McCain holds his ground on torture

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December 7, 2005
White House and McCain Near Deal on Torture
By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 - The White House has all but abandoned its effort to persuade Senator John McCain to exempt Central Intelligence Agency employees from legislation barring inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners in American custody. But a top presidential aide continued to negotiate a deal on Tuesday that would offer covert officers some protection from prosecution, administration and Senate officials said.

The talks between Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, and Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, took place by telephone Tuesday because Mr. McCain was on a book tour in Maine, said Eileen McMenamin, the senator's spokeswoman. The two men met at the White House last Thursday night.

White House officials and Ms. McMenamin refused to discuss the negotiations, saying they were private conversations. But administration officials concede that Mr. McCain's provision, which would also require a uniform standard on how to interrogate detainees, stands a strong chance of becoming law, despite a White House threat to veto any legislation containing it. The measure has already passed the Senate, 90 to 9, and senior House Republican staff members say it would probably pass by a large margin in the House.

Faced with that reality, administration officials said, Mr. Hadley has now retreated to seeking narrower language that could make it harder to prosecute intelligence officers charged with violating torture standards.

Mr. Bush, speaking to reporters Tuesday morning, repeated his statement that "we do not torture." He added that the administration would do all it could, within the law, to protect its citizens from terrorists. His spokesman, Scott McClellan, refused Tuesday to discuss how Mr. Bush defines torture, or to say how the United States ensures that prisoners it turns over to foreign nations are not tortured.

"I'm not going to get into talking about these issues because it could compromise things in an ongoing war on terrorism," Mr. McClellan said. Later, he called the question of how the United States monitors the treatment of prisoners an "intelligence matter" that he could not discuss.

Mr. McCain is balking at agreeing to any kind of exemption for intelligence officials, members of his staff say. Instead, he has offered to include some language, modeled after military standards, under which soldiers can provide a defense if a "reasonable" person could have concluded that he or she was following a lawful order about how to treat prisoners. The senator's offer was first reported Saturday by The Wall Street Journal.

The negotiations between Mr. Hadley and Mr. McCain appear to be coming to a head. Four top House and Senate negotiators, meeting Tuesday to hammer out a military budget bill in conference committee, discussed Mr. McCain's measure and a handful of other contentious issues. But one of the negotiators, Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who heads the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters earlier in the day, "We think we're going to have a good outcome for all parties."

As the House returned to work after a two-week recess, a bitter partisan fight continues to rage over the war in Iraq. Republicans held a news conference to praise American progress in Iraq, while Democrats took credit for changing the public debate and lambasted President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for failing to outline a specific proposal for victory.

In the House, Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip, complained to reporters that Mr. Cheney "apparently wants to continue the option of torture as a national policy, and therefore the defense bill hasn't moved."

Mr. Hoyer said Democrats would stand behind Senator McCain. "He ought to stick to his guns - he's right," Mr. Hoyer said, adding, "We ought to make it clear that the policy of the United States is, we're going to follow not only international law but we're going to pursue our own values, and torture is not one of our values."

Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting for this article.




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