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The next day, Nov. 23, the military interrogators began using their techniques on al-Qahtani, according to the Army investigation, although written approval had not yet been received. While some aggressive treatment of al-Qahtani had begun months earlier — on Oct. 1, 2002, a military police dog was used to scare the Saudi, an Army investigation found — now it began in earnest.

He was interrogated for 18 to 20 hours per day, for 48 of the next 54 days, according to an Army investigative report. On Dec. 7, 2002, he had to be revived at the detainee hospital when his heart rate fell to 35 beats per minute, according to a log of the interrogation published by Time magazine. Then the interrogation continued.

FBI agents at Guantanamo joined the opposition. A Nov. 27 FBI "legal analysis," since reported by Newsweek, labeled several parts of the plan as "coercive interrogation techniques which are not permitted by the U.S. Constitution." It also warned that several of the proposed tactics could constitute torture, depending on how a judge viewed the intent of the interrogator.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kathleen Blomquist declined to say last week whether the department communicated the FBI objections to the Pentagon or the White House.

'Why is standing limited to 4 hours?'

On Dec. 2, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld signed off, approving most of the tactics for use on al-Qahtani and others, including all of categories 1 and 2, but only one item in category 3: mild, non-injurious physical contact. Mock assassinations and water-boarding were out.

Alex Wong / Getty Images file U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld approved the more aggressive interrogation techniques, with a footnote.

Rumsfeld added an asterisk, a note scrawled on the bottom of the approval memo, asking why stress positions were limited. "I stand for 8-10 hours a day," the secretary of defense wrote. "Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"

The approval wasn’t announced, not even to the law enforcement investigators at Guantanamo. "We continued to push the issue," said Fallon, the chief investigator. "Basically the responses started to come back, ‘We’re authorized to do this.'"

The Qahtani interrogation was a success, the Pentagon has said. Al-Qahtani admitted he had been sent to the United States by Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohamed, that he had met Osama bin Laden several times, that he had been trained at two al-Qaida camps, that he knew the shoe bomber Richard Reid, and that 30 other detainees he identified had been bodyguards for bin Laden.

The law enforcement investigators, however, say the interrogation produced little new. "I will just say that most of what we knew, we knew before," Col. Mallow said. "A lot of the intelligence 'successes' that have been touted were a result of much earlier disclosures made by detainees to our agents."

Al-Qahtani’s lawyer says her client repudiates his statements. "He adamantly denies all of that," said Gitanjali S. Gutierrez, of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

She said al-Qahtani, now in his late 20s, is physically and psychologically broken. In addition to the degrading treatment, she said, al-Qahtani was subjected to a "fake rendition," in which he was tranquilized, flown off the island of Cuba, revived, flown back to Cuba, and told he was in a country that allows torture.

"The government," she said, "has never come forward with any evidence that wasn't obtained by torture."

Remembering Nuremberg

Soon other detainees were in line for SERE techniques, under the new leader at Guantanamo. Maj. Gen. Miller, a former artillery officer, had replaced Dunlavey in November. On Dec. 14, according to the law enforcement agents and Pentagon e-mails, the general gave them a proposed "standard operating procedure" for use of SERE techniques.

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