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 (147)

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
This August 31, 2006 OLC memo from Steven Bradbury to John Rizzo discusses whether particular "standards conditions of detention" at certain CIA facilities located overseas are consistent with the applicable standards of the Detainee Treatment Act.
Legal Memo
Steven G. Bradbury
John A. Rizzo
John A. Rizzo, Steven G. Bradbury
N/A
N/A
June 13, 2016
Email
George W. Bush, Michael Hayden
Stress positions, Other Humiliation
This is a heavily redacted message from John Rizzo to Michael Hayden, Michael Morell, and Stephen Kappes, describing an ICRC meeting with detainees and how the detainees' allegations to the ICRC do not "sound far removed from the reality."
June 13, 2016
Email
John A. Rizzo
Michael Hayden, Stephen Kappes, John A. Rizzo, Michael Morell
This is a DOD OIG review of 13 senior-level investigations of detention and interrogation that were initiated as a result of allegations of detainee abuse made in 2004. The purpose of the OIG review "was to evaluate the reports to determine ...
This documents the interview of Detainee 269 at GTMO on 5/4/06. It states that Detainee 269 was interviewed in an air conditioned room with his hands free and his feet shackled to a bolt in the floor. The synopsis states that the purpose of the ...
Nov. 01, 2011
Interview (Summaries/Notes)
Other
This is the Autopsy Report & Death Certificate for Ali Abdullah Ahmed, a 21 year old Yeminis male being held at Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility, Cuba. Mr. Ahmed, along with Mana Shaman Allabardi Al Tabi and Ali Yasser Talal al Zahrani each ...
Aug. 28, 2008
Medical (Autopsy, Death Certificate)
Ali Abdullah Ahmed
Faxed memorandum from Benjamin Powell to Distribution regarding a November 29, 2006 meeting where representatives from the NSC, DOD, State Department, DOJ, CIA, and ODNI met to discuss security issues concerning the 14 High Value Detainees being ...
Oct. 31, 2014
Non-legal Memo
Benjamin Powell
Ashley Deeks
Ashley S. Deeks
This DOS Cable from the US Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan to the DOS Washington describes the Pakistani news coverage of matters concerning US policy, and matters of interest to the US government for August 2006.