US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld faced fresh allegations yesterday that the abuse of detainees in Iraq was not an aberration but a practice that was authorised at the highest levels in the Pentagon.
The roots of the scandal lay in a decision approved by Mr Rumsfeld to expand a highly secret operation against Al-Qaeda to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq, according to the New Yorker magazine, quoting intelligence officials.
Further evidence that prison abuse was authorised high in the chain of command was provided by the Washington Post which obtained a classified cable revealing that requests for harsh interrogation at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were routinely sent to the top military commander in Iraq.
The claims are a further blow to the ability of Mr Rumsfeld to withstand calls for his resignation over the scandal, which has helped drive President George Bush's approval ratings to a record low of 42 per cent, according to a poll in today's issue of Newsweek.
In its weekly edition due out today, the New Yorker claims that a top secret Pentagon operation, known by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to gain intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq.
The Pentagon described the article, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, as "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture", and said the abuse evidenced in recent images "has no basis in any sanctioned programme, training manual, instruction, or order in the Department of Defence".
According to Seymour Hersh, the operation stemmed from a Special Access Programme (SAP) authorised by Mr Rumsfeld shortly after 9/11 that gave blanket approval to a small group of operatives to kill or capture and interrogate "high-value" targets in the war on terrorism.
The was approved by National Security Adviser, Ms Condoleezza Rice, and Mr Bush was informed of its existence, unnamed intelligence officials told Seymour Hersh.
The programme was known to less than 200 operatives and officials, including Mr Rumsfeld and Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the article says.
Under it US commandos crossed borders without visas and could carry out instant interrogations using force if necessary at secret CIA detention centres scattered around the world.
At first the programme was a success but when applied later to Iraq it "embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of elite combat units, and hurt America's prospects in the war on terror".
As the insurgency grew bloodier during 2003, the solution to a lack of intelligence - endorsed by Mr Rumsfeld and carried out by Mr Stephen Cambone, his undersecretary for intelligence - was to get tough with Iraqi detainees suspected of being insurgents.
They expanded the scope of the Pentagon's programme and brought its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib, Seymour Hersh claims. Male prisoners could be treated roughly and exposed to sexual humiliation.
A former intelligence official told Hersh that Mr Cambone made the decision to bring the SAP rules into the Iraq prisons, with army military intelligence officers working under SAP's auspices.
The Pentagon said yesterday that Mr Cambone had no responsibility for interrogation programmes in Iraq. In the late summer of 2003 Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller urged that the commanders in Baghdad change policy and place military intelligence personnel in charge of the prison, Hersh writes. Gen Miller also briefed military commanders in Iraq on the interrogation methods used in Guantanamo Bay that could, with special approval, include sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of cold and heat, and placing prisoners in "stress positions" for agonising lengths of time.
The new allegations will likely dominate Senate hearings as Congress seeks to determine whether the abuse resulted from Pentagon decisions or was the work of a few guards at Abu Ghraib prison.