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 (31)

A list of bullet points discussing legal principles applicable to the CIA's detention and interrogation of detainees, including the use of the "enhanced interrogation techniques."  Many of the principles listed appear in the ...

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 ...

A fax (sent January 15, 2005) from the CIA to the OLC of the December 2004 OMS Guidelines on Medical and Psychological Support to Detainee Rendition, Interrogation, and Detention. The document is heavily redacted but describes the enhanced ...

This document was faxed from the CIA to Steven Bradbury (OLC). It describes the CIA's technique of "horizontal sleep deprivation," wherein a detainee is placed on a large blanket on the floor and chained such that he cannot sleep. ...

This May 7, 2004 Special Review by the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General examines the CIA’s counterterrorism detention and interrogation activities, including the apparently unauthorized use of mock executions, a hand gun, a ...

Lengthy, but almost entirely redacted, document that apparently discusses the CIA’s detention and interrogation program for “high value targets.” The document provides some detail regarding the “standard” and ...

This report, issued by John Helgerson, examines whether CIA interrogators used unauthorized interrogation techniques on high value detainees, including Abd al-Rahman Al-Nashiri.
Non-legal Memo, Oversight Report, Investigative File
John Helgerson
John Helgerson, James Pavitt
Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri
EIT, Use of water, Waterboarding, Physical assault, Threat, Sleep deprivation
This heavily redacted memo contains notes from a meeting on specific interrogation techniques, including the waterboard, sleep deprivation, and water dousing, between DOJ attorneys, including Dan Levin and Steven Bradbury, and CIA personnel. ...
This document is a fax from [redacted], [redacted] Legal Group, DCI Counterterrorist Center, CIA to Steve Bradbury, Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, containing answers composed by the CIA' s Office of Medical Services to the ...