Newsweek on Monday retracted a story that said the U.S. military had confirmed that an interrogator at the Guantanamo Bay prison flushed a copy of the Quran down the toilet — a report blamed for helping trigger rioting in Afghanistan that killed at least 14 people.

Editor Mark Whitaker took the action following sharp criticism from top Bush administration officials, who said earlier in the day that the news magazine’s “irresponsible” actions had contributed to the violence in a nation where the United States is helping to manage a fragile new government.

“Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay,” Whitaker’s one-sentence statement said. He did not elaborate or respond to telephone calls.

Newsweek on Sunday had published a follow-up story and acknowledged mistakes in its May 9 report, which described how interrogators reportedly intimidated Muslim prisoners, desecrating the Quran and, in another instance, leading a detainee around with a collar and dog leash.

But the magazine declined over the weekend to take the more definitive step of retracting the story about the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, where detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan are held and questioned about terrorism and other threats.

That led to a second wave of criticism from the administration Monday. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman vehemently denied the substance of Newsweek’s original report, calling the article “irresponsible” and “demonstrably false.”

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the story “has had serious consequences. People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged.”

Making note of the rioting and deaths, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the press needed to be more careful.

“I think it was Mark Twain who said that something that’s not true can speed around the world three or four times in a matter of seconds, while truth is still trying to put their boots on,” Rumsfeld said after a hearing on Capitol Hill. “And people have said, my goodness, why does it take so long for someone to come back and … have the actual facts?”

It appeared unlikely that the complaints, or the retraction, would settle the matter, however.

A lawyer who helps represent a dozen detainees at Guantanamo Bay said Monday that on two separate occasions two prisoners told her that guards and interrogators desecrated the Quran. She asked not to be identified because high level talks were under way with the State Department to win the release of her clients.

The lawyer acknowledged that she did not see damaged copies of the holy book. But she said she does not believe the prisoners could have collaborated on the story, because they told her the stories in separate interviews and they were not housed together.