WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.

''We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques,'' Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who's since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantánamo Bay prison to discuss using interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture.

Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility -- Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan -- were using sleep deprivation to ''break'' detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique.

A third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world.

'In the past when the ICRC has made a big deal about certain detainees, the DOD [Defense Department] has `moved' them away from the attention of the ICRC,'' Fredman said, according to the minutes.

The document, along with two dozen others, shows that top administration officials pushed relentlessly for tougher interrogation methods in the belief that suspects were resisting interrogation.

Fredman of the CIA also appeared to be advocating the use of techniques harsher than those authorized by military field guides.

''If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong,'' Fredman is reported to have said at one point.

Beaver testified that she didn't recall making the comment about avoiding ''harsher operations'' while ICRC representatives were around.

The minutes of the Guantánamo meeting were among 25 documents released Tuesday by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee and is leading a probe of the origins of cruel treatment of detainees in President Bush's ``war on terrorism.''

The administration overrode or ignored objections from all four military services and from criminal investigators, who warned that the practices would imperil their ability to prosecute the suspects.

The objections from the uniformed services prompted Navy Capt. Jane Dalton, legal adviser to the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, to begin reviewing proposed techniques.

Dalton, who's now retired, told the hearing Tuesday that the review was aborted quickly. Myers, she said, told her that then-Defense Department general counsel William Haynes ``does not want this . . . to proceed.''

Haynes testified that he didn't recall the objections.

Few of the Republicans at Tuesday's hearing defended the administration's detainee programs.

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