As early as tomorrow, the long-awaited Senate torture report will finally see the light of day. If all goes as planned, the Senate Intelligence Committee will release the roughly 500-page executive summary of its 6,000-page report concerning the CIA's "rendition, detention, and interrogation" program. The report is said to be highly critical of the program.
Former President Bush came out over the weekend against the report's conclusions. That's not surprising, considering his own responsibility for the CIA's brutal policies.
Related: The Torture Architects [Interactive Infographic]
Despite attempts to keep the program secret, details of it came out, bit by bit, in documents released over the years. Some, but not all, of the most shocking documents – including the memos comprising the legal infrastructure of the program – are listed below. Hopefully by tomorrow, the story they tell will be more complete.
The memos
In 2002 and 2003, Justice Department lawyers issued a series of legal memos that laid the foundation for the Bush administration's torture program. Two of the most famous are the twin August 2002 memos authored by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee.
twisted the definition of torture, concluding that in order to violate the law prohibiting torture, the resulting pain "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." It also concluded that prosecution under the law might be barred as an infringement on the president's war authority.
approved the CIA's use of torture techniques including waterboarding, cramped confinement, and sleep deprivation on Abu Zubaydah who was being held at a secret prison in Thailand. He would eventually be waterboarded 83 times.
Revelations of torture at Guantanamo Bay
In 2005, TIME magazine published a describing brutal 20-hour interrogation sessions of Mohammed al-Qahtani at Guantánamo from November 23, 2002, to January 11, 2003. On December 2, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved the application of harsher interrogation techniques on Mr. al-Qahtani. Among other things, the log describes sleep deprivation, forced shaving, use of the "Invasion of Space by a Female" technique, and in one incident, interrogators forcing Mr. al-Qahtani to bark like a dog.
Rumsfeld okays the use of torture at Guantanamo
In from 2002, Rumsfeld authorized the military to use harsh interrogation techniques including stress positions, nudity, forced grooming, use of phobias, pushing, and grabbing. He famously added a note next to his signature:
I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?
At the time, Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora raised concerns that some of the methods authorized in the memo could rise to the level of torture. Mora later documented his persistent attempts to get the Defense Department to change course in a 22-page written in July 2004.
Yoo backs use of torture by military interrogators
A 2003 , written by Justice Department attorney John Yoo, gave the Defense Department expansive authority to torture and abuse detainees. It was premised on the same flawed analysis that Yoo had adopted in the 2002 memos provided to the CIA.
The CIA's inspector general launches an investigation
In May 2004, CIA Inspector General John Helgerson of his internal investigation of possible illegal conduct in the CIA's secret prisons. The report detailed the use of torture techniques that were never authorized by the Justice Department, including mock executions, "racking" a gun near a detainee's head, revving a power drill while a detainee stood naked and hooded, and forcing detainees to inhale smoke until they vomited. The report also revealed that the CIA waterboarded Abu Zubaydah 83 times and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times. The report was released to the public in redacted form in 2009 as a result of the ACLU's FOIA lawsuit.
FBI agents report abuses
In a series of emails released in an ACLU FOIA, FBI agents detailed the abuses they witnessed at Guantanamo Bay. In the , from August 2004, an FBI agent described detainees chained to the floor and left without water or food for 24 hours or more, who had urinated or defecated on themselves. One detainee was described as:
…almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night.
Torture in aggregate
In December 2004, the CIA provided to the Justice Department to use in drafting more legal memos authorizing torture. It describes step-by-step how the CIA carried out unlawful extraordinary renditions and interrogations. It also demonstrates that the CIA routinely applied a rapidly accelerating set of harsh interrogation techniques, including nudity, sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation, slaps, facial holds, and attention grasps to nearly every "high-value" detainees. Finally, it details other interrogations techniques in their arsenal including walling, water dousing, the use of stress positions, wall standing and cramped confinement. The "day-to-day look" at a sample interrogation starting on page 9 is particularly chilling.
"No torture here"
On May 10, 2005, Justice Department attorney Steven Bradbury concluded in a pair of memos that the use of each of the methods described in the CIA's backgrounder – including waterboarding– did not violate the law against torture when used or . He followed that up on May 30, 2005, with a concluding that the CIA's program also did not violate the prohibition on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
The ICRC obtains access to detainees
On September 6, 2006, the Bush administration announced that 14 so-called "high-value" detainees had been transferred from CIA detention to Guantánamo Bay. That was the first that the CIA's secret detention program existed.
