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 (227)

This CIA memo labeled "Legal Background" describes Title 18's probation against torture in the US criminal code and how the phrase "severe mental pain or physical suffering" is described. The memo states that at this time, none of the ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Cable
Abu Zubaydah
EIT
This CIA cable describes the phase of Abu Zubaydah's interrogation and states that he underwent confinement, walling and the waterboard during his initial cycle of interrogations. The cable also describes his general behavior in his cell as well ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Cable
Abu Zubaydah
EIT, Use of water, Waterboarding, Physical assault, Walling, Cramped confinement
This May 2004 memo to the Deputy Director for Science and Technology discusses the Office of Technical Service's (OTS) support of the Counterterrorism Center (CTC) by: 1) developing the enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs); 2) hiring SERE ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo
Abu Zubaydah, Gul Rahman
EIT, SERE
This cable details the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah that took place on August 6, 2002. This interrogation included the use of walling, waterboarding "numerous times", attention grab, insult slap, confinement box, and hooding. The cable states ...
This cable details the results of the August 18, 2002 cycle of interrogation sessions of Abu Zubaydah, which is day 15 of the aggressive interrogation phase. The sessions were conducted by IC SERE psychologists. The cable states that Abu Zubaydah ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Cable
Abu Zubaydah
EIT
This email correspondence discusses the Mental Status Examination and Recommended Interrogation Plan for Gul Rahman that were prepared by Bruce Jessen. These were both reviewed by someone at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center whose name is ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Email, Medical
Bruce Jessen
Gul Rahman
EIT
This CIA document contains USG's plan to obtain intelligence more quickly from unlawful combatants through interrogation. The plan discusses the current CTC interrogation team for Abu Zubaydah and the plan to train more CIA officers to deploy ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Other
George Bush, Bruce Jessen, James Mitchell
Abu Zubaydah
EIT, SERE
This cable discusses the proposed strategy for the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and the involvement on contract psychologist Dr. James Mitchell.
Dec. 20, 2016
Cable
James Mitchell
Abu Zubaydah
EIT
This cable describes the current state of the interrogations for Abu Zubaydah and recommends the use of sleep deprivation to "degrade his ability to keep up his full mental capacities."
Dec. 20, 2016
Cable
Abu Zubaydah
EIT, Sleep deprivation
This CIA document is heavily redacted and identifies James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen as contractors who administered enhanced interrogation techniques to Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo
James Mitchell , Bruce Jessen
Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
EIT