Specter's Role in Passage Of Detainee Bill Disputed

Although Frist did not say so then, staffers told others they were nervous that Maine's two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe, and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) might support Specter's less extreme amendment.

Around the time of the vote, several members of the Judiciary Committee staff circulated reports that Frist and the White House pressured Specter into doing the administration's bidding on the habeas corpus amendment. The staffers said Specter was told that no floor time would be available to debate the milder alternative, according to five legislative aides and lobbyists following the bill, who said in separate interviews that they heard this account directly from the staff.

In a telephone interview, Specter disputed that assertion and said he was unaware that more Republicans might have supported the less extreme amendment. Frist "wanted me to limit it to one amendment . . . he wanted to get the bill finished," Specter said. But "he did not tell me" which bill to bring to the floor.

Specter said the less extreme amendment he sponsored "doesn't appeal to me for many reasons." Some habeas corpus petitions succeed on the second try, he said, an option it would not have allowed. "I know they were very nervous about the one that I offered. . . . I could not have pressed an amendment any more strenuously than I did that one," he said. Call said Frist had not told Specter which amendment to offer.

Would the alternative amendment have attracted more GOP support? A Republican aide directly familiar with Hagel's position confirmed that the senator supported the less extreme alternative.

Specter said he did not speak to Hagel before the vote but telephoned him in Vietnam after being interviewed by The Washington Post. He said Hagel told him otherwise. Asked to clarify the discrepancy, Hagel spokesman Mike Buttry said the senator was "not going to talk about hypotheticals."

Six legislative aides and lobbyists separately quoted an aide to Collins as saying at the time that the senator would have supported the alternative amendment, providing the second vote needed to ensure its success. Asked about the statements, Collins's spokeswoman, Jen Burita, said that "we don't know how she would have voted."

Spokesmen for two other senators who voted with the administration, Snowe and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), also declined to say if they would have supported the less extreme alternative.

Four Democratic lawmakers put forward amendments of their own that they knew would not attract enough GOP support to win. They would have required periodic reports on detainees held in CIA custody, closed the special military court system in 2011, or required U.S. notification of other countries that their officials would be prosecuted for extreme detainee abuses.

"Sometimes you offer an amendment because that's what you believe in," said an aide to one Democrat.

But for at least some Democrats involved in lobbying on the bill, the defeat of these amendments -- plus Specter's -- was not entirely an unhappy result. Some lawyers representing detainees told lawmakers before the vote that they were convinced the Supreme Court would strike down Bush's version of the bill.

They argued against a compromise -- such as Specter's unoffered amendment -- on grounds that it could make the outcome more difficult for the court to reject, a senior Democratic aide said. "We were hearing from some of the constitutional experts that . . . it is better to leave the pig ugly than put lipstick on it," the aide said, explaining why Democrats did not propose a habeas corpus amendment that might have won.

Those interviewed said they doubt a challenge to the new law -- once it is signed by Bush -- could be decided by the Supreme Court in less than a year. That leaves hundreds of suspects now incarcerated without legal recourse during that period, and potentially far beyond it.