Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had approved various methods of interrogating terror suspects, in a memo under which US military personnel at Guantanamo Bay could put prisoners in "stress positions" for four hours, hood them and subject them to 20-hour-long interrogations.
The approval, first in December 2002 and later in a January 8, 2003 memo, allowed for inflicting "fear of dogs", and "mild non-injurious physical contact", The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The list contained in the memo, the paper said, was in effect until complaints about the severity of the techniques from some military officers prompted Rumsfeld to request a review of the interrogation policy on January 17, 2003.
The defence department has refused to disclose how many of the methods remain on a new list Rumsfeld approved in April 2003, "a list that officials say is still in use at the offshore prison", the paper said.
It is not clear if the rules were applied in military prisons in Iraq or elsewhere.
"But some of the practices disclosed this year at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, resemble methods on the December 2002 Guantanamo list approved by Rumsfeld," the daily said.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the December list, as prompted by intelligence reports during the summer and fall of 2002, suggested that new Al Qaeda attacks on the US might be imminent.
The national threat level had been raised to 'Orange', and commanders at Guantanamo asked for official clearance for techniques outside traditional army doctrine interrogations.
"Several of the detainees at Guantanamo were high-profile, high-value detainees who were assessed to have important intelligence," Whitman said.
The December 2002 interrogation methods, said the paper, ranged from "use of direct approach, rewards and cigarettes", to others that required approval from superiors.
"Physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing" could be used with approval from the commander of the Guantanamo prison and with the knowledge of General Hill, who as head of the US Southern Command oversees Guantanamo.
Interrogators faced with uncooperative prisoners could disguise themselves linked "to a country with a reputation for harsh treatment", according to the list, or yell at them, although "not directly in ear or to the level it would cause physical pain".
Another set of methods required permission of the officer in charge of Guantanamo interrogations.
These methods included "use of stress positions (like standing) for a maximum of four hours, isolation facility for up to 10 days unless (commanding general) approves extension", and "20-hour interrogations".
Other such techniques were "deprivation of light and sound, use of hood as long as it does not restrict breathing and under direct observation, removal of clothing and forced grooming (ie shaving of facial hair)".
The interrogation group commander would also have to approve "using individual phobias (fear of dogs) to induce stress" and "removal of comfort items, including religious items".
Mark Jacobson, a former Pentagon official who worked on the interrogation policy, said that "fear of dogs does not mean dogs attacking; it means a properly muzzled dog with a handler".
He said that officials later decided not to remove religious items and that several harsh methods were not included in the April 2003 list.
A military intelligence official said that "humiliation techniques" were a longstanding part of interrogations, where "domination is the name of the game".
Portions of a March 2003 draft of the Pentagon's April interrogation report, disclosed by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, also included a legal analysis contending that President George W Bush had the constitutional authority to disregard laws prohibiting torture if he believed national security was in jeopardy.
Whitman described that portion as a "scholarly" exercise and said that currently used interrogation methods were humane.
