House OKs Terrorism Detainee Bill

The House approved legislation Wednesday giving the Bush administration authority to interrogate and prosecute terrorism detainees, moving the president to the edge of a pre-election victory with a key piece of his anti-terror plan.

The 253-168 vote in the House came shortly after senators agreed to limit debate on their own nearly identical bill, all but assuring its passage on Thursday.

Republican leaders are hoping to work out differences and send Bush a final version before leaving town this weekend to campaign for the Nov. 7 congressional elections.

For nearly two weeks the GOP have been embarrassed as the White House and rebellious Republican senators have fought publicly over whether Bush's plan would give him too much authority. But they struck a compromise last Thursday, and Republicans are hoping approval will bolster their effort to cast themselves as strong on national security, a marquee issue this election year.

House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, all but dared Democrats to vote against the legislation.

"Will my Democrat friends work with Republicans to give the president the tools he needs to continue to stop terrorist attacks before they happen, or will they vote to force him to fight the terrorists with one arm tied behind his back?" he asked just before members cast their ballots.

Four Democrats and Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania are being given opportunities to offer amendments in the Senate, but all were expected to fall with lawmakers eager to adjourn this weekend to devote the next five weeks to campaigning for re-election.

While bowing to the inevitable, Democrats continued to criticize the bill. Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said defendants still won't be able to confront some classified evidence against them while allowing evidence obtained through torture.

Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said Congress was acting in "an election-year frenzy" without addressing human rights and constitutional issues raised by the bill.

"I predict that the system created by this bill will be successfully challenged in the courts," Skelton said. "Our nation cannot afford to have any terrorist convictions overturned on judicial appeal."

The president wanted Congress to pass separate legislation that would have authorized warrantless surveillance of international communications of terror suspects, as well as the separate plan to establish a court system to prosecute terrorists.

But as lawmakers scurried to finish several items before leaving town this weekend and focus instead on midterm elections, Mr. Bush's terrorism surveillance bill fell to the wayside. Vast differences between House and Senate versions of the wiretapping bill cannot be bridged before week's end, Republican officials conceded.

That allowed Republicans to focus on passing a bill that would allow Mr. Bush to put the nation's most dangerous terror suspects on trial this fall — just as voters head to the polls.

The bill will let the Pentagon move ahead with military trials of detainees at Guantanamo, providing authority the Supreme Court said President Bush didn't have by himself, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Fuss.

It leaves the Geneva Conventions alone but says the president can interpret them. It also protects CIA agents and others from war crimes charges for using methods some define as torture.

While the bill will grant defendants more legal rights than they had under the old system, it nevertheless would permit some trial evidence not usually allowed in regular U.S. courts.

Hearsay evidence, for example, would be permitted, as long as a judge finds it to be reliable. Coerced testimony would be allowed in narrow circumstances — generally if a judge finds it reliable and the statement was taken before a 2005 ban on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.