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 (60)

A DOJ-OIG questionnaire for FBI personnel who were involved in detainee interview or interrogations at assigned locations in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Iraq; Afghanistan; or in other areas controlled by the U.S. Military. Questionnaire primarily ...

A series of blog posts by a former OLC lawyer, Marty Lederman, discussing the difference between the DOJ's memo on torture from August 2002 and the memo on torture from December 30, 2004 (ACLU-RDI 3547).  The posts conclude that the Bush ...

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 ...
This July 9, 2002 email from [redacted] to [redacted] re: Description of Physical Pressures, includes the contents of a memo from Jim Mitchell describing "potential physical and psychological pressures" to be used on a particular detainee. The ...
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 memorandum from Assistant Attorney General John Bybee to John Rizzo provides the Office of the Assistant Attorney General's view on whether certain proposed conduct during the interrogation of al Qaeda Operative Abu Zubaydah would violate ...
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 ...