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 (38)

DOJ letter regarding ACLU, et al., v. Department of Defense, et al., which states that the CIA has re-reviewed documents concerning waterboarding and produced redacted versions of some of those documents. Letter also mentions that on May 12, ...
May 23, 2008
Letter, Judicial
Michael J. Garcia | Sean H. Lane | Peter M. Skinner
Melanca D. Clark
Michael J. Garcia, Sean H. Lane, Peter M. Skinner
EIT, Use of water, Waterboarding
This August 1, 2002 OLC memo from Jay Bybee to John Rizzo discusses whether certain proposed conduct in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah would violate the prohibition against torture found at Section 2340A of title 18 of the U.S. Code. The memo ...
This email from Jack Goldsmith to Scott Muller discusses the Inspector General Report concerning the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.
Email
Jack L. Goldsmith
Scott W. Muller
Jack L. Goldsmith, Scott W. Muller
EIT, Use of water, Waterboarding
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 Steven Bradbury to John Rizzo analyzes whether certain enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA in the interrogation of high value al Qaeda detainees would violate US law under Article 16. The memorandum concludes ...
This letter is from Jack Goldsmith to Scott Muller stating that he received a copy of the Inspector General Report on the CIA Enhanced Interrogation Program and is concerned about how these techniques are applied in practice.
This memorandum from Steven Bradbury to John Rizzo examines whether certain interrogation techniques can be used in the interrogation of high value al-Qaeda detainees. The memorandum concludes that none of these specific techniques, considered ...