Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008

The bill would have also applied the standards in the U.S. Army Field Manual to the entire government, effectively barring the CIA and other agencies from using tactics like waterboarding in their interrogations.

[2] When the bill came out of conference committee on Dec. 6, 2007, it had a provision barring the CIA and the rest of the federal government from many interrogation tactics criticized as "torture" and "abusive" by civil liberties groups, including waterboarding.

[3] The inserted provision would limit the CIA to the 19 interrogation tactics in the U.S. Army Field manual, effectively banning waterboarding, exposure to extreme temperatures and other techniques used on War on Terror detainees after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S.

It bans a total of eight interrogation techniques: mock executions, beatings, electrical shocks, forced nakedness, sexual acts, causing hypothermia and heat injuries.

The Bush administration had also just announced that it planned to put six War on Terror detainees from Guantanamo Bay - five of which had been subjected to the CIA tactics - on trial for involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.