Bush, GOP rebels agree on detainee bill

By ANNE PLUMMER FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 55 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The White House and rebellious Senate Republicans announced agreement Thursday on rules for the interrogation and trial of suspects in the war on terror.
President Bush' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> President Bush urged Congress to put it into law before adjourning for the midterm elections.

The agreement contains concessions by both sides, though the White House yielded ground on two of the most contentious issues. The Bush administration agreed to drop one provision narrowly interpreting international standards of prisoner treatment and another allowing defendants to be convicted on evidence they never see.
The accord, however, explicitly states the president has the authority to enforce Geneva Convention standards and enumerates acts that constitute a war crime, including torture, rape, biological experiments and cruel and inhuman treatment. White House officials said these provisions would provide the
CIA' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> CIA the clarity it needs to continue with the interrogation of its most valued suspects.
The pact follows more than a week of squabbling among Republicans that had threatened to derail an anti-terrorism agenda put together by the White House and GOP leaders going into the Nov. 7 elections. It was announced at a time when support for Bush's proposal in the GOP-run Congress had been crumbling, but the agreement could lead to enactment of one of Bush's top remaining priorities of the year.
The House and Senate are expected to vote next week on the legislation.
"I'm pleased to say that this agreement preserves the single most potent tool we have in protecting America and foiling terrorist attacks," the president said after the agreement was announced.
Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) of Arizona, one of three GOP lawmakers who told Bush he couldn't have the legislation the way he initially asked for it, said the deal "gives the president the tools he needs to continue to fight the war on terror and bring these evil people to justice."
The agreement would grant Congress' permission for Bush to convene military tribunals to prosecute terrorism suspects, a process the Supreme Court had blocked in June because it had not been authorized by lawmakers.
During those trials, coerced testimony would be admissible if a judge allows and if it was obtained before cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment was forbidden by a 2005 law. Bush wanted to allow all such testimony while the maverick senators — McCain, John Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — had wanted to exclude it.
The central sticking point had been a demand by the three senators that there be no attempt to redefine U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions.
CIA Director Michael Hayden praised the deal a week after saying his agency needed to be confident that its interrogation program for high-value terror suspects is legal.
"If this language becomes law, the Congress will have given us the clarity and the support that we need to move forward with a detention and interrogation program that allows us to continue to defend the homeland, attack al-Qaida and protect American and allied lives," he wrote to CIA personnel.
Added
Stephen Hadley' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Stephen Hadley, the president's national security adviser, on CIA interrogations: "The good news is the program will go forward."
Rep. Duncan Hunter (news, bio, voting record), R-Calif., indicated he was not satisfied with the piece on classified information: "We're going to look at it closely. And we have some recommendations with respect to classified information."
Hadley said the bar would be "very high" and that classified information would not be automatically shared with terrorists.
"Our view is we think it's a good approach because the likelihood of that occurring would be very remote," Hadley said.
Bush expressed support for the deal before microphones in Orlando, Fla., where he was campaigning for Republican candidates.
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," he said.
The accord was sealed in a 90-minute session in the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who had earlier in the day told Warner, McCain and Graham it was time to close the deal. The four lawmakers were joined by Hadley, as well as other administration officials, for the final session.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Democrats backed the GOP's efforts to bring terrorists to justice. "Five years after 9/11, it is time to make the tough and smart decisions to give the American people the real security they deserve," Reid said.
The agreement was hailed by human rights groups.
"Today's agreement makes clear that the president cannot unilaterally downgrade the humane treatment standards of the Geneva Conventions," said Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First.
Whatever the outcome, the controversy has handed critics of the president's conduct of the war on terror election-year ammunition.
Bush's former secretary of state,
Colin Powell' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Colin Powell, dismayed the administration when he sided with Warner, McCain and Graham. He said Bush's plan, which would have formally changed the U.S. view of the Geneva Conventions on rules of warfare, would cause the world "to doubt the moral basis" of the fight against terror and "put our own troops at risk."
The handling of suspects is one of two administration priorities relating to the war on terror.
The other involves the president's request for legislation to explicitly allow wiretapping without a court warrant on international calls and e-mails between suspected terrorists in the United States and abroad. One official said Republicans had narrowed their differences with the White House over that issue, as well, and hoped for an agreement soon.
Republican leaders have said they intend to adjourn Congress by the end of the month to give lawmakers time to campaign for re-election.
The Supreme Court ruled in June that Bush's plan for trying terrorism suspects before military tribunals violated the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law.
The court, in a 5-3 ruling, found that Congress had not given Bush the authority to create the special type of military trial and that the president did not provide a valid reason for the new system. The justices also said the proposed trials did not provide for minimum legal protections under international law.
About 450 terrorism suspects, most of them captured in
Afghanistan' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Afghanistan and none of them in the U.S., are being held by military authorities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ten have been charged with crimes.

