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 (2)

RelevanceDateRelease Date
Aug. 06, 2004 | OLC | ACLU-RDI 6579
This letter from Levin to Rizzo addresses the use of waterboarding on a specific detainee. It concludes that "although it is a close and difficult question, the use of the waterboard technique in the contemplated interrogation of [redacted] ...
Aug. 31, 2016
Legal Memo, Letter
Daniel B. Levin
John A. Rizzo
Daniel B. Levin, John A. Rizzo, Jay Bybee
EIT, Use of water, Waterboarding
July 22, 2004 | DOJ | ACLU-RDI 6578
In the letter to Acting CIA Director McLaughlin, Attorney General Ashcroft confirms his advice that the use of certain interrogation techniques (other than waterboarding) in the interrogation of a particular detainee outside territory subject to ...
Aug. 31, 2016
Legal Memo, Letter
John D. Ashcroft
John E. McLaughlin
John McLaughlin, David Ayres, John A. Rizzo, Jay Bybee
Use of water, Waterboarding