A new government audit says high-ranking Bush administration officials routinely ignored FBI complaints of abusive interrogations of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other US military sites. According to the Justice Department, senior White House officials began receiving reports of tactics including extreme temperatures, religious abuses and nude interrogation as early as 2003. But the White House made no effort to curb the practices. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft is said to have personally complained to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the treatment of a prisoner in November 2003. Nearly half of the 450 FBI agents who worked at Guantanamo reported witnessing or hearing about harsh techniques including sleep deprivation and the shackling of hands and feet. In a statement, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin said, “Some have suggested that the abuse of detainees in US custody was simply the result of a few bad apples acting on their own. The report released today…is proof that that is simply not true.”