[News] New Yorker: Rumsfeld 'approved' abuse

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New Yorker: Rumsfeld 'approved' abuse

Sunday 16 May 2004 6:44 AM GMT

  Rules were: 'Grab whom you must. Do what you want'

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a secret programme that 
encouraged interrogation methods used at Abu Ghraib prison, reports The New 
Yorker magazine.


Rumsfeld had approved "a highly secret operation" last year, which 
"encouraged physical coercion and the sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners 
in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in 
Iraq," New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote, citing 
current and former intelligence officials.

Excerpts of Hersh's report have been released before publication this week.

The Pentagon said Hersh's report was "outlandish, conspiratorial, and 
filled with error and anonymous conjecture."

"No responsible official of the Department of Defence approved any program 
that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses as 
witnessed in the recent photos and videos," Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di 
Rita said in a statement.

The New Yorker reported that the clandestine Defence Department operation 
was known as a Special-Access Program (SAP).

Its rules were: "Grab whom you must. Do what you want," according to one 
former intelligence official cited by Hersh.

Rumsfeld's decision to import such techniques into Iraq, after their use in 
Afghanistan, was opposed by members of US intelligence organisations, the 
report said.

Use in Afghanistan

"They said, 'No way. We signed up for the core program in Afghanistan, 
preapproved for operations against high-value terrorist targets, and now 
you want to use it for cabdrivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off 
the streets,'" the former intelligence official told Hersh.


Pictures of naked, humiliated
detainees have caused outrage
The source said the CIA objected to the programme's use inside Abu Ghraib, 
where a scandal involving the mistreatment of Iraqis has sparked Democratic 
calls for Rumsfeld's resignation. The CIA ended its SAP involvement in the 
jail.

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

Hersh writes that Rumsfeld left the detailed planning to Pentagon 
intelligence chief Steve Cambone, but that the programme was ultimately 
approved by Rumsfeld and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General 
Richard Myers.

Tougher techniques

The Pentagon wanted to use tougher interrogation techniques as the US plan 
to occupy Iraq was hindered by a growing insurgency, Hersh wrote.

"As far as they're concerned, this is a covert operation, and it's to be 
kept within the Defence Department channels," the former intelligence 
official told Hersh.


"No responsible official of the Department of Defence approved any program 
that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses as 
witnessed in the recent photos and videos"

Lawrence Di Rita,
Pentagon spokesman
Hersh is an award-winning US journalist who broke the story of the 1968 My 
Lai massacre, when US soldiers executed Vietnamese civilians during the war 
in Vietnam.

Also on Saturday The New York Times reported that the mistreatment of Iraqi 
inmates at Camp Cropper, near Baghdad airport, predates abuse of Abu Ghraib 
prisoners by US soldiers.

A prisoner told the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that he 
had been beaten by interrogators, hooded, handcuffed, threatened with 
torture and murder, urinated on and kicked in the head, lower back and 
groin, the daily said.

He was also kept awake for four days and had a baseball tied into his mouth 
with a scarf, it added.

The ICRC lodged formal complaints with US officials in February, the Times 
said, and eventually documented 50 cases of abuse.



AFP


You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/8C6F160D-F87E-4739-941B-81E888C33E04.htm 






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