State Department Tries to Undo Newsweek Article Damage

WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department, moving to undo damage it says was caused by a Newsweek article alleging U.S. desecration of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, is telling its embassies to spread the word abroad that America and Americans respect all religious faiths.

In a two-page cable sent Monday night to all U.S. diplomatic posts, the department told the ambassadors to inform host governments and local media that Newsweek had retracted its report that investigators found evidence interrogators at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, desecrated the Quran.

The Pentagon has found nothing to substantiate the allegations, the cable noted, adding, "The U.S. government will continue to investigate all credible allegations of misconduct and will take action against those responsible if the allegations are substantiated."

Newsweek on Monday retracted the report in its May 9 issue after officials in the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department criticized its publication and its use of an anonymous source. Protests in Afghanistan, where more than a dozen people died and scores were injured in rioting, and demonstrations elsewhere in the Muslim world were blamed on the article.

"We condemn all acts inciting violent protest and we express our sympathies to those injured in recent demonstrations and to the families of those killed," the State Department cable said. "We urge all members of the press to provide the same wide coverage to the magazine’s retraction as was given to the original allegations."

The United States, the cable said, "is a tolerant society in which freedom of religion for all faiths is ardently defended…. Disrespect of the Holy Quran is not, has not been and will never be the policy of the United States."

The White House on Monday said the magazine had taken a "good first step" by retracting its story, but it wants the magazine to do more to repair damage caused by the article.

"The report had real consequences," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Monday. "People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged. There are some who are opposed to the United States and what we stand for who have sought to exploit this allegation. It will take work to undo what can be undone."

McClellan said Newsweek should try to set the record straight by "clearly explaining what happened and how they got it wrong, particularly to the Muslim world, and pointing out the policies and practices of our military."

Daniel Klaidman, Newsweek’s Washington bureau chief, said Tuesday in an interview on CBS’ "The Early Show" that the magazine will "continue to look at how we put together this story, learn from mistakes that we’ve made and make improvements that are appropriate as we go along."

Asked if anyone involved in preparing the article would lose his job, Klaidman said, "We think that people acted responsibly and professionally and … there was no malice, no institutional bias, just a mistake that was made in good faith." The article was written by Michael Isikoff, an investigative reporter, and John Barry, a national security correspondent for the magazine.

The administration worried that the Newsweek story – and the idea that interrogators at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, tried to make terror suspects talk by desecrating the holy book of Islam – had undercut attempts to demonstrate tolerance and repair the United States’ reputation after global criticism over the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.

Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine decided to publish the short item after hearing from an unnamed U.S. official that a government probe had found evidence a Quran had been flushed down a toilet by interrogators.

Whitaker said the magazine’s original source later said he could not be sure he had read about the alleged Quran incident in the report Newsweek cited and that it might have been in another document.

"Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay," Whitaker said.

The Newsweek report was not the first public airing of allegations about U.S. personnel at Guantanamo Bay desecrating a Quran. In August and October 2004 there were news reports based on a lawsuit and a written report by British citizens who had been released from the prison in Cuba. They claimed abuse by U.S. guards, including throwing their Qurans into the toilet.

In January, Kristine Huskey, a lawyer representing Kuwaitis detained at Guantanamo, said they claimed to have been abused and in one case a detainee watched a guard throw a Quran into a toilet.

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Associated Press Diplomatic Writer Barry Schweid contributed to this report.