Senior Administration Officials Hold a Background Briefing On the President's Proposed Legislation Establishing Military Commissions

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Senior Administration Officials Hold a Background Briefing On the President's Proposed Legislation Establishing Military Commissions

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS HOLD A BACKGROUND BRIEFING ON THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSED LEGISLATION ESTABLISHING MILITARY COMMISSIONS

SEPTEMBER 6, 2006

SPEAKERS: SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS

[*] SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Today, the president, as he has announced, sent up to Congress proposed legislation addressing the need for military commissions and issues raised by the Supreme Court's decision in the Hamdan case on Common Article 3.

As the president has indicated and as we've made clear in testimony to Congress, the president does want to work with Congress on legislation coming off the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan that would authorize by statute military commissions to try terrorist detainees who've committed war crimes.

And the legislation that the president is proposing would create a new chapter within Title 10 of the U.S. Code, following right after the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and it would create a new code of military commissions.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And this new code, which would be Chapter 47 of Title 10, would track many of the provisions of the UCMJ and would be modeled on the UCMJ.

It includes dozens of provisions that are taken from the UCMJ and adapted for purposes of military commission trials, with some important differences, as we've focused on and noted in prior testimony.

Most importantly, the hearsay rule would be relaxed. And also there's a provision with respect to the use of classified evidence, which is critically important when you're talking about trials of enemy combatants detained in the war of terror and the use of classified information leading to the detention and the potential for prosecution of these detainees.

In addition, however, the proposed legislation would make some key changes in the procedures that were initially laid out for military commissions under the military order of the president and the orders issues by the secretary of defense.

In particular, the legislation would provide for a military judge, who would preside ...

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