Warnings by military lawyers about both the legality and the effectiveness of techniques that were modeled on methods used by China to extract false confessions from US prisoners in the Korean War were ignored, the report found.

Released Wednesday, the investigation traced the interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and that later spread to Afghanistan and Iraq to the Pentagon's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA).

The agency oversees the military's Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) training, which prepares captured military personnel to withstand interrogations that do not abide by the Geneva Conventions.

The techniques used at SERE schools were strikingly similar to those that later surfaced at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere: nudity, stress positions, hoods, treatment like animals, sleep disruption, loud music and flashing lights, and exposure to extreme temperatures.

At the US Navy's SERE schools they also included waterboarding, the near drowning technique used 266 times by the CIA in its interrogations of two top Al-Qaeda detainees.

"Typically, those who play the part of interrogators in SERE school neither are trained interrogators nor are they qualified to be," the report said. "Their job is to train our personnel to resist providing reliable information to our enemies."

But in the wake of the September 11 attacks, that was turned on its head by senior officials at the agency eager to apply SERE methods to interrogations of Al-Qaeda prisoners, and by top Pentagon civilians looking for advice.

The agency's senior SERE psychologist, Bruce Jessen, circulated a draft plan on April 16, 2002 for exploiting detainees for intelligence to the agency's commander and other senior agency officials.

It proposed the creation of a secret "exploitation facility" that would be off limits to outsiders like the International Committee of the Red Cross or the press, the report said.

"The plan also described the fundamentals," the report said. "'Exploitation of select Al-Qaeda detainees.'"

In the spring of 2002, the CIA sought approval for interrogations of high-level Al-Qaeda detainees, which led to White House briefings by CIA director George Tenet and a National Security Council review that included attorney general John Ashcroft and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

By June, JPRA had begun assisting in training officers from "another government agency," a common euphemism for the CIA, the report said.

Jessen was said to have suggested "exploitation strategies" to one officer sent to interrogate a high-level Al-Qaeda operative.

At a two day training session July 1-2 2002, JPRA personnel provided instruction on waterboarding, the report said.

Weeks later, the Pentagon's deputy general counsel for intelligence, Richard Shiffrin, asked the agency for information on SERE techniques at the prompting of the Pentagon's general counsel, Jim Haynes.

Shiffrin "confirmed that a purpose of the request was to 'reverse engineer' the techniques," the report said.

On August 1, 2002, the Justice Department issued two now famous legal opinions approving waterboarding and re-defining torture as "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

Top lawyers representing the Pentagon, the CIA and vice president Dick Cheney traveled to Guantanamo on September 25, 2002, and a week later two behavioral scientists at the Cuban "war on terror" prison proposed new interrogation techniques.

One told Senate investigators there was "increasing pressure to get 'tougher' with detainee interrogations."

But when Major General Michael Dunlavey, the task force commander in Guantanamo, requested authority to use aggressive interrogation techniques on October 11, 2002, warning flags quickly went up.

The air force raised "serious concerns" about the legality of many of the techniques; the legal adviser to criminal investigation unit at Guantanamo warned that service members could be exposed to prosecution; an army lawyer said some techniques crossed "the line of 'humane' treatment;" the Marine Corps said they "arguably violate federal law;" and the Navy called for a more detailed review.

But General Richard Myers, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stepped in to cut short a legal review by the Joint Staff, telling his legal counsel that Haynes wanted it stopped.

On November 27, 2002, Haynes recommended approval of the all but three of 18 special techniques sought by the Guantanamo commander.

Rumsfeld signed it on December 2, 2002, adding a note on stress positions: "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?"

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