Newsweek Retracts Quran Story

Article Alleged Guantanamo Interrogators Desecrated Holy Book

(CBS/AP)  Newsweek magazine, under fire for publishing a story that led to deadly protests in Afghanistan, said Monday it was retracting its report that a military probe had found evidence of desecration of the Quran by U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay.

Earlier Monday, Bush administration officials had brushed off an apology that Newsweek's editor Mark Whitaker had made in an editor's note and criticized the magazine's handling of the story.

"It's appalling that this story got out there," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said as she traveled home from Iraq.

"People lost their lives. People are dead," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. "People need to be very careful about what they say, just as they need to be careful about what they do."

Since the report's publication - anti-American protest has flared across the Muslim world - including the deadly riots in Afghanistan. And the White House continues to criticize Newsweek, urging it to clarify its story in an effort to mitigate its fallout, CBS News Correspondent John Roberts reports.

Following the criticism, Whitaker released a statement through a spokesman later Monday saying the magazine was retracting the article.

"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.

Newsweek had reported in its issue dated May 9 that U.S. military investigators had found evidence that interrogators placed copies of Islam's holy book in washrooms and had flushed one down the toilet to get inmates to talk.

Whitaker wrote in his note to readers that "We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst."

Whitaker said in his editor's note that while other news organizations had aired charges of Quran abuse based on the testimony of detainees, the magazine decided to publish a short item after hearing from an unnamed U.S. official that a government probe had found evidence corroborating the charges.

But on Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told the magazine that a review of the military's investigation concluded "it was never meant to look into charges of Quran desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them 'not credible."'

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

"Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we," Whitaker wrote.