Washington – Stepping up a confrontation with the Senate over the treatment of detainees, the White House is insisting that the CIA be exempted from a proposed ban on abusive treatment of suspected al-Qaeda militants and other terrorists.
The Senate defied a presidential veto threat nearly three weeks ago and approved, 90-9, an amendment to a $440 billion military spending bill that would ban the use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” of any detainee held by the U.S. government.
That could bar some techniques the CIA has used in some interrogations overseas.
In a 45-minute meeting Thursday, Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA director, Porter Goss, urged Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who wrote the amendment, to support an exemption for the agency, arguing that the president needed maximum flexibility in dealing with the global war on terrorism, according to two government officials who were briefed on the meeting. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of the discussions.
McCain rejected the proposed exemption, which stated that the measure “shall not apply with respect to clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States, that are carried out by an element of the U.S. government other than the Department of Defense and are consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States and treaties to which the United States is a party, if the president determines that such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack.”
Spokesmen for McCain, Cheney and Goss all declined to comment on the matter Monday, citing the confidential nature of the discussions.
Human-rights organizations said Monday that it was unclear whether the presidential determination cited in the proposed exemption would require a case-by-case decision or would be more of a blanket authority. But they said the administration’s proposal would seriously undermine McCain’s measure.
Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First, formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said the administration had interpreted an international treaty banning torture to mean that a prohibition against cruel and inhumane treatment did not apply to CIA actions overseas.