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 (94)

CID report in to the death of a detainee in US custody. The detainee was brought to the hospital on December 3, 2003 with blunt trauma to the head with bleeding in the brain (determined by CT scan) and died January 4, 2004. The attending doctor ...
July 15, 2005
Investigative File (CID)
Physical assault
Department of Justice Office of Legal Council on Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A. This memo superceding the August 2002 memo interpreting the anti-torture statute. The memo disagrees with the previous memo's ...
June 01, 2005
Legal Memo
Daniel B. Levin
James B. Comey
Daniel B. Levin, James B. Comey, George W. Bush
A Colonel new to a military Company found movie entitled “Ramadi Madness” on the hard drive of the combat Company’s computer in the Company’s facilities in St. Augustine, Florida and reported the matter to CID. The movie was a composite of ...

An investigation finding probable cause to believe that two U.S. soldiers committed the offense of assault when they punched and kicked a local detainee whom they picked up at a roadblock and transported to an Iraqi prison. A sergeant took ...

Jan. 31, 2005
Investigative File (CID)
Jacqueline J. Scott, Thom Jones
Physical assault, General, Other
Checklist of Key Issues for Meeting with Swedish State Secretary Lars Danielsson. Topics were Turkey/EU, North Korea, Iraq/WMD, Partnership for Peace/NATO enlargement, Guantanamo Swede, and Global War on Terror. Contents redacted.
Letter from Margaret P. Grafeld, DOS to Amrit Singh, ACLU re: the ACLU's FOIA Request. The letter states that the document production requested is being complied with in some parts and denied or withheld in part.
Dec. 30, 2004
Letter, Judicial
Margaret P. Grafeld
Margaret P. Grafeld
This is a State Department form letter to be used as a template for addressing inquires and questions concerning how family members of Guantanamo detainees may or may not visit their relatives being detained at Guantanamo and the rational for the ...
Letter from Margaret P. Grafeld, DOS to Amrit Singh, ACLU re: the ACLU's FOIA Request. The letter states that the document production requested is being complied with in some parts and denied or withheld in part.
Dec. 30, 2004
Letter, Judicial
Margaret P. Grafeld
Margaret P. Grafeld
Letter from Margaret P. Grafeld, DOS to Amrit Singh, ACLU re: the ACLU's FOIA Request. The letter states that the document production requested is being complied with in some parts and denied or withheld in part.
Dec. 30, 2004
Letter, Judicial
Margaret P. Grafeld
Margaret P. Grafeld
Letter from Margaret P. Grafeld, DOS to Amrit Singh, ACLU re: the ACLU's FOIA Request. The letter states that the document production requested is being complied with in some parts and denied or withheld in part.
Dec. 30, 2004
Letter, Judicial
Margaret P. Grafeld
Margaret P. Grafeld