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 (6709)

This memorandum from Assistant Attorney General John Bybee to John Rizzo provides the Office of the Assistant Attorney General's view on whether certain proposed conduct during the interrogation of al Qaeda Operative Abu Zubaydah would violate ...
This memorandum from the Office of the Assistant Attorney General to Alberto Gonzales examines the legal standards of conduct for interrogations under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
This document, prepared by the Chief of Medical Services, summarizes and reflects upon the rendition, detention and interrogation program. The findings include that in a particular no evidence was found that the use of waterboard produced ...
This June 20, 2003 email from [redacted] to [redacted] re: Re: RDG Tasking for IC Psychologists Jessen and Mitchell, contains comments on the tasking for IC psychologists, Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. [Redacted] expresses concern that Mitchell ...
Email
James Mitchell , Bruce Jessen
SERE
This document is a CIA Memo drafted for the Deputy Director for Operations via the Associate Deputy Director for Operations/Counterintelligence. The previous release of this document (on June 13, 2016) included more redactions such as Bruce ...
This June 16, 2003 email from [redacted] to [redacted] re: RDG Tasking for IC Psychologists Jessen and Mitchell, contains comments on the tasking for IC psychologists, Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, specifically the projects they will be ...
Email
James Mitchell , Bruce Jessen
Abu Zubaydah
This July 9, 2002 email from [redacted] to [redacted] re: Description of Physical Pressures, includes the contents of a memo from Jim Mitchell describing "potential physical and psychological pressures" to be used on a particular detainee. The ...
This report details the investigation into the death of Gul Rahman. This re-released report includes a description of psychologist Bruce Jessen and his role in the interrogation of Gul Rahman.
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
Report from the Office of Inspector General on Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities from September 2001-October 2003, specifically focusing on the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs). In a previously released ...