New York: In yet another startling revelation, a leading news magazine has said that US President George W Bush, along with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, had signed off a memo on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door for abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

While there is no telling where the scandal will bottom out, it said US soldiers and Central Investigative Agency (CIA) operatives could be accused of war crimes and of charges, which could include homicide involving deaths during interrogations.

The 'New Yorker' magazine had earlier reported that National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and other top US officials had signed off on a secret plan allowing soldiers to interrogate Iraqi prisoners by using sexual humiliation and physical coercion. She had later dismissed the charges saying, "There's really nothing to the story."

By January 25, 2002, according to a memo obtained by 'Newsweek,' it was clear that President Bush had already decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply at all, either to the Taliban or al-Qaeda.

In the memo written to Bush, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales laid out the argument that the Geneva Conventions were obsolete in the new paradigm.

"As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," Gonzales wrote to Bush and concluded in stark terms, "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."