Space shuttle glides to a safe landing

By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 1 minute ago
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Space shuttle Atlantis and its six astronauts glided to a safe landing in darkness early Thursday, ending a 12-day mission whose smooth success was briefly upstaged by the high drama caused by mysterious floating debris.

"Nice to be back. It was a great team effort," said commander Brent Jett immediately after touchdown at
Kennedy Space Center' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Kennedy Space Center at 6:21 a.m. EDT.
More than 1 1/2 hours after landing, the astronauts, all wearing broad grins, left the shuttle to greet
NASA' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> NASA administrator Michael Griffin and other agency officials. Then they walked under Atlantis to inspect the shuttle's heat shield.
"It's really a beautiful day in Florida, a great way to end a mission," said Jett. "It was a pretty tough few days for us, a lot of hard work, a great team effort to get the station assembly restarted on a good note."
Jett and his crew did the first construction work on the international space station since the Columbia disaster 3 1/2 years ago. The astronauts performed three grueling spacewalks and took on other heavy-lifting tasks in one of the most challenging missions ever, adding a 17 1/2-ton truss addition with giant solar wings that will help power the orbiting lab.
The landing 48 minutes before sunrise was a day later than planned because NASA ordered up extra inspections of the spacecraft's delicate skin to make sure it was safe to come home. The fear was that a mysterious piece of debris spotted floating nearby on Tuesday might have hit the spacecraft. Astronauts later saw other debris.
It was a flying piece of foam insulation that knocked a hole in Columbia causing its demise in 2003, killing seven astronauts. Since then, NASA has developed new equipment and practices to guard against and watch out for similar damage to the sensitive space shuttle.
Those new techniques were used to make sure Atlantis was safe to return. After numerous cameras took pictures above and below Atlantis, some of them maneuvered robotically by the shuttle astronauts, NASA proclaimed the spacecraft damage-free.
"We've seen a new standard in NASA vigilance," said shuttle program manager Wayne Hale.
NASA officials said their best guess was that the most worrisome debris was a plastic filler from the thermal tiles which protect the shuttle from blasting heat. Four other unidentified objects, including a possible garbage bag, floated near the shuttle over the next day.
In a news conference, Griffin downplayed the litter in space, saying debris can slip out of the shuttle cargo bay because people are not perfect. He and launch director Mike Leinbach said Atlantis came back as clean, if not cleaner, than Discovery in its two previous landings.
The unplanned drama threatened to overshadow what had been a nearly flawless mission filled with strenuous spacewalks and rigorous robotics work that placed the space station back on a path to completion after its long hiatus. The crew of five men and one woman were the longest-trained in NASA history, because they were originally supposed to fly to the space station in 2003. But the Columbia accident kept them grounded.
The mission was the first of 15 tightly scheduled flights needed to finish constructing the half-built space lab by 2010.
"We are rebuilding the kind of momentum that we have had in the past and that we need if we're going to finish the space station," said Griffin.
NASA and its international partners of Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan must finish building the space station before the U.S. space agency ends the shuttle program in 2010 with plans to return to the moon in a new vehicle. The massive, 25-year-old shuttles are the only spaceships large enough to haul construction parts to the space lab.
The next flight in the construction sequence is set for December.
The mission was bookended by delays. The launch was scrubbed four times in two weeks because of a launch pad lightning bolt, Tropical Storm Ernesto and problems with the electrical system and a fuel gauge. Griffin called those snags "just routine life in the space business."
With all the postponements, NASA negotiated with the Russians to squeeze out one last chance in its launch window. The Russians were worried the trip would interfere with their Soyuz trip to the space station with a paying customer, Iranian-born space tourist Anousheh Ansari, a Dallas businesswoman. The Soyuz lifted off Monday, just hours after Atlantis had undocked from the space station.
Less than 24 hours after Atlantis undocked, an oxygen generator on the space station overheated and spilled a toxic irritant, forcing the three-man crew to don masks and gloves in the first emergency ever declared aboard the 8-year-old orbiting outpost.
___
On the Net:
NASA: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_sc/storytext/space_shuttle/20362963/SIG=10tpccdlk/*http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

