[Mb-civic] Cheney Fights for Detainee Policy - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Cheney Fights for Detainee Policy
As Pressure Mounts to Limit Handling Of Terror Suspects, He Holds Hard Line

By Dana Priest and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 7, 2005; Page A01

Over the past year, Vice President Cheney has waged an intense and 
largely unpublicized campaign to stop Congress, the Pentagon and the 
State Department from imposing more restrictive rules on the handling of 
terrorist suspects, according to defense, state, intelligence and 
congressional officials.

Last winter, when Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman 
of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, began pushing to have 
the full committee briefed on the CIA's interrogation practices, Cheney 
called him to the White House to urge that he drop the matter, said 
three U.S. officials.

In recent months, Cheney has been the force against adding safeguards to 
the Defense Department's rules on treatment of military prisoners, 
putting him at odds with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and acting 
Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon R. England. On a trip to Canada last 
month, Rice interrupted a packed itinerary to hold a secure 
video-teleconference with Cheney on detainee policy to make sure no 
decisions were made without her input.

Just last week, Cheney showed up at a Republican senatorial luncheon to 
lobby lawmakers for a CIA exemption to an amendment by Sen. John McCain 
(R-Ariz.) that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. 
The exemption would cover the CIA's covert "black sites" in several 
Eastern European democracies and other countries where key al Qaeda 
captives are being kept.

Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt declined to comment on the vice 
president's interventions or to elaborate on his positions. "The vice 
president's views are certainly reflected in the administration's 
policy," he said.

Increasingly, however, Cheney's positions are being opposed by other 
administration officials, including Cabinet members, political 
appointees and Republican lawmakers who once stood firmly behind the 
administration on all matters concerning terrorism.

Personnel changes in President Bush's second term have added to the 
isolation of Cheney, who previously had been able to prevail in part 
because other key parties to the debate -- including Attorney General 
Alberto R. Gonzales and White House counsel Harriet Miers -- continued 
to sit on the fence.

But in a reflection of how many within the administration now favor 
changing the rules, Elliot Abrams, traditionally one of the most hawkish 
voices in internal debates, is among the most persistent advocates of 
changing detainee policy in his role as the deputy national security 
adviser for democracy, according to officials familiar with his role.

At the same time Rice has emerged as an advocate for changing the rules 
to "get out of the detainee mess," said one senior U.S. official 
familiar with discussions. Her top advisers, along with their Pentagon 
counterparts, are working on a package of proposals designed to address 
all controversial detainee issues at once, instead of dealing with them 
on a piecemeal basis.

Cheney's camp is a "shrinking island," said one State Department 
official who, like other administration officials quoted in this 
article, asked not to be identified because public dissent is strongly 
discouraged by the White House.

A fundamental question lies at the heart of these disagreements: Four 
years into the fight, what is the most effective way to wage the 
campaign against terrorism?

Cheney's camp says the United States does not torture captives, but 
believes the president needs nearly unfettered power to deal with 
terrorists to protect Americans. To preserve the president's 
flexibility, any measure that might impose constraints should be 
resisted. That is why the administration has recoiled from embracing the 
language of treaties such as the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which 
Cheney's aides find vague and open-ended.

(continued)...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/06/AR2005110601281.html?referrer=email
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20051107/07a9f61c/attachment.htm