DelawareOnline: Biden says U.S. handling of detainees must change
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, D-Del., said the Bush administration's system of handling terrorism suspects must be overhauled, especially the practice of rendition, where detainees are imprisoned in other nations, some with a record of human rights violations.
"Rendition, as is currently practiced, is undermining our moral credibility and standing abroad and weakening the coalitions with foreign governments that we need to effectively combat international terrorism," he said. "We also put our own intelligence officers at risk, by not providing them with clear guidelines to govern their conduct."
Biden said he has introduced a bill designed to change the way America handles foreign detainees. The bill is in part a response to an executive order issued July 20 by President Bush barring the Central Intelligence Agency from torturing terrorism suspects. The American Civil Liberties Union expressed skepticism last week over whether the order would stop torture.
The bill is designed to ban extraordinary rendition, and will define the term "unlawful enemy combatant" to force the Bush administration to be more specific in charging defendants with a crime.
The bill would also close secret prisons such as CIA-run "black sites," used to detain terrorism suspects outside the U.S., extend Bush's torture ban to include all branches of the military, and would give the writ of habeas corpus, which requires prisoners to be brought before a court to decide on the legality of their detention, to prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and allowing them to dispute whether they should be charged as a combatant or criminal defendant.
Philip Zelikow, former adviser to Bush's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and now a history professor at the University of Virginia, cautioned the committee against stripping the intelligence community of tools it may need to get information on terrorist activities.
Zelikow said legislators should be careful about drafting laws with unforeseen consequences that might endanger national security in the future.