Huntsman unveils map proposing 4 districts

By Bob Bernick Jr. and Suzanne StruglinskiDeseret Morning News
Gov. Jon Hunstman Jr. unveiled a new four-congressional district map Wednesday as negotiations continue in Washington to grant Utah an additional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

"It is imperative that we come together and do what is best for Utah. Clearly, it is in our best interest to gain a much needed and deserved fourth seat," Huntsman said Wednesday. "This map is consistent with my pledge of fairness made last week to the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives." Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., wants to change a pending bill that would give Utah a fourth House seat that is at-large until the 2010 Census, instead creating four distinct geographic districts that would be established by the state. Huntsman testified before the committee last week in Washington, saying while he preferred the at-large option, redistricting could be done fairly. "Whether we like it or not, that legislation granting Utah a fourth congressional seat can only make it through the House Judiciary Committee with an amendment striking the 'at-large' election provision," said Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah. "I have made it clear, and I think many Utahns agree, that what matters is that we get the additional seat we deserve and for which we have fought so hard." The Utah seat is a political compromise in a bill that grants a vote in the House for the District of Columbia, where residents currently do not have a voting member in the House or Senate. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C. is still working on a compromise to get the bill through, according to her office. Cannon encouraged the governor and Utah's state legislative leaders to work with Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, "to provide the assurances he apparently needs in order to embrace a process that will lead to a fair reapportionment."

document.writeln(AAMB6);
document.write(''); "We should not lose this opportunity to gain the fourth seat we so clearly deserve due to the partisan interests of any member of the delegation," Cannon said. But Matheson says it's up to the Republicans to make sure this bill goes through and he is not the one preventing it from moving forward. "I have always said Utah deserves an additional voice in Congress," Matheson said in a statement. "Utah should have been given a fourth seat after the 2000 Census. I've supported bipartisan legislation that would accomplish the goal. That compromise bill took partisanship out of the mix, and it seemed likely to move forward, until one member of Congress blocked the bill's progress. If it gets unstuck, I look forward to voting for it. But clearly the ball is in the majority party's court." Matheson spokeswoman Alyson Heyrend said Matheson would vote for a bill giving Utah a fourth seat, whether it creates a fourth district or an at-large position. She said it was "way too hypothetical" to comment on the maps released by the governor Wednesday. "Congress isn't going to pass any maps, that is putting the cart before the horse," Heyrend said. "The Utah Legislature does the redistricting." She said Matheson's office knew nothing about the maps until the governor's press release came out. "Who knows what the Utah Legislature will do," Heyrend said. Meanwhile back in Utah, Huntsman, state House Speaker Greg Curtis and Senate President John Valentine, all Republicans, quickly met Wednesday to give preliminary approval to a four-district alternative. Oddly enough, it was not the four-district plan that was formally adopted by the 2001 GOP-controlled Legislature and former GOP Gov. Mike Leavitt. Leaders adopted a four-district plan then just in case Utah won its U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the U.S. Census data from which North Carolina, not Utah, was given an extra U.S. House seat. Utah ultimately lost that court challenge, and so a new three-district redistricting plan was adopted. Todd Taylor, executive director of the Utah Democratic Party, was not pleased with what he saw under the new four-district plan Wednesday. "First off, on its face, it is illegal," said Taylor, who has led state Democrats through two previous statewide redistricting efforts, in 1991 and in 2001. Court-tested redistricting law says that each district's population can vary only by 0.5 percent from other districts', Taylor said. The four districts put forward by GOP leaders Wednesday show population variations of 2.39 percent, 2.52 percent, 4.21 percent and 0.70 percent, respectively. "This shows Utah's Republicans going back to their old tendencies," Taylor said. "They either dump all the Democrats they can into one district, or they break up all the Democrats they can into all the districts." Curtis said: "We were told to draw up a map that was very fair to Congressman Matheson. We did that. Of the 15 Utah House seats that Democrats hold in Salt Lake County, the new 2nd District has 14 of them. I told the governor I don't know how we could have drawn it any more Democratic." Taylor said despite artificial deadlines that GOP leaders in Washington may have put on Utah to suggest a four-district plan, this is not the way to go about it. "As bad as the four-seat plan adopted" in 2001 "may have been, at least there was an open hearing process. They come up with this map in one day with no hearings at all. I got my map from a newspaper reporter," Taylor said. There will still be public hearings and "tweaking" of the boundaries to get each of the four new districts' populations below 0.5 percent deviation, Curtis said. The four-district plan GOP leaders put together Wednesday may actually put more Democrats into Matheson's new 2nd District than he has in his current 2nd District, which takes in the eastern part of Salt Lake County and counties to the east, south and southwest. His is one of the largest geographic districts in the nation. Under the new four-district plan, Matheson would pick up more of the west side of the county, all of Summit County (which he has now) and then north into Morgan County. The county's west side and the 7,100 residents in Morgan County would be new for him. While Matheson would pick up new constituents in Morgan County and the west side of Salt Lake County, he probably would be better off in his Democrat/Republican ratio. But, by making a safe Democratic seat, Republicans could also be making the other three seats even more secure for Republicans — and thus for a decade or more making it nearly impossible for Democrats to capture a second Utah congressional seat. "I don't know how to answer that complaint," Curtis said. "I guess Todd Taylor just is having a bad day and won't be happy with anything we do."
E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com; suzanne@desnews.com

