WASHINGTON, May 15: US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a secret program that encouraged interrogation methods used at Abu Ghraib prison, where Iraqi prisoners were abused, The New Yorker magazine said Saturday.

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

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

Hersh said 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.

The US defense secretary'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 intelligence source said the CIA objected to the program's use inside Abu Ghraib, were 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 ulitimately 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 My Lai massacre, when US soldiers executed Vietnamese civilians during the war in Vietnam.-AFP