WASHINGTON - The Pentagon’s harsh interviewing tactics against detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba cribbed from the U.S. military’s resistance training programs were "inappropriate,” Republican Sen. Susan Collins said on Tuesday.

The Senate Armed Services Committee revealed at a hearing on Tuesday that top Pentagon lawyers began compiling lists of interrogation methods used by the military’s elite Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape Schools in July 2002, much earlier than previously had been known.

“It seems that it was more logical for the (Pentagon) to go to the FBI for assistance than to try to figure out how the SERE techniques could be re-engineered for interrogation since that’s not at all what the purpose of the SERE techniques were,” Collins said during the hearing.

The U.S. Navy’s survival school is headquartered at the Brunswick Naval Air Station and the training takes place near Rangeley, Maine.

Senate Democrats said they provided evidence for the first time showing the abuse scandals in Iraq and Afghanistan were the direct result of policies developed by Rumsfeld’s top aides rather than enlisted soldiers or military field commanders.

“The truth is that senior officials in the U.S. government sought information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the panel’s chairman.

In July 2002, William Haynes, the Pentagon’s former general counsel, instructed his deputies to find strategies the Army had used to get more information from suspected terrorists captured on the battlefield. Haynes testified in 2006 that the requests initially were made in October.

Haynes’ deputies turned to military officials who run the Army’s SERE schools that train U.S. troops how to endure and withstand harsh interrogation techniques.

Collins asked Richard Shiffrin, a deputy to Haynes, why former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld did not seek advice on how to elicit better information from detainees from U.S. law enforcement agencies.

“(Rumsfeld) was very jealous of other agencies and specifically with respect to DOD’s capabilities,” Shiffrin said in his testimony. “It would have been unthinkable to say to the secretary ‘Well, you know the people that are really good at this are law enforcement.’ I don’t think he would have accepted that answer.”

“I suspect that you are correct,” Collins said.

Asked in an interview whether Haynes misled Congress, Collins said she would have to review the timeline of events but “what is clear is that Rumsfeld approved aggressive techniques against the advice of military lawyers.”

The testimony took place in a hearing room in the Senate Dirksen Office Building across the street from the Capitol. The room was filled with reporters, congressional aides and other observers.

Several protesters were dressed in orange jumpsuits and one wore a black hood over his head.