Deal made on detainee questioning

WASHINGTON -- The White House yesterday reached a compromise with Republican senators over treatment standards for the nation's most dangerous terrorism suspects, with President Bush declaring that ``the most potent tool we have" -- aggressive interrogations -- will continue.

The deal was reached when Bush dropped his insistence that the United States redefine the Geneva Conventions to allow the coercive techniques -- which remain classified, but reportedly include sleep and food deprivation and forcing suspects to stand for protracted periods.

Instead, the senators agreed to rewrite the 1996-97 War Crimes Act to ban only the most aggressive techniques. Currently, the act bans anything that would constitute a ``grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions. The new law, the White House said, would define specific crimes that would be banned, including cruel or inhuman treatments, biological experimentation, mutilation, rape, sexual assault, and torture.

Both sides expressed confidence that the agreement would allow the CIA's interrogation program for ``high-value" suspects, the exact parameters of which remain classified, to continue.

``The agreement clears the way to do what the American people expect us to do: to capture terrorists, to detain terrorists, to question terrorists, and then to try them," Bush said shortly after the agreement was announced.

The breakthrough ends a political stand off that had become a distraction for the GOP. Rather than showing a unified front in battling terrorism, Republicans in recent days have been forced to grapple with internal divisions over how to interrogate suspects, with Democrats sitting on the sidelines.

But the holdout senators said the legislative fight was worth it. They were concerned that having the United States change its interpretation of an international treaty could endanger US soldiers, that it would free up other countries to change their interpretations of how to treat prisoners.

``There's no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved," said Senator John McCain of Arizona, who is one of three Republican lawmakers who opposed the original White House demand that the Senate agree to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions. ``The agreement that we've entered into gives the president the tools he needs to continue to fight the war on terror and bring these evil people to justice."

Unlike the Geneva Conventions, the War Crimes Act is an American law that applies only to US officials and is not part of an international treaty. Rewriting the War Crimes Act to outlaw specific acts -- and implicitly permitting others -- does not erode the Geneva Conventions, which broadly state that countries can't engage in ``outrages upon personal dignity," said Senator Lindsey O. Graham, Republican of South Carolina.

``We're not being seen as rewriting the terms in the middle of the war," said Graham, who worked alongside McCain and the Senate Armed Services chairman, John W. Warner of Virginia, in crafting the compromise.

The deal also resolves two major sticking points concerning the rules under which terrorist suspects can be tried in military tribunals. Rather than give defendants full access to classified information gathered against them, as the senators initially wanted, defendants will be allowed to review only the evidence prosecutors present to juries. And prosecutors will be able to redact from that evidence any intelligence-gathering ``sources and methods."

In addition, while the White House had wanted coerced testimony to be admissible in trials, the agreement will allow judges to rule on a case-by-case basis whether such evidence was gathered lawfully.

Obstacles to final passage of the bill remain. The House Armed Services chairman, Duncan Hunter, immediately served notice that House leaders fear that under the compromise, too much classified information could be provided to terrorists, potentially endangering American agents and harming US efforts to prevent attacks.

``We feel that it's reasonable to use classified information to obtain a conviction," said Hunter, a California Republican. ``We've got work to do."

In addition, Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, has joined a range of Democrats in insisting that all terror suspects have a right to challenge their detention in federal court. The agreement reached yesterday strips defendants at the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility of those ``habeas corpus" rights.

Still, with the biggest internal Republican Party squabble settled, Senate leaders expressed confidence that the deal will provide momentum for them to overcome the other areas of concern. Senate majority leader Bill Frist said Congress will be able to place a bill on the president's desk before the end of next week, when House and Senate members leave Washington to campaign for reelection.

``We have a legislative framework that would allow terrorists to be brought to justice," said Stephen J. Hadley, the president's national security adviser, who huddled with a group of senators that included Frist, McCain, Graham, and Warner to hammer out final details at the Capitol yesterday.

Aides said Democratic senators intend to carefully review the deal struck yesterday but appear unlikely to oppose it. Most Democrats have taken their cues from McCain, a former prisoner of war who was tortured while in captivity in North Vietnam, and have been content to allow Republicans to fight with one another over the issue of detainee treatment.

The legislation is necessary because of a June Supreme Court decision that struck down the administration's initial rules for trying terror suspects. The decision meant that to place suspected terrorists on trial, the administration needed to get congressional approval to create special tribunals.

In addition, following the court ruling, the president acknowledged the existence of a CIA interrogation program in which agents use particularly aggressive methods to interrogate top-level terrorist suspects. He has sought to obtain legal authority for that program to continue.

Bush warned that the Geneva Conventions' prohibition of ``outrages upon personal dignity" was too vague for the CIA program to continue, since agents would be reluctant to conduct interrogations out of fear of legal repercussions. McCain and the other senators, however, saw reinterpreting the treaty as a precedent that could end up harming American forces.

The compromise -- to uphold the Geneva Conventions but instead specify which acts are illegal under the War Crimes Act and implicitly approve others -- leaves open the question of what techniques President Bush will authorize.

Graham said he believes that ``water-boarding," a method designed to simulate drowning that American agents have been said to use in the past, would not be permitted under the compromise.

``It's a technique that is not of our values," Graham said. Hadley declined to comment on which techniques would be acceptable under the measure and whether any used in the past are among those banned in the new proposal.

He said the president will issue an executive order outlining ``standards and regulations" governing interrogations, but said it will not mention specific methods because that would allow terrorists to train for ways to frustrate those methods.