A Senate Intelligence Committee document has revealed that Condoleezza Rice personally approved the CIA’s use of waterboarding on al-Qaeda suspects.

The new narrative provides the most detailed timeline yet of the conception and top-level approval of the violent “enhanced interrogation” techniques employed by American officials.

The report describes a meeting between then-CIA Director George Tenet and Dr Rice in July 2002. The Secretary of State "advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation" of alleged al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubaydah, the report said.

In 2003, the CIA briefed Dr Rice, Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, on the use of waterboarding and other methods including week-long sleep deprivation, forced nudity and the use of stress positions. The Senate report says that officials "reaffirmed that the CIA program was lawful and reflected administration policy".

CIA memos released by President Obama's administration last week revealed that Mr Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times in the course of a month, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who claimed to have planned the September 11 attacks, 183 times.

The new timeline shows that Dr Rice played a greater role in the acceptance of harsh interrogation techniques than she admitted last autumn in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The narrative also shows that dissenting legal views about the severe interrogation methods were repeatedly brushed aside.

The Intelligence Committee’s timeline comes a day after the Senate Armed Services Committee released an exhaustive report detailing direct links between the CIA’s harsh interrogation programme and abuses of prisoners at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in Afghanistan and at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

Last Autumn, Dr Rice acknowledged to the Senate Armed Services Committee only that she had attended meetings where the CIA interrogation request was discussed, and asked for the attorney general to conduct a legal review. She said that she did not recall the details. Dr Rice omitted her direct role in approving the programme in her written statement to the committee.

A spokesman for Dr Rice declined comment when reached last night.

Days after Dr Rice gave Mr Tenet her approval, the Justice Department approved the use of waterboarding in a top secret August 1 memo. Mr Zubaydah underwent waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002.

In the years that followed, according to the Senate narrative, there were numerous internal legal reviews of the programme, as government attorneys apparently raised concerns that the harsh methods, particularly waterboarding, might violate federal laws against torture and the US Constitution.

But Bush administration lawyers continued to approve the programme. The CIA voluntarily dropped the use of waterboarding, which has a long history as a torture tactic, from its arsenal of techniques after 2005.

Last week, Dennis Blair, the Obama administration’s top intelligence official, privately told intelligence employees that “high value information” was obtained through the harsh interrogation techniques. But on Tuesday, in a written statement, Mr Blair said, “The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means.”

The recent disclosures about US interrogation policy have fuelled demands for an ever more forensic prosecutorial examination of the actions of the Bush Administration. Mr Obama has already conceded that lawyers who drafted the memos may face criminal sanction.

Although the President has consistently stated that it would be wrong to pursue CIA interrogators who obeyed legal guidance, there is a growing clamour from human rights groups for court action. One possible route is through Europe where activists in both Spain and Germany are already pushing for the prosecution of Bush Administration officials.

Times Recommends

• Please help: maimed children of war want their lives back
• Cabal seizes diamond riches to buy power
• White House gatecrashers got to the president