In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA programme designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in US custody.

For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included future-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. “The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a US official, who witnessed the exchange.

Waterboarding as an interrogation technique has its roots in some of history’s worst totalitarian nations, from Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition to North Korea and Iraq. In the US, the technique was first used five decades ago as a training tool to give US troops a realistic sense of what they could expect if captured.

Long before “waterboarding” entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods.

No formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans.

Congressional officials say the groups’ ability to challenge the practices was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs.

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