"There is no unit that is directly reportable to the Secretary of Defense for clandestine operations as is described in the Washington Post article of January 23, 2005" and the department "is not attempting to 'bend' statutes to fit desired activities," Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita said in a statement.

The Post, quoting interviews with participants and documents itobtained, reported on Sunday the Pentagon has created a previouslyundisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, which arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what it known as human intelligence.

The report said the unit, which was designed to operate withoutdetection and under the defense secretary's direct control, deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators andtechnical specialists alongside newly empowered special operationsforces and has been operating in secret for two years, in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places.

The Strategic Support Branch was created to provide Rumsfeld with independent tools for the "full spectrum of humint operations," the report said, quoting an internal account of its origin and mission.

In his statement, DiRita admitted that the Pentagon was attempting to improve its human intelligence capability, in the Defense Human Intelligence Service, a component of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

He said that before the Sept. 11 commission issued its final report last year concluding that the country's human intelligence capability must be improved, the Defense Human Intelligence Service had taken steps "to make better human intelligence capability available to assist combatant commanders for specific missions involving regular or special operations forces."