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<font size=3>September 6, 2006 <br>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/">
<img src="cid:6.2.5.6.2.20060906142446.02acf3e0@freedomarchives.org.0" width=199 height=47 alt="The New York Times">
</a> <br><br>
</font><h1><b>C.I.A. Detainees Sent to Guantánamo
</b></h1><font size=3>By
</font>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/david_stout/index.html?inline=nyt-per">
<font size=3 color="#000066">DAVID STOUT</a><br><br>
</font><font size=3>WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 – President Bush said today that
14 suspected terrorists held in secret locations by the
</font>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org">
<font size=3 color="#000066">C.I.A.</a></font><font size=3>, including
some who were deeply involved in the Sept. 11 attacks and other notorious
assaults on Americans, are being transferred to the Guantánamo Bay naval
base in Cuba to stand trial.<br><br>
Mr. Bush said in a speech at the White House that he welcomed the
transfers as a way to provide a measure of justice for relatives of the
nearly 3,000 people who died in the attacks five years ago next Monday.
“They should have to wait no longer,” he said.<br><br>
The president also urged Congress to approve legislation he was proposing
that would authorize the use of military commissions to try the
Guantánamo detainees. The legislation is aimed at addressing a
</font>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/supreme_court/index.html?inline=nyt-org">
<font size=3 color="#000066">United States Supreme
Court</a></font><font size=3> ruling in June that tribunals set up by the
Bush administration could not be used because Congress had not approved
them.<br><br>
Mr. Bush’s speech coincided with the Pentagon’s release of a new manual
spelling out specific procedures that can be used to interrogate
prisoners in Defense Department custody. The manual rules out some
questioning tactics that could be defined as torture, or humiliation, or
both. The manual does not apply to the Central Intelligence
Agency.<br><br>
The president’s announcement that the 14 terrorist suspects would be sent
to Guantánamo was the first time he that he had acknowledged the secret
program run by the C.I.A. to hold and question “high value” terrorist
suspects overseas.<br><br>
Allusions to the secret program have surfaced in court documents,
however, and some administration officials have assailed news
organizations for reporting about it.<br><br>
Mr. Bush said that the “small number of terrorist suspects’’ detained by
the C.I.A. “includes individuals believed to be key architects of the
Sept. 11 attacks and attacks on the USS Cole,’’ as well as on U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. <br><br>
“These are dangerous men with unparalleled knowledge about terror
networks and their plans of new attacks,’’ the president said. ’’The
security of our nation and the lives of our citizens depend on our
ability to learn what these terrorists know.’’<br><br>
He said that the location of the C.I.A. detention facilities could not be
divulged to protect U.S. allies that had allowed the agency to operate
within their borders. But he said: “I can say that innocent lives have
been saved, here in the United States and across the world,’’ he
said.<br><br>
He also said the C.I.A. could continue to detain and interrogate
terrorists suspects, though none are currently in the agency’s
custody.<br><br>
Interrogation procedures used by the agency against a former aide to
</font>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/osama_bin_laden/index.html?inline=nyt-per">
<font size=3 color="#000066">Osama bin Laden</a></font><font size=3>, Abu
Zubaydah, had been ’’tough, and safe and necessary,’’ Mr. Bush said. His
disclosures under interrogation led to the arrest of Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, who in turn led U.S. authorities to other terrorists. Mr. Bush
said his proposal to Congress for trials before military commissions is
both legal and within America’s tradition of respecting individual
rights.<br><br>
The suspected
</font>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda/index.html?inline=nyt-org">
<font size=3 color="#000066">Al Qaeda</a></font><font size=3> and
</font>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/t/taliban/index.html?inline=nyt-org">
<font size=3 color="#000066">Taliban</a></font><font size=3> members held
at Guantánamo are not “common criminals or bystanders accidentally swept
up on the battlefield,” Mr. Bush said, but killers whose hatred for the
United States is bottomless.<br><br>
Mr. Bush asked Congress to clarify what interrogators can and cannot do,
and to give them protection from lawsuits in United States courts by
detainees who might allege that their rights under the Geneva Convention
have been violated. The applicable section of the convention is too
“vague and undefined,” he said. <br><br>
Mr. Bush’s announcements today, made in a 36-minute speech in the White
House with some relatives of 9/11 victims present, may be interpreted by
administration critics as a retreat from his previous hard-line stand on
the handling of terrorist suspects.<br><br>
But the president adopted a posture of cooperation rather than surrender
today as he pledged to work closely with Congress to enact his package.
And with the traditional Labor Day start of the campaign season just
past, he put pressure on the lawmakers to declare their positions on
terrorism and how to fight it.<br><br>
Brian Knowlton of the International Herald Tribune contributed reporting
for this article.<br>
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