GOP Senators Differ With President on Military Trials

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501200.html

GOP Senators Differ With President on Military Trials
Terrorism Suspects' Right To Information Is at Issue

Key Republican senators have drafted a legislative plan for special military trials of suspected terrorists that diverges from a recent Bush administration plan by granting defendants rights that the White House has sought to proscribe, government officials said yesterday.

Under the lawmakers' plan, any future military trials of the nearly 200 eligible U.S. detainees held in military prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other locations around the world would be governed by a law that explicitly ensures that defendants have the right to know the evidence against them.

The Bush administration has long maintained that no law is needed to establish a system of military commissions, as they are known, for trials of terrorism suspects, but the Supreme Court ruled otherwise in June. The administration still contends that military prosecutors should be able to present sensitive evidence to military judges but withhold it from defendants.

But the sponsors of the legislation -- Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) -- disagreed. They have embraced the view of senior uniformed military lawyers that blocking defendants' access to evidence would violate long-standing due-process standards and set a dangerous precedent for trials of captured U.S. military personnel.

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