Republicans defy Bush over detainees

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

Defiant Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee bucked President Bush yesterday and approved a bill for detention and trial of foreign terrorism suspects that Mr. Bush says would compromise the war on terrorism.

The president insisted that he will not accept a bill that ties the CIA's hands or puts classified information at risk, and urged Congress to pass a proposal similar to what he submitted instead.

Led by Sen. John McCain of Arizona and committee Chairman John W. Warner of Virginia, four Republicans joined the panel's 11 Democrats to support a bill that gives terrorism detainees broader civil rights than Mr. Bush has proposed.

But most Senate Republicans, including the rest of the committee's members, support the administration's view that Mr. Warner's bill would limit intelligence gathering and expose classified information to terrorists. They have vowed to fight it out on the Senate floor.

Mr. Warner said he crafted the measure carefully to meet the concerns of the Supreme Court. The high court earlier this year struck down Mr. Bush's current setup for trying detainees held at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"It would be a very serious blow to the credibility of the United States ... if legislation passed by the Congress and signed by the president failed to meet a second Supreme Court review," Mr. Warner said yesterday.

But Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and committee member, called that argument a "boogeyman" and insisted he would try to amend the bill to be more in line with the White House approach.

The administration last week publicly acknowledged a classified CIA interrogation program, which, officials said, has produced information that helped thwart at least eight terrorist plots since 2001. But the Supreme Court ruling leaves that program on tenuous ground, and Mr. Bush says it would have to end if Congress doesn't approve new rules.

A Capitol Hill source said that after two weeks of fruitless negotiations with Mr. McCain, the White House has decided to instead have the fight in public and make its case directly.

The effort has kicked into high gear this week with CIA Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden saying that without specific guidance, he would have to close down the interrogation program. The administration also released a letter from the military's top lawyers saying guidance would be welcome, and a letter from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying what the U.S. is doing makes sense.