CNN: Hersh report 'journalist malpractice'
Official denies existence of secret interrogation squad
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Officials in the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community Monday flatly denied a New Yorker magazine report that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a clandestine unit to crack down on terrorists held at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, where inmates were abused.
The article, by Seymour Hersh, quotes a former intelligence official saying the unit's instructions were, "Grab whom you must. Do what you want." The report also says the CIA pulled its people from involvement in interrogations at the prison in October "because it was out of control."
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"This is the most hysterical piece of journalist malpractice I have ever observed," said Lawrence DiRita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in response to Hersh's report.
A senior intelligence official said the article contains "fantasy," adding, "I haven't found any truth in it."
The unit described simply does not exist, the intelligence official said.<font size=3>
Hersh, in an interview Monday on CNN's "American Morning," said there is no reason to believe Rumsfeld or President Bush knew about the abuses of Abu Ghraib inmates captured in photographs that have sparked outrage across the world.
"But the way it began was with" the clandestine program, he said.
Seven U.S. soldiers have been charged with abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.
Hersh's article said that after the Afghanistan war began, Rumsfeld set up a special access program (SAP), "Copper Green," to travel and crack down on terrorists. According to a former intelligence official quoted in the magazine's May 24 issue, the rules governing the secret operation were, "Grab whom you must. Do what you want."
When attacks against coalition forces were on the rise last fall, Rumsfeld and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone "cut an order sending this secret group into Baghdad," Hersh told CNN. "The instructions were, 'Let's get tougher.' "
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DiRita, responding Monday, called Hersh "one of history's great conspiracy theorists."
And the intelligence official told CNN there is no such thing as "Copper Green." The official said there is no joint interrogation program between the Defense Department and the CIA approved by the Secretary of Defense.
It is "incorrect" to suggest that the CIA withdrew from interrogations at Abu Ghraib, the intelligence official added.<font size=3>
But Hersh told CNN said he has faced similar attacks before when uncovering major stories.
When told the Pentagon spokesman's position, Hersh said, "I understand this is going to be the kind of response. ... I leaned over backwards to make sure in my own reporting. I met multiple sources. There was a lot of basis for this.
"It will come out eventually."
"I'm not saying that Rumsfeld or the president or anybody else had any idea of how this sort of transmogrified into what we saw in the photographs," he said, referring to the photos of naked Iraqi prisoners being forced to perform or simulate sexual acts by Americans at the prison.
"But the way it began was with a program, guys coming in -- very sophisticated guys, under aliases. We've all heard about the civilians running around those prisons. Some of them were people from this unit. I can tell you the intelligence community went batty about this."
Last fall, "when things began to go very bad in Iraq," the United States "brought in elements of this special unit into Baghdad" with certain instructions, Hersh said: "Get people -- go and grab some of the Sunni males, use coercion and also use sexual intimidation if you have to."
To accomplish that, Hersh wrote, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, head of U.S. forces in Iraq, had Abu Ghraib -- and its guards -- put under the command of a military intelligence brigade instead of the military police brigade that had been in charge, creating an atmosphere of conflict between the commanders of the two brigade.
Hersh, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his story on the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, said he had fewer than half a dozen sources for his report but more than two. And "more than a few in the CIA" know about the the agency's pullout from Abu Ghraib, he said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday he had read a summary of the New Yorker article and stressed that all war prisoners should be treated humanely. "I haven't read the article and I don't know anything about the substance of the article," Powell said. "I have just seen a quick summary of it. So I will have to yield to the Defense Department to respond."
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