Rumsfeld and Aide Backed Harsh Tactics, Article Says

By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON --

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and one of his top aides
authorized the expansion of a secret program that permitted harsh
interrogations of detained members of Al Qaeda to be used against
prisoners in Iraq, including detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib
prison, according to an article in The New Yorker Magazine.

The article, by Seymour M. Hersh, reports that Mr. Rumsfeld and
Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence,
approved the use of the tougher interrogation techniques in Iraq in
2003 in an effort to extract better information from Iraqi prisoners
to counter the growing insurgency threat in the country.

Across the Bush administration, officials on Saturday disputed several
of the critical details in Mr. Hersh's article.

They said that there was no high-level decision or command that they
were aware of to use highly coercive interrogation techniques on Iraqi
prisoners.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who has apologized for the abuses, has said that the
prison abuses were conducted by lower-level military forces without
the approval of senior commanders.

One of the central unresolved questions of the prison abuse scandal is
whether the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners was ordered by senior
military or civilian officials.

Administration officials pointed on Saturday to testimony before
Congress in which several administration officials acknowledged that
the Geneva Conventions applied to detainees in Iraq and therefore did
not permit the use of coercive tactics.

But some officials, speaking on background, acknowledged that as the
insurgency worsened in Iraq last summer, there was rising concern
about how to improve intelligence about future attacks.

At the Pentagon, the chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, vigorously
denied the allegations that Mr. Cambone directed a covert program to
encourage the coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners to
improve intelligence gathering.

"It's pure, unadulterated fantasy," Mr. Di Rita said in a telephone
interview.

"We don't discuss covert programs, but nothing in any covert program
would have led anyone to sanction activity like what was seen on those
videos."

"No responsible official in this department, including Secretary
Rumsfeld, would or could have been involved in sanctioning the
physical coercion or sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners," Mr. Di
Rita said.

Mr. Di Rita said Mr. Cambone was not involved in setting detainee
policy in Iraq.

"Cambone had no involvement in any matter involved in detainee
management," Mr. Di Rita said.

"That's part of the fevered imagination of conspiracy theorists."

The article, to published in the May 24 edition of The New Yorker,
said that the expansion of the "special access program" allowed
authorities in charge of Abu Ghraib to engage in degrading and
humiliating practices.

The article said, "According to interviews with several past and
present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon's operation,
known inside the intelligence community by several code words,
including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual
humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in effort to generate more intelligence
about the growing insurgency in Iraq."

In addition, the article said that Mr. Rumsfeld's decision in the
matter had, in effect, shifted the blame for the abuses from himself
to lower-level military guards.

Some elements of The New Yorker story have been previously reported,
including the development by the C.I.A. of a special interrogation
program for Qaeda prisoners captured in Afghanistan.

That program, authorized by government legal opinions, included the
use of coercive interrogation methods.

Mr. Hersh writes that Mr. Cambone carried out Mr. Rumsfeld's directive
to use the coercive interrogation methods.

The article said that by the summer of 2003, American military and
intelligence agencies were growing fearful about the strength of the
insurgency and were frustrated at the poor intelligence they were
getting from detainees.

Some of the officials identified by Mr. Hersh in the article have
testified publicly about their actions in the prison abuse issue.

Mr. Cambone testified for several hours before the Senate Armed
Services Committee on Tuesday, May 11, and was questioned extensively
about what interrogation methods were approved for prisoners in Iraq
and whether they complied with the Geneva rules.

Asked by Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, "What is the
status" of detainees in the prison, he answered flatly, "They are
there under either Article 3 or Article 4 of the Geneva Conventions."

Those two articles pertain to prisoners or war or other prisoners,
respectively.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. asked him
whether military intelligence, C.I.A. and private contractors "all
have identical rules and regulations in terms of interrogating the
detainees or prisoners of war or combatants? Or is there any
distinction between the three?"

"Within Iraq the rules of the Geneva Convention apply," said Mr.
Cambone.

"So therefore, the rules apply for all three."

Senator Kennedy asked:

"My question is, do they have different kinds of rules of questioning?
Do each of those services have rules? If they do have rules, how are
they different?"

"I can speak for the D.O.D., contractor and military personnel, and
those rules are the same," answered Mr. Cambone, carefully leaving out
the question of what rules apply to the C.I.A.

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Well, there you have it, folks, it's time for Rummy to be arrested.

Harry