WASHINGTON – The White House said Monday it was revising its proposal for dealing with terrorism suspects as indications grew that President Bush’s plan was meeting increased resistance among Republicans in both chambers of Congress.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino said the administration was sending the new language in hopes of reaching an agreement. A revolt by GOP senators, who have written their own proposal preserving more rights for terror detainees than the administration wants, has embarrassed the White House at a time when Republicans want to use their security policies as a main platform in November’s congressional elections.
“Our commitment to finding a resolution is strong,” Perino said.
A week after a Republican-led Senate committee defied Bush and approved terror-detainee legislation that the president vowed to block, three more GOP senators said they now opposed the administration’s version, joining the four Republicans who had already come out against it.
If all 44 Democrats plus the chamber’s Democratic-leaning independent also vote for the alternative by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., as expected, that would give it a majority in the 100-member Senate.
Republican officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they have encountered resistance and were no longer certain they had enough votes to push the measure to passage through the GOP-run House.
An administration official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity surrounding the negotiations, said the new language only addresses a dispute over the nation’s obligations under the Geneva Conventions, which set the standard for treatment of prisoners taken during hostilities.
No other details of the new administration plan were initially available.
Warner told reporters Monday that the White House and his office continued to exchange “alternative proposals” on an informal basis.
The president’s measure would go further than Warner’s bill, allowing classified evidence to be withheld from defendants in terror trials and allowing coerced testimony. Bush also favors a narrower interpretation of the Geneva Conventions that would make it harder to prosecute U.S. interrogators for using harsh techniques.
Neither side is saying how an agreement can be achieved on whether to allow the CIA to use highly controversial methods such as disorientation, forced nakedness and waterboarding, in which a subject is made to think he is drowning. Without confirming any specific techniques used by the CIA, the Bush administration says the agency’s program has foiled terror plots. Opponents say the techniques verge on torture.
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