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)

This heavily redacted message describes one instance (starting on August 4, 2002) of "the aggressive phase" of high value captive interrogation and recommends its use as a template for future interrogation. Nothing new has been disclosed since ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo, Cable
ALEC Info Director
EIT
This heavily redacted cable seems to describe a proposal for "turning up the heat" in the interrogation of detainee Abu Zubaydah. One unredacted sentence references moving onto "Option B" in the interrogation; another reveals the psychologists' ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo, Cable
Abu Zubaydah
EIT
This is a moderately redacted cable which summarizes the mechanics and legal basis for use of enhanced interrogation techniques on detainees. The cable states that "our attorneys have presented our legal analysis to the legal adviser to the NSC, ...
This cable seems to provide the Director of Central Intelligence's guidelines for the operation of detention facilities, and specifically for COBALT, a CIA black site in Northern Kabul, Afghanistan. Almost everything but the acknowledgement is ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo, Cable
George J. Tenet
This memo is a response from a redacted doctor to a request from the CIA Inspector General for comments on the "Draft Special Review--Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Program" report (2003-7123-IG). Everything but the envelope ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo
John L. Helgerson
John L. Helgerson
This is a memo from someone (name redacted) located at the site of interrogation to Jim Pavitt, Deputy Director for Operations for the CIA, reporting on the status of an investigation of the death of a detainee. Though the name of the detainee is ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo
James Pavitt
James Pavitt
Gul Rahman
This CIA memorandum for the Deputy Director of Operations is a review of the CIA Detainee Program with particular focus on the guidelines for detention and interrogation on May 12, 2004. The memorandum is heavily redacted and states that the CIA ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo
Henry A. Crumpton
This is an email (with sender and receiver redacted) sending a final draft of the CIA High Value Target Interrogation and Exploitation (HVTIE) Team Training document. The postscript note in the email mentions Mitchell and Jessen by name and ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Email
James Mitchell , Bruce Jessen
SERE
This is an email which provides electronic copies "of the CTC/RDG Interrogator Course Critiques." This course was taught by Mitchell, Jessen, and one other redacted official, and the critiques come from "interrogator graduates" and an OMS ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Email, Other
James Mitchell , Bruce Jessen
This is a heavily redacted email sent to students who "have been selected/invited to attend/support the CTC/RDG Interrogators and Debriefers courses." The only unredacted information in the email (other than Mitchell and Jessen's names) is ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Email
Bruce Jessen, James Mitchell