By Tim Starks, CQ Staff

Top Democrats on congressional intelligence panels could be heading for conflict with President-elect Barack Obama over interrogation policies, a subject over which they often clashed with President Bush.

Obama said earlier this year he supported legislation that would have mandated that the CIA and other agencies subscribe to a 2006 Army field manual’s guidelines on interrogation practices, which would have the effect of banning harsh treatment of detainees such as waterboarding. But some media reports have raised questions about whether Obama would use his executive powers to mandate the same interrogation standards once he is in the White House.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein , D-Calif., one of Congress’ leading proponents of banning harsh interrogation methods, is expected to take over the gavel at the Intelligence Committee.

“Sen. Feinstein intends to introduce legislation that would require America’s intelligence agencies to follow the Army field manual in interrogations; to prohibit the use of contractors in interrogations; to grant the International Committee of the Red Cross access to detainees; and to close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility within one year,” said a spokesman, Phil LaVelle. “If President Obama accomplishes these goals through executive action, then we won’t need to pursue them legislatively as well.”

Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who chairs the select Appropriations subcommittee that recommends intelligence funding, said this week that Obama should take seven steps to improve the treatment of detainees. An aide to Holt said that he expected a standard of treatment during interrogations that is at least equal to that of the Army field manual.

“While an executive order will not remove the need for legislation on the issue, it is a way for President-elect Obama to put an immediate halt to our government’s use of torture during interrogations and to prevent secret detentions,” said Holt, chairman of the Select Intelligence Oversight Panel. “By exercising his authority and acting quickly, he will begin to restore our moral leadership on the issue and repair some of the harm that has been done to our international reputation.”

Although Obama issued a statement during the campaign supporting the idea of applying the Army field manual interrogation standard to all agencies, not just the Pentagon, a senior campaign adviser to Obama left the door open to applying another standard.

“He [believes] torture not be allowed in any form or fashion in any part of the federal government, and he would make sure that was the case,” said John Brennan, who served under former CIA chief George J. Tenet in a variety of capacities at a time when the agency has since acknowledged it waterboarded a small number of terror suspects.

“Whether the Army field manual is comprehensive enough to cover all those tactics and techniques, that’s something I think he’d look to his national security advisers for,” Brennan said in an interview with CQ in August.

The Wall Street Journal, citing a “current government official familiar with the transition,” reported this week that “Obama may decide he wants to keep the road open in certain cases for the CIA to use techniques not approved by the military, but with much greater oversight.”

Opponents of using the Army field manual standard at the CIA said that interrogators there are more experienced than Pentagon interrogators and therefore are better equipped to apply techniques not listed in the manual.

The bill that included the Army field manual guidelines (S 2996) stalled this summer.

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