US:A LEADING Democratic senator has accused Pentagon officials of "twisting the law" to allow harsh interrogation techniques - or torture - of suspected terrorists.
Senate armed services committee chairman Carl Levin said the office of former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld started researching techniques such as waterboarding - a form of controlled drowning - as early as 2002.
Mr Levin told a committee hearing that the controversial interrogation techniques were then adopted over the objections of military lawyers. "If we use those same techniques offensively against detainees, it says to the world that they have America's stamp of approval. That puts our troops at greater risk of being abused if they're captured. It also weakens our moral authority and harms our efforts to attract allies," Mr Levin said.
The committee is investigating the policy decisions that led to the use of torture against prisoners in Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.
"Some have suggested that detainee abuses committed by US personnel at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and at Guantánamo were the result of a 'few bad apples' acting on their own. It would be a lot easier to accept if that were true.
"Senior officials in the United States government sought out information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorised their use against detainees," said Mr Levin.
New evidence uncovered by the committee contradicts Pentagon officials' claims that harsh techniques were only considered in response to requests for guidance from military commanders.
According to the findings, former chief Pentagon counsel William Haynes became interested in using harsher interrogation methods in July 2002, when his office inquired into a military programme that trained soldiers to survive enemy interrogations.
Pentagon officials wanted to know if the resistance training, which included sensory deprivation, sleep disruption, stress positions, waterboarding and slapping, could be used against detainees.
The committee also released previously secret memos dating from the 2002 inception of the harsh interrogation programme at Guantánamo. In one, the top military lawyer at Guantánamo, Diane Beaver, says the US defence department hid prisoners who were being treated harshly from the International Committee of the Red Cross. "Officially it is not happening," she said.