W. House Looks To Weaken Abuse Ban

(CBS/AP)  Congressional negotiators are feeling heat from the White House and their constituents as they consider whether to back the Senate-approved ban on torturing detainees in U.S. custody or weaken it as the White House prefers.

Led by Vice President Dick Cheney, the Bush administration is pushing floating an alternative proposal that would allow the president to exempt covert agents outside the Defense Department from the prohibition.

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Click here to read the proposal

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Meanwhile, some newspapers are calling for lawmakers to support Sen. John McCain's provision that would ban the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" against anyone in U.S. government custody, regardless of where they are held.

"There's a lot of public pressure to retain the language intact. At the same time, there's pressure from the vice president's office to modify it," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, a group that supports McCain's provision.

Cheney and CIA Director Porter Goss met last week with McCain, R-Ariz., and suggested excluding from the torture ban overseas clandestine counterterrorism operations by agencies other than the Pentagon "if the president determines that such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack."

McCain, himself a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, said Tuesday that he rejected that because "that would basically allow the CIA to engage in torture."

It's unclear just how much influence McCain has in the House-Senate negotiations to iron out differences between House and Senate versions of the $445 billion defense bill. McCain won't be involved in those negotiations.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Rep. Bill Young, R-Fla., who chair Congress' defense spending subcommittees, will be among the leaders of those talks in coming weeks.

Young has said the United States has no obligation to terrorists. Stevens, who voted against the ban in the Senate, said he planned to tweak it during negotiations to satisfy administration concerns that the ban was too broad because it would apply to agents who work undercover.

Top Democratic bargainers — Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania — support McCain's language, but their clout is limited because they are in the minority party.

Though the measure to stop detainee abuse passed the Senate 90 to 9, the administration says if it doesn't come out, the president will veto the entire bill funding the Pentagon, CBS News correspondent Bob Fuss reports.

The House bill did not include McCain's provision, which also requires U.S. service members to follow the Army Field Manual when imprisoning and questioning suspects in the war on terrorism.

In the weeks since the Senate vote, newspapers from Alabama to Texas to California have called on their lawmakers to support McCain's language. Several took particular aim at hometown Republicans leading the negotiations.

"Sen. Stevens is wrong and should follow the lead of Sen. McCain, who speaks firsthand of the wrongs of torture," the Anchorage Daily News said Monday.

Said the St. Petersburg Times on Oct. 16: "Young and his fellow conferees have an obligation to rise above partisanship and uphold principles that should be beyond debate in a civilized society."