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 (37)

RelevanceDateRelease Date
Dec. 30, 2004 | OLC | ACLU-RDI 3547
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
May 19, 2004 | FBI | ACLU-RDI 2782

Memo from FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni to all field office personnel reiterates FBI policy that "no attempt be made to obtain a statement by force, threats, or promises."  Approved by John S. Pistole and Valerie E. ...

Dec. 15, 2004
Legal Memo
Valerie E. Caproni
John S. Pistole, Valerie E. Caproni
Nov. 27, 2002 | FBI | ACLU-RDI 2835
Legal analysis of interrogation techniques sent from FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) to FBI legal counsel.
Dec. 15, 2004
Legal Memo
Marion E. Bowman
Marion E. Bowman
FBI | ACLU-RDI 2847
Draft FBI memo divided into sections headed "Guantanamo" "Iraq" and "Afghanistan", with an additional section headed "Unknown Location." Memo also includes a redacted log of listings with "Date" and "Event" columns that include the words ...
June 01, 2004 | FBI | ACLU-RDI 3224
Memo is broken up in different sections. One section is entitled potentially relevant federal criminal statutes. Another section is entitled potential issues to be discussed at May 4, 2004, [the contents are redacted].
CRIM | ACLU-RDI 2756

Memorandum referring to joint comments on draft OLC memorandum; all other contents redacted.

Oct. 15, 2004
Legal Memo
David E. Nahmias | Laura Parsky
Barry Sabin | Teresa L. McHenry
David E. Nahmias, Laura H. Parsky, Teresa L. McHenry, Barry Sabin
Nov. 03, 2004 | FBI | ACLU-RDI 5995
The document is an internal FBI memorandum sent from the General Counsel to all divisions, regarding an appropriate course of action in response to requests received from military criminal investigative services to interview FBI personnel ...
Legal Memo
FBI General Counsel