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The SERE program's chief psychologist, Col. Morgan Banks, issued guidance in early 2003 for " behavioral science consultants " who helped to devise Guantánamo's interrogation strategy — although Banks has emphatically denied that he advocated the use of SERE counter-resistance techniques to break down detainees.

However, General James T. Hill, chief of the U. S. Southern Command, confirmed that a team from Guantanamo went " up to our SERE school and developed a list of techniques " for " high-profile, high-value " detainees.

According to an op-ed in the November 14, 2005 New York Times by M. Gregg Bloche and Jonathan H. Marks, two lawyers with no first-hand knowledge of SERE, " General Hill had sent this list -- which included prolonged isolation and sleep deprivation, stress positions, physical assault and the exploitation of detainees ' phobias -- to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who approved most of the tactics in December 2002.

Some within the Pentagon warned that these tactics constituted torture, but a top adviser to Secretary Rumsfeld justified them by pointing to their use in SERE training, a senior Pentagon official told us last month.