'Rumsfeld OK'd prisoner plan'

United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally approved a plan that led to the use of unconventional methods and ultimately abuse of prisoners in Iraq, a report said on Sunday.

The root of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal is not in the criminal inclination of a few army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation focused on the hunt for Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, the New Yorker magazine said.

The article quoted former intelligence officials as saying that Rumsfeld and Joint Chief of Staff Gen Richard Myers approved the programme, but may not have known about the abuse.

"Rumsfeld's decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of elite combat units and hurt American's prospect in the war on terror," said the article, which came amidst demands for the defence secretary's resignation from some of the major newspapers and leading political figures.

Seven soldiers have been charged and several practices, including putting prisoners in stressful positions, stripping them or forcing them into sex acts, have been banned.

The report quoted a Central Intelligence Agency official as saying that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld's "longstanding desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the CIA."

The magazine said the plan for interrogation was a highly classified "special access programme", or SAP, which gave advance approval to kill, capture or interrogate "high value targets".

Quoting interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the New Yorker said the Pentagon operation, known inside by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation or Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency.

Such secret methods were extensively used in Afghanistan, but sparingly in Iraq till the insurgency strengthened and American casualties began rising.

The Abu Ghraib story, the magazine said, began, in a sense, just weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, with the American bombing of Afghanistan. Almost from the start, the administration's search for Al Qaeda members in the war zone, and its worldwide search for terrorists, came up against major command-and-control problems.

For example, the New Yorker said, combat forces that had Al Qaeda targets in sight had to obtain legal clearance before firing on them. On October 7, 2001, the night the bombing began, an unmanned Predator aircraft tracked an automobile convoy that, American intelligence believed, contained Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader.

A lawyer on duty at the US Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, refused to authorise a strike. By the time an attack was approved, the target was out of reach, the magazine reported.

There were similar problems throughout the world, as American Special Forces units seeking to move quickly against suspected terrorist cells were compelled to get prior approval from local American ambassadors and brief their superiors in the chain of command, it said.

Rumsfeld, it said, reacted in his usual direct fashion: he authorised the establishment of a highly secret programme that was given blanket advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate "high value" targets.

SAP, subject to the defence department's most stringent level of security, was set up, with an office in a secure area of the Pentagon. The programme would recruit operatives and acquire the necessary equipment, including aircraft, and would keep its activities under wraps, the report said.

Rumsfeld's goal was to get a capability in place to take on a high-value target, a stand-up group to hit quickly, a former high-level intelligence official was quoted as saying.

He got all the agencies together to get pre-approval in place. "Just say the codeword and go."

The operation had across-the-board approval from Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor. President George W Bush was informed of the programme, the former intelligence official was quoted as saying.

In theory, the magazine said, the operation enabled the administration to respond immediately to time-sensitive intelligence: commandos crossed borders without visas and could interrogate terrorism suspects deemed too important for transfer to the military's facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.   

They carried out instant interrogations, using force if necessary, at secret CIA detention centres scattered around the world.

The intelligence, it said, would be relayed to the SAP command centre at Pentagon in real time, and sifted for those pieces of information critical operation. Fewer than two hundred operatives and officials, including Rumsfeld and Gen Myers, were completely read into the programme, it quoted the former official as saying.

The goal was to keep the operation protected.

The rules were "grab whom you must. Do what you want," the officer was quoted as saying.

One Pentagon official who was deeply involved in the programme, the New Yorker said, was Stephen Cambone, who was named undersecretary of defence for intelligence in March, 2003. The office was new.

Cambone was unpopular among military and civilian intelligence bureaucrats in the Pentagon, essentially because he had little experience in running intelligence programmes, though in 1998 he had served as staff director for a committee, headed by Rumsfeld, that warned of an emerging ballistic missile threat to the US, the magazine said.

Cambone, the article said, was a strong advocate for the war against Iraq. He shared Rumsfeld's disdain for the analysis and assessments proffered by the CIA, viewing them as too cautious, and chafed, as did Rumsfeld, at the CIA's inability, before the Iraq war, to state conclusively that Saddam Hussein harboured weapons of mass destruction.

Rumsfeld left the interrogation details to Cambone. "It was Cambone's deal," a Pentagon consultant was quoted as saying.