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 (254)

RelevanceDateRelease Date
Email from Daniel Levin to John Rizzo discussing whether the use of twelve interrogation techniques in the interrogation of Sharif al-Masri would violate any U.S. statute, the U.S. Constitution, or any treaty obligation of the U.S.
Email from Daniel Levin to John Rizzo discussing whether the use of twelve interrogation techniques in the interrogation of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani would violate any U.S. statute, the U.S. Constitution, or any treaty obligation of the U.S.
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 ...
N/A
June 13, 2016
Non-legal Memo
Stress positions
This July 9, 2002 email from [redacted] to [redacted] re: Description of Physical Pressures, includes the contents of a memo from an operational psychologist describing "potential physical and psychological pressures" to be used on a particular ...
This document, prepared by the Chief of Medical Services, summarizes and reflects upon the rendition, detention and interrogation program. The findings include that in a particular no evidence was found that the use of waterboard produced ...
N/A
These guidelines, issued by George Tenet, detail permissible interrogation techniques (including EITs), medical and psychological personnel who must be present, interrogation personnel, approvals required, and recordkeeping requirements.
This document is a fax from [redacted], [redacted] Legal Group, DCI Counterterrorist Center, CIA to Steve Bradbury, Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, containing answers composed by the CIA' s Office of Medical Services to the ...
N/A
June 13, 2016
Email
George W. Bush, Michael Hayden
Stress positions, Other Humiliation