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Washington — U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to Republican senators this week to allow CIA exemptions from a proposed ban on the torture of terror suspects in U.S. custody, said participants in a closed-door session.

Mr. Cheney told his audience the United States doesn't engage in torture, these participants added, even though he said the administration needed an exemption from any legislation banning "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment in case the president decided one was necessary to prevent a terrorist attack

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Appearing with Hatch on CBS's "Face the Nation," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, said cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners "is not what America is all about. Those aren't the values that we're fighting for."

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Sen. Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said his vote against the ban doesn't mean he favors torture. He rejected Durbin's comments as "not really relevant to what we are trying to do to detain and interrogate the worst of the worst so that we can save American lives".

Roberts said that success with detention and interrogation depends on the detainee's fear of the unknown. He suggested that passing a law and putting U.S. policies into a manual would tell detainees too much about what to expect.

"As long as you're following the Constitution and there's no torture and no inhumane treatment, I see nothing wrong with saying here is the worst of the worst. We know they have specific information to save American lives in terrorist attacks around the world. That's what we're talking about," Roberts said.