New York: American Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally approved a plan to get information from insurgents which led to use of unconventional methods and ultimately abuse of prisoners in Iraq, a media report said today (May 16, 2004).

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie 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, which had focused on the hunt for al-Qaeda to interrogation of prisoners in Iraq, the New Yorker magazine said.

The article quoted former intelligence officials as saying that Rumsfeld and Joint Chief of Staff General Richard Mayers 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 his resignation from some of the major newspapers and leading political figures. But Rumsfeld has rejected demands for his resignation, contending that only a few were involved in the abuses and action is being taken against them.

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 senior CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) official who, it said, confirmed the details of the account, as saying that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld's "longstanding desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the CIA."

But some reports quoted officials as saying that not everything in the articles is correct.

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

Such secret methods were extensively used in Afghanistan but sparingly in Iraq till 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, the night the bombing began, an unmanned Predator aircraft tracked an automobile convoy that, American intelligence believed, contained Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader.

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