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 (123)

Department of Justice Office of Legal Council on Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A. This memo superceding the August 2002 memo interpreting the anti-torture statute. The memo disagrees with the previous memo's ...
June 01, 2005
Legal Memo
Daniel B. Levin
James B. Comey
Daniel B. Levin, James B. Comey, George W. Bush

Questions for Alberto Gonzalez, during his confirmation hearing, including many related to the treatment of detainees

June 01, 2005
Interview (Transcript)
Patrick Leahy
Alberto Gonzalez
Alberto R. Gonzales, John D. Ashcroft, Patrick Leahy, George W. Bush, Colin L. Powell, Donald H. Rumsfeld, George J. Tenet

A letter praising the Bush administration for its work addressing the problem of torture and welcoming the Bush administration's statement that the United States will neither torture terrorist suspects nor use cruel and unusual treatment to ...

June 01, 2005
Letter
George W. Bush, William J. Haynes, II, Patrick Leahy
Email discusses a New York Times front page article describing the role of the FBI in Iraq after the turnover of sovereignty. The email specifically disputes that Saddam is being held as a "High Value Detainee" by the FBI. It states that he is ...
May 18, 2005
Email
Valerie E. Caproni
John F. Curran
Valerie E. Caproni, John F. Curran, George W. Bush
The interviewed detainee stated he had just been released from the fleet hospital approximately 30 minutes before the interview started. The detainee was specifically asked the questions regarding force protection. Asked if he knew or had ...
May 18, 2005
Non-legal Memo, Interview (Summaries/Notes)
George W. Bush
State Department memo concerning an upcoming meeting between President Bush and Russian President Putin. Ms. Jones comments are "State-drafted annotated version of the Camp David Action Checklist approved by President Bush and President Putin in ...
May 18, 2005
Non-legal Memo
Elizabeth Jones
George W. Bush, Elizabeth Jones
Summary of comments made through media outlets by General Peter Schoomaker, General George Casey, Major General Geoffrey Miller, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, President George Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, General Peter Pace, ...
State Department fax from Debra Long the DOS UN & Legal Programme Officer to Amb. Moley forwarding a letter from the Association Against Torture to President Bush.
May 09, 2005
Letter
Debra Long
Kevin Edward Moley
Kevin Edward Moley, George W. Bush, Debra Long
This letter is from Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, two former Guantanamo detainees. The letter is on the letterhead of the Centre for Constitutional Rights and states that
State Department memorandum providing background on the Prime Minister's agenda and visit with President Bush at Camp David.
May 04, 2005
Non-legal Memo
Elizabeth Jones
Colin L. Powell
George W. Bush