NEW YORK, 17 May 2004 — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the expansion of a secret program that encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners to obtain intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq, The New Yorker reported.

The Defense Department strongly denied the claims made in the report, which cited unnamed current and former intelligence officials and was published on the magazine’s website. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita issued a statement calling the claims “outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture.”

The story, written by reporter Seymour Hersh, said Rumsfeld decided to expand the program last year, broadening a Pentagon operation from the hunt for Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan to interrogation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

That program “encouraged physical coercion and the sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq,” Hersh wrote, citing current and former intelligence officials.

Seven soldiers are facing military charges related to the abuse and humiliation of prisoners captured by the now-infamous photographs at the prison. Some of the soldiers and their lawyers have said military intelligence officials told military police assigned as guards to abuse the prisoners to make interrogations easier.

According to the story, which hits newsstands today, the initial operation Rumsfeld authorized gave blanket approval to kill or capture and interrogate “high value” targets in the war on terrorism. The program stemmed from frustrating efforts to capture high-level terrorists in the weeks after the start of US bombings in Afghanistan.

The program got approval from President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and Bush was informed of its existence, the officials told Hersh.

Under the program, Hersh wrote, commandos carried out instant interrogations — using force if necessary — at secret CIA detention centers scattered around the world. The intelligence would be relayed to the commanders at the Pentagon.

Last year, Rumsfeld and Stephen Cambone, his undersecretary for intelligence, expanded the scope of the Pentagon’s program and brought its methods to Abu Ghraib, Hersh wrote.

Critics say the interrogation rules, first laid out in September after a visit to Iraq by the then-commander of the prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amounted to a green light for abuse.

Leaked photos from Abu Ghraib have shown US soldiers abusing Iraqi inmates, forcing them into sexually humiliating positions.

Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize-winning US journalist who broke the story of the 1968 My Lai massacre, when US soldiers executed Vietnamese civilians during the war in Vietnam.

Defense Department officials deny that, saying prisoners always are treated under guidelines of the Geneva Conventions.

“No responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses as witnessed in the recent photos and videos,” Di Rita said in his statement. “This story seems to reflect the fevered insights of those with little, if any, connection to the activities in the Department of Defense.”

Di Rita also said Cambone has never had any responsibility for any detainee or interrogation programs.

The intelligence sources told the magazine photos of the sexual abuse were used to intimidate prisoners and detainees into providing information on the insurgency. It was thought that some prisoners would do anything — including spying on their associates — to avoid dissemination of the shameful photos to family and friends.

One intelligence official said the CIA ended its involvement with the program at Abu Ghraib prison by last fall.

“They said, ‘No way. We signed up for the core program in Afghanistan — pre-approved for operations against the high-value terrorist targets — and now you want to use it for cabdrivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off the streets,” the source said.

Lawmakers from the US Congress called for an investigation into the charges.

“This is a very serious allegation that Sy Hersh is making,” said US Senator Joe Lieberman, a former presidential candidate and prominent Democrat.

“The search for truth should take us wherever it leads,” he said.

The renewed spotlight on Rumsfeld comes just days after many pundits determined he had dodged a bullet, seeming to have survived calls by Democrats in Congress for his ouster, after US President George W. Bush issued a ringing public endorsement of Rumsfeld last week.

Secretary of State Colin Powell reiterated Bush’s praise yesterday, saying Rumsfeld was doing “a terrific job under the most difficult of circumstances.”

Speaking to reporters on the way back from the World Economic Forum in Jordan, Powell dismissed calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation. “

Quick Elections

Meanwhile, two prominent senators yesterday pressed for speedy elections in Iraq, saying a vote should be held soon after the United States hands power over to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.

“The handover should represent a short-term transfer of sovereignty to a caretaker government that will quickly pave the way for elections,” senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain wrote in a joint column in The Washington Post.

Lieberman was a Democratic presidential candidate in this year’s election and McCain lost the Republican presidential nomination against George W. Bush in 2000.

Iraq’s election is planned for January 2005, but Lieberman and McCain said it should be held in the fall.

“No Iraqi government can derive legitimacy simply through selection by the United Nations or the United States. Real legitimacy is derived only from the free choice of the Iraqi people,” they wrote.

“For this reason, we should strongly consider moving up the date of the planned elections from January to this fall.”

UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is currently in Iraq consulting on the make-up of the post-June 30 administration.

“Iraqis currently have little opportunity to turn their political desires into government decisions, and Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish Iraqis all fear losing out in a political process dominated by outsiders,” the influential senators wrote.

“In this atmosphere, some have turned to violence, and more may follow,” they said.

“The United States and the United Nations should move ahead as quickly as possible with a full plan for democratic elections, one that will ensure that Iraqi liberals can compete fairly in local constituencies with Islamists organized nationally,” they wrote.