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 (66)

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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Report from the Office of Inspector General on Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities from September 2001-October 2003, specifically focusing on the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs).
This report details the investigation into the death of Gul Rahman. This re-released report includes a description of psychologist Bruce Jessen and his role in the interrogation of Gul Rahman.
This document is a memorandum from the chief of the Counterintelligence Evaluation Branch of the Counterespionage Group in the Counterintelligence Center about an interview conducted with John B. Jessen regarding the death of Gul Rahman.
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 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 ...
This CIA list includes Abu Zubaydah's reported terrorist activity, injuries at the time of capture, highlights from reporting, legal authority for interrogation techniques used, and interrogation techniques used on Abu Zubaydah.