WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other officials "redefined the law" to allow the use of torture, a report released Thursday said.

The report followed a two-year investigation by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., The Washington Post reported.


"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," the report concludes. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."

The Bush administration has suggested that the use of techniques like sleep deprivation, stress positions and dogs came from a bottom-up request from interrogators who said tougher methods were needed for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. But the report concluded that the use of torture was a top-down initiative, originating with a February 2007 memo from President George W. Bush that said the Geneva Convention did not apply to non-government fighters.