Senate: No waterboarding

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday voted to ban waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods that have been used by the CIA against high-level terrorism suspects, setting up a confrontation with President Bush, who has threatened to veto the bill.

The prohibition was contained in a bill authorizing intelligence activities for the current year, which the Senate approved on a 51-45 vote.

The ban would restrict the CIA to the 19 interrogation techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual. That manual prohibits waterboarding, a method that makes an interrogation subject feel he is drowning.

The House approved the measure in December.

The Senate action is the latest chapter in a battle between congressional Democrats and the Bush administration over the treatment of terrorist detainees and the boundaries of executive privilege.

Republican presidential contender Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, voted against the measure Wednesday. McCain said the measure goes too far by applying military standards to intelligence agencies. Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama did not vote because they were campaigning. Washington Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, both Democrats, voted for the ban.

Democratic supporters of the ban hailed its passage and challenged Bush to veto it, saying that to do so would effectively endorse torture.

"If the president vetoes intelligence authorization, he will be voting in favor of waterboarding," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said at a news conference.

The majority leader, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, said: "We are taking an important step toward restoring our moral leadership in the world. It is now up to the president to show his own moral leadership and sign this bill into law."

The legislation bars the CIA from using waterboarding, sensory deprivation or other harsh coercive methods to break a prisoner who refuses to answer questions. Those practices were banned by the military in 2006.

CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said last week that current law and court decisions, including the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, cast doubt on whether waterboarding would be legal now. Hayden prohibited its use in CIA interrogations in 2006; it has not been used since 2003, he said.

Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri, ranking Republican on the Select Committee on Intelligence, said Democrats were irresponsibly and baselessly accusing the CIA of torture and that limiting the interrogators to techniques in the Army Field Manual would undermine U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts.

"Unless the measure is stripped out, or the bill is vetoed, which I expect it will be, if it's included it would shut down the most prolific source of information, useful actual information that the CIA receives," Bond said.

The Detainee Treatment Act, adopted in 2005, restricts the military from using anything beyond the 19 interrogation methods approved by the Army Field Manual. These include strategies such as "good cop-bad cop," isolation from other prisoners and American interrogators posing as representatives of another country.

Material from The Associated Press and The Washington Post is included in this report.