Senator: Gitmo An 'Embarrassment'

A senior Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter, urged Congress to clarify prisoners' rights at Guantanamo Bay, decrying a "crazy quilt" of legal decisions about the military's handling of suspected terrorists.

Other Republicans on Specter's Judiciary Committee were divided over whether the Republican Bush administration's practices were satisfactory. Military officers and Justice Department officials defended the treatment of suspects at the detention center on a U.S. Navy base in Cuba's southeastern coast.

"We're holding them humanely," said Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemingway, a legal adviser to the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in Belgium for talks with the European Union, defended the holding of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay camp, estimating that about a dozen prisoners released from Guantanamo had been killed or captured later "on the battlefield."

"We can't release them and have them go back to fight against America," he told reporters in Brussels.

Critics — mostly human-rights groups and Democrats — long have accused the administration of unjustly detaining suspects at Guantanamo. Amnesty International recently compared the prison to Soviet-era gulags, and even some Republicans have questioned whether it should remain open.

The Senate panel convened to wade into the complicated system in place to detain, interrogate and, if warranted, prosecute foreigners suspected of having links to Afghanistan's former ruling Taliban militia or the al Qaeda terror network.

The administration calls the Guantanamo prisoners "enemy combatants," entitled to fewer legal protections that those afforded prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Some detainees have been held for three years without charges.

The Supreme Court and lower federal courts have weighed in on detainees' rights but have issued conflicting opinions.

"It's a genuine crazy quilt to try to figure out where the due process rights lie," said Specter.

Military and Justice Department witnesses testified that extraordinary protections are in place for prisoners' rights and the processing of their cases. To ensure they weren't mistakenly classified as enemy combatants, each case goes through a process in which all evidence is looked at, and detainees get formal hearings before review panels, the officials said.

Of the 558 given hearings at Guantanamo, 520 were declared "properly classified" as enemy combatants. Of the others, 23 have been released, Justice Department officials said.

"Because of the highly unusual nature of the global war on terror, and because we do not want to detain any person longer than is necessary, we've taken this unprecedented and historic action to establish this process to permit enemy combatants to be heard while conflict is ongoing," said Rear Adm. James M. McGarrah, who oversees reviews of prisoners and recommendations whether they should remain at Guantanamo.

Detaining terrorism suspects "serves the vital military objectives of preventing captured combatants from rejoining the conflict, and gathering intelligence to further the overall war effort, and to prevent additional attacks against our country," said Michael Wiggins, a deputy associate attorney general.

Still, he acknowledged, "Such detention is not for criminal justice purposes and is not part of our nation's criminal justice system."

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee's senior Democrat, called the detention center "an international embarrassment to our nation, to our ideals, and it remains a festering threat to our security." He added: "This policy on detainees is clearly not working."

Both Republicans and Democrats pressed witnesses on the pace of prosecutions.

"This seems to be a horribly slow process," said Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican.

Said Leahy: "We haven't seen any justice."

Hemingway responded: "We've moved with considerable dispatch. A lot of people think that all we did was dust off World War II procedures." In fact, he said, "We have built a whole judicial system to try these cases."

"Congress has its work cut out for it" as it studies the system that lies outside the scope of the U.S. judicial branch, Specter said. He expressed frustration that the House and Senate have failed to act on several bills, including his own, to define more clearly rights and procedures for enemy-combatant detainees.

"It may be that it's too hot to handle for Congress, may be that it's too complex to handle for Congress, or it may be that Congress wants to sit back as we customarily do," he said. "But at any rate, Congress hasn't acted."

Several Republicans defended the current system, saying U.S. officials have extracted critical intelligence from detainees.

"They are provided more due process than required," Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama said as he angrily defended the prison and took issue with what he called the hearing's negative tone.

Pressed by Democrats on how long detainees could be held, Hemingway said, "I think we can hold them as long as the conflict endures."

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., later asked for a timetable. "If there is no definition as to when the conflict ends, that means forever, forever, forever these folks get held at Guantanamo Bay," he said.

Wiggins responded: "It's our position that, legally, they can be held in perpetuity."

CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart notes it all added up to a frustrating day. The chairman of the committee, Specter, finally concluded that maybe the issue is just too complex for Congress to handle. In any event, nothing seems likely to change soon. The Pentagon argues there's just no other place to put so many prisoners.