Alleged 9/11 planner faces Gitmo hearing

By ANDREW SELSKY, Associated Press 2 hours, 42 minutes ago
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks, and other alleged terrorists linked to major attacks against the U.S. are expected to face hearings at the Guantanamo prison camp within three months, a military official said Wednesday.
Fourteen "high-value" detainees — including the alleged plotter of the USS Cole' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> USS Cole bombing and the alleged coordinator of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania — will be invited to appear at hearings, held to determine whether they're enemy combatants, said Navy Capt. Phil Waddingham, director of the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants.
If Mohammed appears, it would mark the first time he has been seen since he was captured more than three years ago in Pakistan. Detainees can refuse to appear but the tribunals — held in small rooms inside a prefab building here — will be held regardless, Waddingham told reporters.
Mohammed and the 13 other top alleged terrorists were recently transferred from
CIA' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> CIA custody to this isolated
U.S. Navy' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba,
President Bush' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> President Bush announced on Sept. 6.
Army Brig. Gen. Edward A. Leacock, the deputy commander of Guantanamo, said the 14 new detainees are being treated humanely. Authorities have said they are being held in a maximum-security area but Leacock refused to say precisely where.
"They're all adapting well to their new environment," Leacock said in an interview with reporters here, adding that they're fed three times a day, have recreational opportunities and have opportunities to pray five times per day.
They are being checked for medical and dental problems and have been given materials to write letters, which — after they are censored by the military — will be given to the Red Cross for mailing, Leacock said. The Red Cross announced in Geneva Wednesday they will come to Guantanamo to visit the 14 new detainees next week.
Waddingham told reporters visiting Guantanamo that preparations were being made for the Combatant Status Review Tribunals for Mohammed and the other 13 detainees. They would be open to the press, he said.
"I am expecting the CSRTs to begin in two or three months," he said.
Every one of the other roughly 450 detainees at Guantanamo, who began arriving in 2002, have already undergone the tribunals. The tribunals for the 14 new arrivals will be held almost certainly using the same procedures, Waddingham said.
The tribunals are conducted by a three-member military panel, which examines evidence against a detainee, can speak to witnesses, and determines if the detainee is an enemy combatant and should be held. The detainee is represented by U.S. military counsel.
Those judged not to be enemy combatants are generally transferred out of Guantanamo to their home countries. Those determined to be enemy combatants stay locked up here. They then face annual Administrative Review Boards that examine whether they still pose a threat to the United States or have intelligence value.
Congress and the Bush administration are currently working on guidelines on how detainees should be interrogated and put on trial. Ten Guantanamo detainees have been charged with crimes but their military trials were put on hold after the Supreme Court last June ruled that the tribunals were illegal — partly because the Bush administration had set them up without Congressional approval.
Mohammed is believed to be the No. 3 al-Qaida leader before he was captured in Pakistan in 2003. Ramzi Binalshibh, who allegedly helped plan the Sept. 11 attacks and allegedly was a lead operative for a foiled plot to crash aircraft into London's Heathrow Airport, is also among the 14 captives. Abu Zubaydah, who was believed to be a link between
Osama bin Laden' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaida cells before he was captured in Pakistan in 2002, is also among the 14.
The Combatant Status Review Tribunals will also be held for them, Waddingham said. The 14 terrorism suspects are undergoing "orientation" and not being interrogated, Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock told a group of reporters at the
Pentagon' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Pentagon.
Craddock, who oversees U.S. military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean as commander of U.S. Southern Command, said estimated the 14 would be made available to the Red Cross around Oct. 1, but not before they completed their orientation.
In Geneva on Wednesday, the chief spokesman for the ICRC, Antonella Notari, said officials plan to arrive Sept. 25 for a scheduled two-week visit to Guantanamo. The ICRC is the only neutral agency with full access to Guantanamo detainees.