Washington ? A Pentagon report Thursday cleared top civilian and military officials in the abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, but its conclusion drew a critical response from some senators who questioned the report’s scope and objectivity.

A summary of the prisoner abuse report conducted by Vice Adm. Albert Church, the Navy chief of staff and formerly its inspector general, found “no evidence to support the notion” that the office of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the National Security Council staff, the U.S. Central Command or any other organization “applied explicit pressure for intelligence or gave back channel permission … to use more aggressive interrogation techniques.”

Church’s investigation, which started in May and is the latest of at least six Pentagon internal reviews of the abuse of foreign detainees, also declined to blame wrongdoing on top military officers in Washington, Iraq, Afghanistan or Guantanamo Bay, where about 600 individuals have been held.

By declining to blame top military leaders for the abuses, Church implicitly held individual soldiers, some of whom have been charged or already convicted of criminal offenses, as responsible for their actions in abusing the detainees.

Church told the Senate Armed Services Committee that his mandate was not to assign blame, but rather Rumsfeld told him to determine how abusive interrogation techniques were adopted and then migrated among several areas of U.S. military operations.

“There was no policy … at any level that directed or condoned torture or abuse,” Church said. “There was no link between the authorized interrogation techniques and the abuses that, in fact, occurred.”