House Pushes Through New Detention, Tribunals Rules

GWEN IFILL:

Interrogating terror suspects. Congress puts its stamp on new rules. NewsHour congressional correspondent Kwame Holman reports.

KWAME HOLMAN:

Soon after the Supreme Court struck down the military commissions designed by the Bush administration to prosecute Guantanamo-held terror suspects, the White House, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Defense Department, and the Congress all began active negotiations to come up with an acceptable, constitutional solution.

One reason the high court derailed the tribunal plan was that the president never asked Congress to approve it.

REP. DUNCAN HUNTER (R-CA), House Armed Services Committee Chairman: The Supreme Court did not say that Congress did not have the right to proscribe this new and define this new structure under which we're going to prosecute terrorists. They said we had the obligation.

KWAME HOLMAN:

The details, announced with great fanfare at the Capitol last week, were fashioned into legislation and brought to the floor of the House today. Florida Democrat Alcee Hastings stood to remind that no members of his party were asked or even allowed to contribute to that process.

REP. ALCEE HASTINGS (D), Florida: All of the negotiations were with the administration and with the Republican majority. Go to the record from yesterday's Rules hearing and you will find that Duncan Hunter, the chair of the Armed Services Committee, said no Democrat was involved in those negotiations.

KWAME HOLMAN:

House Republicans, however, nearly were unanimous in support of the key provisions of the new military tribunals bill.

REP. MAC THORNBERRY (R), Texas: I think this is a good bill, but I also believe that it is right up to the edge of tying our own hands or, to change my metaphor, of putting blinders on ourselves, to make it very, very difficult to stop future attacks.