The White House has released a mass of documentation to show that permission was never given to torture prisoners during the war on terror.
Senior legal advisers to US President George W Bush said the abuse of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad had been carried out in violation of the policies set by the US government.
However, the officials did say that the Bush administration had decided to use aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, but that these had stopped short of torture.