In October 2006, the International Committee of the Red Cross obtained access to the men for the first time. The ICRC's to the CIA was leaked and published by the New York Review of Books in 2009. The report contains detailed descriptions of abuses meted out by the CIA and concludes that the interrogation techniques and treatment the men were subjected to "singly or in combination . . . amounted to torture and/or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok BanACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
WASHINGTON — Today, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to block the enforcement of a law that would effectively ban people in America from using TikTok as soon as January 19, 2025. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected TikTok’s challenge to the law. TikTok has asked the Supreme Court for a temporary injunction to prevent the app from being banned while the court considers whether to take the case, saying that unless the justices intervene, the law will “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.” “The Constitution imposes an extraordinarily high bar on this kind of mass censorship,”said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project. “The Supreme Court should take up this important case and protect the rights of millions of Americans to freely express themselves and engage with others around the world.” The brief argues that the D.C. Circuit failed to fully address the law’s profound implications for the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. While the lower court’s decision correctly recognized that the statute triggers First Amendment scrutiny, it barely addressed users’ First Amendment interests in speaking, sharing, and receiving information on the platform. The court also perplexingly attempted to cast the government’s ban on TikTok as a vindication of users’ First Amendment rights, which it is not. The rights groups also explain that the law was intended to suppress certain content and viewpoints that many legislators believe could be amplified on TikTok, including the risk of foreign “propaganda.” But under the First Amendment, the government must meet a very high bar to restrict speech based on concerns about its “motivating ideology” or “perspective,” and the government has not come close to meeting that bar here. “The government should not be able to restrict speech, especially to the extent here, based on guessing about the mere possibility of uncertain future harm,” said David Greene, civil liberties director at EFF. “The Supreme Court should put the TikTok ban on hold while it considers the DC Circuit’s erroneous ruling.” Finally, the brief underscores that the government can’t impose this type of sweeping ban unless it’s necessary to prevent extremely serious and imminent harm to national security. But the government has not provided evidence of impending harm, or evidence that banning TikTok is the only available way to address its concerns. As the brief explains, the D.C. Circuit improperly treated the government’s invocation of “national security” as a trump card and failed to hold the government to its burden. “Restricting citizens’ access to foreign media is a practice that has long been associated with repressive regimes, and we should be very wary of letting the practice take root here,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “It would do lasting damage to the First Amendment and our democracy if the Supreme Court let this ban go into effect even temporarily.” You can find the brief online here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A587/335380/20241217144322392_24A587%20TikTok%20v%20Garland%20Amicus%20Brief%20pdfa.pdf -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Religious Liberty
ACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter IslamophobiaACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration today released the first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia and related forms of bias and discrimination, including hate against Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Americans. In advance of the strategy, American Civil Liberties Union and its partners had urged the administration to overhaul government programs that reflect anti-Muslim discrimination. In particular, we have called for urgent action to constrain governmental agencies from continuing to exercise their authorities and technology to wrongly surveil and investigate, watchlist, and question and detain Muslims at the border, as well as deny immigration benefits to people from Muslim-majority countries. While the White House raised expectations that many of these issues would be addressed, the final strategy ended up falling far short. The following is a statement from Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project: “While this strategy acknowledges discrimination and its harms, it does little to end them and is a squandered opportunity. For decades, American officials have invoked national security to pass laws and implement programs that disproportionately harm Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim. A serious anti-discrimination strategy would concretely address multiple bias-infused government practices that deny our communities equal participation in civic life and our democracy, like federal watchlisting, surveillance, and investigation. We’re profoundly frustrated that the administration didn’t take even the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.” -
VirginiaDec 2024
National Security
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Our client, Nizar Trabelsi, is in the United States against his will. The federal government brought him here from Belgium more than a decade ago and charged him with terrorism-related crimes. At trial, the government’s case failed: a federal jury found Mr. Trabelsi not guilty. But instead of allowing Mr. Trabelsi to return to Belgium after his acquittal, the United States placed him in highly restrictive immigration detention and began an ongoing effort to force him to Tunisia, where he was born and where he will very likely be tortured. Mr. Trabelsi’s detention violates the Constitution, immigration law, and the extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium. Through this lawsuit, he seeks to return to Belgium, and he demands an immediate improvement of his detention conditions. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Immigrants' Rights
Federal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is UnlawfulFederal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is Unlawful
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — This week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the court does not have jurisdiction to decide whether the government can continue to detain Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who was brought to the United States against his will for prosecution and was cleared of all charges last year. The ruling means the United States will be able to continue to detain Mr. Trabelsi while it attempts to deport him to Tunisia, where he was born and where, as an immigration judge ruled earlier this year, he will likely face torture. The court also concluded that even if it did have jurisdiction over Mr. Trabelsi’s case, his claims challenging the government’s detention of him would fail. “Reviewing claims that the government is holding someone unlawfully is at the core of the judicial function, and we’re heartbroken for our client that the court got this so wrong,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Center for Democracy. “The government’s arguments in defense of Mr. Trabelsi’s detention makes a hash of the Constitution, immigration laws, and its own extradition treaty.” In 2013, the United States forcibly extradited Mr. Trabelsi from Belgium to face criminal charges in the United States. In July 2023, after almost 10 years of highly restrictive pretrial detention, a federal jury cleared Mr. Trabelsi of all charges. But instead of releasing Mr. Trabelsi or returning him to Belgium, the U.S. transferred him to immigration detention, wrongly treating him as an applicant for admission and placing him in the deportation process. Over the years, the Belgian government has issued multiple formal diplomatic requests asking the U.S. to facilitate his return, but the U.S. has refused to send him back. Mr. Trabelsi filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to detain him. He also sought immediate improvements to his detention conditions. Those claims were not part of the court’s ruling today, and will continue to be litigated on a separate track. “Mr. Trabelsi only wants to return to Belgium after being illegally extradited to the United States, held for ten years, and then acquitted by a jury of any crimes,” said Nicole Hallett, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “He cannot be held indefinitely and we will continue to fight to make sure that justice ultimately prevails.” Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the University of Chicago Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, the ACLU of Virginia, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School. The complaint in Trabelsi v. Crawford was filed against Jeffrey Crawford, warden of the Farmville Detention Center where Mr. Trabelsi is being held; Liana Castano, ICE field office director for the Washington Field Office; Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general.