Air Force Instructor Details Harsh Interrogations

Kleinman said the Air Force's training program was distorted into an offensive program. He noted that the harsh techniques were adapted from torture methods used by Chinese communists, and were never regarded as useful in eliciting intelligence. Instead, they break a prisoner psychologically and make him eager to say anything to stop the pain.

"That model's primary objective was to compel a prisoner to generate propaganda, not intelligence," he said.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the committee chairman and the only senator to attend the hearing, sought to draw a link between the alleged abuse Kleinman described and the actions of Bush administration officials who made the initial decisions to allow "enhanced interrogation" of detainees. Pentagon decisions approving harsh measures "conveyed the message that senior officials felt that physical pressures and degrading tactics were appropriate," he said.

Levin noted that many of the aggressive techniques approved by Pentagon officials -- and witnessed by Kleinman and others -- were later used against detainees at Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

"The clear message to our troops was that the abuse of detainees was permissible activity," Levin said.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.