Defense Dept. asked to hand over Iraq images for Web

A government watchdog group on Wednesday asked the U.S. Department of Defense to release three CD-ROMs with digital photographs and video clips of prisoner abuse in Iraq. In a Freedom of Information Act request, the Federation of American Scientists requested copies of the disks with "abuses committed against Iraqi prisoners held in the custody of U.S. government or coalition forces in Iraq."

The group said in its request that it would widely disseminate the photographs and video on its Web site, a move that is likely to generate controversy. During a Senate appearance last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged that he had CD-ROMs with "a lot more photographs and videos" from the Abu Ghraib prison than those that have already appeared on the Internet and in the news. "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services committee.