Another recommendation approved by Mr. Obama was a proposal to establish a multiagency interrogation unit within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to oversee the interrogations of top terrorism suspects using largely noncoercive techniques approved by the administration earlier this year.
The senators have blocked President Bush's original proposal for legislation to clarify which interrogation techniques are permissible and to establish trial procedures for terrorism suspects now in United States military custody.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 — President Bush's national security adviser signaled on Sunday that he was seeking a compromise with the Republican senators who are rebelling against the administration's proposal to explicitly permit certain severe interrogation practices against terrorism suspects.
"Clash Foreseen Between C.I.A. and Pentagon" (front page, May 10) refers to the Pentagon's proposal to have a separate set of interrogation techniques, "presumably more coercive," for the terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay.
A task force led by the Harvard Law School professor Philip Heymann has been advising him on a proposal to create an élite U.S. government interrogation team, staffed by some of the best C.I.A., F.B.I., and military officers in the country, and drawing on the advice of social scientists, linguists, and other scholars.
The Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, a Republican from Long Island, said he would "look at all the judge's proposals," but cautioned that many small communities would have difficulty videotaping interrogations.
Some of the proposals Feinstein had called for last December, such as the videotaping of interrogations, did not make it into the amendment.
The senator, Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, also rejected a proposal to have his committee conduct its own assessment of the agency's harsh interrogation methods, which included wall-slamming and waterboarding, the documents say.
Perhaps the most important legislative proposal would be to codify Obama's executive order requiring the CIA to abide by restrictions on interrogations spelled out in the Army Field Manual, including a ban on such "enhanced interrogation techniques" as the infliction of pain, stress positions and sleep deprivation.
Mr. Obama banned brutal interrogations.
