[1] Weaving together interviews with primary source documents, the film describes the initial response to 9/11 and the drawing up of legal memoranda, collectively called the "torture memos,"[2][3] that approved and expanded detention and interrogation policies, including the use of what the Bush administration and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques".
[4][5] Many of the enhanced techniques, including waterboarding, were derived from a military training program called Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) and were modeled after tactics used to torture American soldiers during the Korean War.
[9][10] Primary source documents, including the torture memos, interrogation logs, and reports, were released through Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits by the ACLU, Associated Press, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
It was suggested that the airdate they proposed, January 21, 2009, one day after President Bush left office, was a factor in their decision but PBS claimed that the date was coincidental.
[12] PBS's airdate offer was declined by the producer, Sherry Jones, as too late, not because of the election but because she felt that it needed to be released when “the news was still breaking.”[13]