ABC News has reported that dozens of secret talks and meetings were held in President George Bush's [Images] White House by senior administration officials from 2002 onwards, who approved minute details of how high-value Al Qaeda [Images] suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency.

ABC News has discovered that top advisers in the Bush Administration signed off on how the terror suspects would be quizzed � slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or waterboarded.

The discussions were threadbare, down to the number of CIA agents who would use a specific tactic. On suspects difficult to break, the advisers okayed the use of 'combined' interrogation techniques � using many instead of just tactic.

The meetings were held by members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, which at that time included Vice President Richard Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Images], Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, apart from CIA director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft. The principals not only discussed the tactics, but also approved them, reports ABCNews.com.

The meetings were held in the White House's Situation Room and were usually attended by most of the principals or their deputies. They were chaired by the then NSA, Rice.

While the interrogation programme has consistently drawn fire both in the US and outside, President Bush said in a speech in September 2006: 'I can say that questioning the detainees has given us the information that has saved innocent lives by helping us stop new attacks in the United States.'

Tenet himself had told ABC News last year: 'It was authorised, it was legal according to the attorney general.'

The discussions, ABC News reports, began after the capture of Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in 2002 from Faisalabad, Pakistan, seen then as a major breakthrough.

As the terrorist proved defiant in custody, the CIA wanted to use harsher interrogation methods on him, which was how the plan was signed off by the Principals Committee. The CIA subsequently confirmed that Zubaydah was subject to waterboarding, which led him to give information that led to the arrests of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

Apart from the Principals authorizing the torture, the US Justice Department wrote a classified memo giving legal authority to government interrogators to do so. This was known as the 'golden shield'.

The Principals, it is reported, okayed methods that combined different methods and pushed the limits of international law and even the 'golden shield''

Then attorney-general Ashcroft, who had agreed with the decision to allow enhanced interrogation methods and even advised that they were legal, however argued that White House advisers should not be involved in the details of the interrogation. After one meeting, he reportedly asked, 'Why are we talking about this in White House? History will not judge this kindly.

Some time in 2004, in the face of massive outcry over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib � unrelated to this � the programme was withdrawn. But as it happened, a new Al Qaeda suspect had been arrested in Asia, and the matter was kicked up by the CIA to the Principals Committee once again for approval for 'enhanced interrogation techniques'.

At this meeting, NSA Rice was decisive, reports ABC News. Despite worries that the programme was harming America's image, she did not back down, and told the CIA: 'This is your baby, go do it.'

Spokespersons for Tenet, Rumsfeld and Powell declined to react to the ABC News' expose, as did the White House on behalf of Rice, and Cheney.