Rumsfeld approved abuse programme, says magazine

US DEFENCE Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorised the expansion of a secret programme encouraging physical coercion and sexual humiliation of prisoners to obtain intelligence in Iraq, a US magazine has claimed.

The Pentagon strongly denied the claims in the New Yorker, which cited unnamed current and former intelligence officials.

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita issued a statement calling the claims "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture".