Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “wants to make a deal on detainees with President Obama,” the New York Times reports.
Mr. Graham, a South Carolina Republican, has been talking in recent months with Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, in hopes of resolving a host of thorny legal problems. In exchange for some Republican support for closing the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Mr. Graham is pushing the administration to prosecute those accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks before a military commission, rather than in civilian court as the Justice Department intended.
Beyond that one case, though, Mr. Graham and others familiar with his proposals said he was seeking Mr. Obama’s support for comprehensive legislation setting detailed guidelines for handling all detainees. Such legislation would allow investigators to delay reading suspects their Miranda rights, send most top-level Qaeda figures to military rather than civilian courts and explicitly authorize the government to imprison some terrorism suspects without trials — not just Guantánamo inmates, but detainees who may be captured years in the future.
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