On Capitol Hill, lawmakers and aides have expressed frustration that they have not been told what the CIA techniques were and whether the agency would adhere to the ban on torture.
"We don't know what the methods are; that is where the difficulty lies," said a congressional aide who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the debate. "Although the Department of Defense techniques, bar none, are articulated openly, with the CIA there is no way to judge whether those techniques satisfy the ban on cruel and degrading treatment."
Human rights advocates applauded the military's embrace of Geneva Convention protections and the Army's decision to make public its interrogation tactics. But they worried that congressional approval of a CIA detention program that was secret and allowed a broad range of harsh techniques would be a step backward.
"They have decided to take the military out of the torture business and leave that to the CIA, and that is extremely problematic," said Jumana Musa, an advocacy director for Amnesty International.
Administration officials said the new policy ensured that the toughest techniques were reserved only for the most experienced interrogators and used only on the most notorious suspects.
"The president made clear this is a small program targeting a certain category of high-level Al Qaeda members," said a senior administration official speaking on condition of anonymity because of the deliberations involved.
Senior Pentagon officials suggested that creating separate rules for the CIA and the military represented a logical division of labor.
"Each of us has our task to do," Stephen A. Cambone, the undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, said in an interview Thursday.
For the uniformed military, disclosing interrogation tactics and outlining protections detainees will be afforded was vital to assuring the public that the military was doing all it could to ensure there would be no repeat of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
"The military really felt it has been tarnished by events at Abu Ghraib and other detainee abuses," said an administration official. "They want to restore a certain image, and so for them there is a greater interest in being able to speak with a great deal of transparency."
Military leaders argued this week that they did not believe abusive tactics worked in extracting information.
