Dept.'s official position on the question of detainees/ Geneva Conventions: the Geneva Conventions apply to the conflict w/ Al Qaeda but not with the Taliban; Neither Al-Qaeda nor Taliban detainees have ...
Dec. 30, 2004
Non-legal Memo
Alberto R. Gonzales, Colin L. Powell, William Howard Taft, IV
Cover letter from Craig Mokhiber, Officer-in-Charge, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to U.S. Amb. to the U.N. John Danforth enclosing a letter from Prof. Cherif Bassiouni, Independent Expert for Human Rights in Afghanistan. ...
Dec. 30, 2004
Letter
Craig Mokhiber
John Danforth
John Claggett Danforth