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 (70)

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 interrogation of Abu Zubaydah that took place on August 5, 2002 at the which the IC SERE psychologists were present. This interrogation included the use of walling, the water board, attention grab, confinement box, hooding, ...
This August 4, 2002 cable details the first and second sessions of the aggressive phase of interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. Throughout these sessions Abu Zubaydah continued to maintain his position that he had no additional information.
This August 3, 2002 cable provides authorization to implement more aggressive techniques in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, including the use of the water board and mock burial, as described in this cable. The cable also provides information ...
This email chain includes two cables discussing the status of Abu Zubaydah's interrogation and describing his condition. The first cable is dated August 2, 2002 and describes Abu Zubaydah's condition on day 45 of the isolation phase. It also ...

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 ...

This cable provides formal authorization to proceed with portions of the next phase of Abu Zubaydah's interrogation, which include "more aggressive techniques" in order to obtain information, that the interrogation team concludes he is ...
This June 18, 2002 cable details the message that the interrogation team delivered to Abu Zubaydah, which is redacted, the interrogation techniques used on him and his reactions to them, and an assessment of his resistance posture. The cable ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Cable
Abu Zubaydah
SERE, Physical assault, Attention grasp, Isolation, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling, Nudity

This document is an undated draft memorandum analyzing whether the McCain Amendment would prevent the CIA from using its "enhanced interrogation techniques." The memo concludes that the McCain Amendment would not do so because (1) ...

An undated CIA memo arguing that the CIA's interrogation program does not violate the Convention Against Torture, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A, or 18 U.S.C. § 2441. Part of the memo relies upon the contention that so long as ...