WASHINGTON, July 14: In a compromise worked out by the US Senate, President Bush has agreed to change the way his administration prosecutes prisoners of terror war and allow court review of government eavesdropping on terror suspects.
The twin compromises could lead to the curtailing of what critics in both Republican and Democratic parties have called the overaggressive use of presidential authority since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said President Bush had agreed to sign a bill authorising the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review a programme under which the National Security Agency had been monitoring international phone calls and e-mails.
The eavesdropping occurs when a person in the US and someone overseas are suspected of discussing terrorist activity.
Meanwhile, Republican Senators John Warner and John McCain said they believed they had an understanding with the White House that trials for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay would proceed under established military procedures, abandoning the administration’s plan to use wartime “commissions” with less restrictive rules of evidence. The agreements on eavesdropping and trying terror suspects are subject to approval by the Senate and the House.
Earlier this week, in the wake of a US Supreme Court decision on how to bring war prisoners to justice, the Bush administration also said it would apply the Geneva Conventions, which provides for humane treatment of captives.
Previously the administration said the Geneva Conventions did not apply to “enemy combatants” in a global war. In the past, the White House also had said it had constitutional authority to conduct the eavesdropping programme without court oversight.
Senators Warner and McCain said they were assured by the White House that detainees would be tried under a court modeled on the US military code of justice.
Abandoning trials by “military commissions” marked another shift that the administration had long resisted.
