US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld allowed an "abusive and degrading" interrogation of an al-Qaeda detainee in 2002, a report citing an US army document claimed last night.
In a December 2005 Army inspector general's report, denounced as "fiction" by a Pentagon spokesman, officers apparently told of Mr Rumsfeld's direct contact with the general overseeing the interrogation at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The report published on salon.com, titled "What Rumsfeld Knew," comes amid calls by a string of respected military commanders for the Pentagon chief to resign and to take responsibility for US military setbacks in Iraq.
Mr Rumsfeld spoke regularly to Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, a key figure in the treatment of detainees in Iraq and Guantanamo, during the interrogation of Mohammed al-Kahtani, a Saudi suspected to have been an intended September 11th hijacker, the report said.
Mr Kahtani received "degrading and abusive" treatment by soldiers who were following the interrogation plan Mr Rumsfeld had approved, salon.com said, quoting the 391-page report, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Over 54 days in late 2002, soldiers forced Mr Kahtani to stand naked in front of a female interrogator, accused him of being a homosexual, forced him to wear women's underwear and made him perform "dog tricks" on a leash, the Salon report said.
It cited Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt, an Army investigator, as saying in a sworn statement to the inspector general that "The secretary of defense is personally involved in the interrogation of one person."
Gen. Schmidt is quoted as saying under oath that he concluded Mr Rumsfeld did not specifically order the interrogation methods used on Mr Kahtani, but that his approval of broad policies permitted abuses to take place.
Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, dismissed the allegation's that Rumsfeld or the defense department condoned abuse.
"We've gone over this countless times and yet some still choose to print fiction versus facts," Mr Gordon said by telephone. "Twelve major reviews, to include one done by an independent panel, all confirm the Department of Defense did not have a policy that encouraged or condoned abuse. To suggest otherwise is simply false."