White House Answers Judge's Finding of US Torture

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman also had no direct comment on Crawford's comments as quoted in the newspaper's Wednesday editions.

"We have always taken allegations of abuse seriously," Whitman said. "We investigate all allegations, all credible allegations, of abuse," and have done some dozen investigations of interrogation methods, Whitman said.

The investigations concluded that special interrogations techniques briefly used for a small number of detainees shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were legal at the time, Whitman said. That includes techniques used on al-Qahtani in 2002, he said.

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Whitman would not speculate on whether Crawford's action in the al-Qahtani case has any effect on other cases or the whole of the Bush administration legal structure for so-called enemy combatants.

Obama is expected to change that structure as part of a promised overhaul of anti-terrorism policies that brought the Bush administration repeated reversals in federal court and that other countries have called out of bounds.

Obama has said he will close the Navy prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where al-Qahtani is held. He has not said what he will do with the estimated 250 terror suspects or others housed there, but his comments suggest at least some could be tried in U.S. civilian courts.

Information collected under torture would be tainted and probably unusable in U.S. courts.

It's unlikely that Guantanamo could be closed quickly, as Obama acknowledged Sunday.

"It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize," he said on ABC's "This Week" program.

"We are going to get it done, but part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom may be very dangerous, who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted, even though it's true."

About 520 Guantanamo detainees have been released from custody or transferred to prisons elsewhere in the world.

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