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 (56)

This CIA memo discusses the timeline for the use of enhanced interrogation techniques post 9/11 on high value detainees at black sites.
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo
George J. Tenet, George Bush
EIT, SERE
This document is a CIA Memo drafted for the Deputy Director for Operations via the Associate Deputy Director for Operations/Counterintelligence. The previous release of this document (on June 13, 2016) included more redactions such as Bruce ...
This memo describes the "key" role that contract interrogators/debriefers play in the CIA's Rendition and Detention Program. The memo states that before September 11, 2001 the CIA had no resident expertise in interrogation, and so they sought ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo
EIT, SERE
This memo discusses and summarizes the OLC opinions issued in 2002 and 2003 about the legal standards for interrogations of detainees.
Aug. 31, 2016
Legal Memo, Non-legal Memo
Abu Zubaydah
EIT
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 ...