American Civil Liberties Union

The American Civil Liberties Union helped make the documentary record of post-9/11 detention available to the public. Its Freedom of Information Act litigation, alongside its attorneys’ work on the effort to clear Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s manuscript for publication, connected legal advocacy to the recovery and interpretation of records about detention and interrogation.

Freedom of Information Act Litigation

During the years when Slahi’s manuscript remained classified, litigation spearheaded by the American Civil Liberties Union compelled the U.S. government to release thousands of secret documents describing the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody after the September 11 attacks. Some records offered glimpses of Slahi’s treatment first in CIA custody and later at Guantánamo, including fragments of his own voice. The litigation therefore made evidence available beyond the institutions that had held or investigated him.

A Documentary Record of Detention

The released material became a resource for examining claims about detainees and their treatment. Slahi’s editor describes the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project as having unearthed a trove of secret documents that serves as a historical record of abusive post-9/11 detention and interrogation practices. That record included materials relevant to the special interrogation of Slahi, while later investigations by the U.S. Senate and the Justice Department supplied further accounts of the program and its methods.

Manuscript and Legal Advocacy

The American Civil Liberties Union’s role also extended to the pro bono legal team that fought for more than six years to have Slahi’s manuscript cleared for public release. Attorneys from the National Security Project served as co-counsel alongside his lead attorneys and other private and organizational counsel. The manuscript’s eventual publication depended on that extended legal effort; the editor presents the lawyers’ persistence as a demonstration that public access to the account and national security were not necessarily incompatible.

Research and Public Significance

The recovered documents made it possible to compare Slahi’s narrative with records produced by government agencies and later investigations. The editor says that without the documentary record assembled through the American Civil Liberties Union’s litigation, the manuscript’s cross-referencing, corroboration, and annotations would not have been possible. The organization’s contribution thus lies both in disclosure and in enabling closer scrutiny: the records do not erase the manuscript’s redactions or resolve every uncertainty, but they give readers additional public evidence against which to assess the account.