NEW YORK, March 26 -- The Defense Department is considering major changes to the military tribunals that the Bush administration established to prosecute foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the New York Times reported in Sunday editions.
Citing military and administration officials, the newspaper said the proposed changes were detailed in a more-than-200-page draft manual for the tribunals that has been circulating among Pentagon lawyers.
However, there are reservations about effecting the changes because of the opposition of Vice President Cheney, the newspaper said.
The changes, which would come after widespread criticism from the federal courts, foreign governments and human rights groups, include strengthening the rights of defendants, establishing more independent judges to lead the panels and barring confessions obtained by torture, the newspaper said.
Military officials said the draft, modeled after the Manual for Courts-Martial, was written under the auspices of the official in charge of the tribunals, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Altenburg. Officials said the changes would generally move the tribunals, or "military commissions," more into line with the judicial standards applied to members of the U.S. military in traditional courts-martial, the Times reported.
President Bush first authorized the commissions after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The administration's willingness to restructure the commissions -- a central part of its strategy for fighting terrorism -- is uncertain, the Times said, with some officials seeing the changes as premature. A lawsuit challenging the legality of the commissions is now in a federal appeals court.
Some White House supporters of the reforms have changed jobs, leaving a small group of officials led by Cheney who oppose switching to the commission rules unless forced to do so by the courts.
"There are a number of folks who would like to make changes," the Times quoted one Pentagon official as saying about the rules governing the military commissions. But, the official added, "Cheney is still driving a lot of this."
Cheney's counsel, David Addington, rebuffed a question of possible modifications to the commission procedures at an interagency meeting this month on detainee policy. "We don't need any changes in the commissions," U.S. officials quoted Addington as saying. A spokesman for Cheney's office did not respond to requests for comment on the counsel's views, the Times said.
