Washington ? A confidential report to Army generals in Iraq in December 2003 warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees, a finding delivered more than a month before Army investigators received the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison that touched off abuse investigations.

The report, which was recently obtained by The Washington Post, concluded that some U.S. arrest and detention practices at the time could “technically” be illegal. It also said coalition fighters could be feeding the Iraqi insurgency by “making gratuitous enemies” as they conducted sweeps netting hundreds of detainees who did not belong in prison.

The investigation, by retired Col. Stuart Herrington, also found that members a joint Special Operations and CIA mission searching for weapons of mass destruction and high-value targets including Saddam Hussein — had been abusing detainees throughout Iraq and had been using a secret interrogation facility.

Herrington’s findings are the latest in a series of confidential reports to come to light about detainee abuse in Iraq. Until now, U.S. military officials have characterized the problem as one largely confined to the military prison at Abu Ghraib — a situation they first learned about in January 2004. But Herrington’s report shows that U.S. military leaders in Iraq were told of such allegations even before then, and that problems were not restricted to Abu Ghraib.