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 (35)

RelevanceDateRelease Date
Aug. 01, 2002 | OLC | ACLU-RDI 4548

An OLC memo concluding that the CIA’s proposed interrogation plan for Abu Zubaydah — which contemplates methods including “insects placed in a confinement box” and “the waterboard” — does not violate ...

Apr. 16, 2009
Legal Memo
Jay S. Bybee
John A. Rizzo
Jay S. Bybee, John A. Rizzo
Abu Zubaydah
EIT, SERE, Use of water, Waterboarding, Physical assault, Face slap or insult slap, Attention grasp, Facial hold, Walling, Stress positions, Cramped confinement, Use of phobias, Sleep deprivation
Jan. 08, 2003 | FBI | ACLU-RDI 3425
Interview of detainee at Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay. When asked how he was doing the detainee stated "that things were not going well, and that he perceived current U.S. actions as a holy war between Christians and Muslims, propagated by ...
May 18, 2005
Interview (Summaries/Notes)
General, Cramped confinement, Temperature, Religious, Physical assault, Environmental manipulation, Other Humiliation
Dec. 31, 2003 | FBI | ACLU-RDI 2972
This FBI memo condenses an interview conducted with a detainee at Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay. The detainee related his experience when captured in Afghanistan, including seeing an American (supposedly John Walker Lindh) while in detention. He ...
Dec. 15, 2004
Interview (Summaries/Notes)
Assault/death, Cramped confinement, Threat
July 18, 2003 | NCIS | FBI | ACLU-RDI 1897
This investigative report was generated by the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF) Report of Investigative Activity and the interview of the detainee at Camp Delta was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Navy Naval ...
Dec. 21, 2005
Investigative File, Interview (Summaries/Notes)
Physical assault, General, Cramped confinement
Jan. 29, 2003 | NCIS | FBI | ACLU-RDI 1882
Memo summarizes the interview of a Camp Delta detainee. The interview was conducted by two Special Agents with the FBI and NCIS. The detainee was questioned specifically about his capture by the Northern Alliance (some of the detainee's accounts ...
Dec. 21, 2005
Interview (Summaries/Notes)
Physical assault, General, Cramped confinement, Other