WASHINGTON, Jan 24: A Republican lawmaker said on Sunday his US Senate committee would look into a reported move by the Pentagon to reinterpret US law to give Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld broad authority over spy operations abroad.

Responding to the report in The Washington Post on Sunday, Senate Armed Services Committee member John McCain, an Arizona Republican, told CBS's "Face the Nation" program he would raise the question at hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Post, citing Pentagon documents and interviews with participants, reported that Rumsfeld had created a unit called the Strategic Support Branch to end "near total dependence" on the CIA for human intelligence.

The unit, which has been operating for two years, deploys teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists with special operations forces, The Post said. The department contended the defence intelligence missions were subject to fewer legal constraints, the newspaper added.

Defence Department spokesman Lawrence DiRita, however, said there was "no unit that is directly reportable to the secretary of Defence for clandestine operations as is described in The Washington Post article."

"Further, the department is not attempting to 'bend' statutes to fit desired activities, as is suggested in this article," he added in a statement. McCain said the move was "a product of the frustration with the CIA of a failure to have decent human intelligence."

"Should the Armed Services Committee look at it? Yes. And should we know more about it? Yes. And I'm always sorry to read about things in The Washington Post when they affect a committee that I'm a member of." -Reuters