US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a secret program that encouraged interrogation methods used at Abu Ghraib prison, where Iraqi prisoners were abused, it was reported.

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 magazine investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote, citing current and former intelligence officials.

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

The New Yorker reported that the clandestine Defense 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 organizations, the report said.

"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.

The source said the CIA objected to the program'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 program was ultimately approved by Rumsfeld and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers.

The Pentagon wanted to use tougher interrogation techniques as the US plan to occupy Iraq was hindered by a growing insurgency, Hersh wrote. "So here are fundamentally good soldiers -- military intelligence guys -- being told that no rules apply," a former military intelligence official told Hersh.

When the New Yorker and CBS published photographs showing US soldiers sexually abusing Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib amid allegations of assaults and beatings, "the (Pentagon) cover story was that some kids got out of control," Hersh said.

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

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 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.

An examination "revealed hematoma in the lower back, blood in urine, sensory loss in the right hand due to tight handcuffing with flexi-cuffs and a broken rib," said a Red Cross panel report, which US officials received in February, according to the Times.

"Sometimes they treated them good and sometimes they didn't treat them so good," US military policeman Floyd Boone told the Times, describing the work of Camp Cropper interrogators of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, based in Weisbaden, Germany.

In October, the US Army struck Camp Cropper's tents and barbed-wire fence.

The 205th Military Intelligence Brigade was reassigned to Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad and given control over the 800th Military Police Brigade, under Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the Times added.

(Xinhua News Agency May 16, 2004)