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White House defends fight against torture ban
By John Hendren and Warren Vieth
11/09/05 "Los
Angeles Times" -- -- WASHINGTON -- The White House on
Tuesday defended its efforts to head off new restrictions on the
U.S. treatment of war prisoners as the issue headed toward a
showdown in Congress that has attracted worldwide interest.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Vice President Dick
Cheney was representing the views of President Bush in lobbying
lawmakers to exempt the CIA from legislation that would ban the
inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists and other detainees.
McClellan said existing laws and regulations were adequate to
prevent torture of the prisoners, including those held in what are
reported to be secret CIA-operated facilities in Eastern Europe.
"We follow those laws and rules," McClellan said. "What we need to
make sure is that we are able to carry out the war on terrorism as
effectively as possible."
The White House's aggressive lobbying comes as House and Senate
negotiators are considering a torture ban that, as an amendment to a
defense spending bill, breezed through the Senate last month on a
90-9 vote.
The debate was being watched closely in other countries. Some
critics of the U.S. have interpreted the administration's aversion
to new restrictions as confirmation that it favors the use of
torture as an interrogation tactic.
The torture ban, which was omitted from the House version of the
defense spending bill, would make the Army field manual the
authority on interrogations and would bar all U.S. government
agencies from "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" of prisoners.
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., on Tuesday postponed formal
discussions on the amendment by negotiators until next week. But a
House GOP leadership aide said that the top House and Senate
lawmakers have been unofficially meeting on the torture-ban
amendment, which was proposed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
As Congress considers the torture ban that would apply to all
government agencies, the Army is scrambling to tighten its rules for
prisoner interrogation.
Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey plans to enact 204 "corrective
actions" in a new draft version the Army Field Manual and other
policy directives, Army officials said.
Criticism of US. interrogation tactics was largely spurred by a
series of abuses shown in photographs of naked, hooded detainees at
the Abu Ghraib military prison outside of Baghdad. The photographs
were released last year, and several soldiers have been prosecuted
on charges stemming from the abuse.
One of the new rules clarifies the chain of command for military
prisons. For instance, A military police commander -- not a military
intelligence officer -- must be in charge of the detention facility.
Medical personnel, who were criticized in a New England Journal of
Medicine article for allegedly helping interrogators spot physical
and mental vulnerabilities among prisoners, would be barred from
providing information to interrogators, officials said.
Other changes would require a senior officer and a senior
noncommissioned officer to be inside a prison facility at all times,
require that all soldiers handling detainees be certified by the
Army in such duties, and require autopsies for all detainees who die
in custody. Red Cross reports must be sent to commanders within 24
hours. Contractors would be required to have the same training as
Army troops and will be monitored.
In a contentious exchange with White House reporters on Tuesday,
McClellan said Cheney's lobbying efforts were intended to preserve
the ability to question suspected terrorists aggressively,
"consistent with our laws and values."
McClellan denied that the CIA exemption sought by the vice president
would allow CIA operatives to torture foreign detainees to extract
information about suspected terrorist plots.
McClellan declined, however, to specify exactly what practices
Cheney was attempting to preserve in his conversations with
lawmakers.
Staff writer Richard Simon in Washington contributed to this report.
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