U.S. Tells U.N. Panel of Steps to Revise Policy on Interrogation The Obama administration told a United Nations panel in Geneva on Wednesday that the United States had tortured terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks, but that it had since taken steps to prevent any future use of unlawful, coercive interrogation techniques. "The United States is proud of its record as a leader in respecting, promoting and defending human rights and the rule of law, both at home and around the world," Mary McLeod, the acting State Department legal adviser, told the panel. But in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, we regrettably did not always live up to our values. The panel addressed by Ms. McLeod monitors compliance with the United Nations Convention Against Torture. In her testimony, she formally introduced a new position by the United States government on whether a provision of that treaty, which prohibits "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," imposes legal obligations on its conduct abroad. The George W. Bush administration contended that it applied only on American soil. But the Obama administration, after an internal debate, told the United Nations that it applied abroad where the United States had governing authority. Those places include the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as American-flagged ships and aircraft, Ms. McLeod said. The State Department, which had proposed changing the Bush-era position on the scope of the cruelty ban, faced resistance from military and intelligence lawyers, who raised unspecified operational concerns. Administration officials have described the debate as a technical legal matter about unintended consequences and said no one was proposing the use of cruelty or torture in interrogations, which is banned under American law. In its presentation on Wednesday, the Obama administration stopped short of saying that the treaty also barred cruelty in overseas prisons where the United States had a detainee in its effective control but was not a governing authority. Such places would appear to include the former secret prisons where the Central Intelligence Agency tortured prisoners during the Bush administration and detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan during wars there. Ms. McLeod and Tom Malinowksi, the assistant secretary of state for human rights, said that there was no place the United States considered itself free to use torture. "We believe that torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment are forbidden in all places, at all times, with no exceptions," Mr. Malinowski said. The legal and moral argument against torture would be dispositive under any circumstances. It would not matter to that argument if torture were effective; our experience also taught that it is not. After the opening presentation by the American officials, several members of the panel posed questions. Among them, Alessio Bruni of Italy asked why an appendix to the United States Army Field Manual on interrogation permitted limiting a detainee to four hours of sleep a night as part of a special procedure for separating captives to prevent them from communicating. Mr. Bruni noted that four hours of sleep, especially over an extended period, was "definitely insufficient for a majority of people" and could be a "form of ill treatment." He asked what the military's justification was since the amount of sleep one received appeared to be unrelated to communication. Both Mr. Bruni and Jens Modvig of Denmark also pressed the delegation to discuss how the military's practice of force-feeding detainees at Guantánamo, who are on a prolonged hunger strike, squares with its obligations under the cruel treatment ban, now that the United States has accepted that it applies there. The American delegation will return to the committee on Thursday to answer those and other questions.