Detainee Treatment Act
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The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (DTA) is an Act of the
United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...
that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on 30 December 2005. Offered as an amendment to a supplemental defense spending bill, it contains provisions relating to treatment of persons in custody of the
Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to: Current departments of defence * Department of Defence (Australia) * Department of National Defence (Canada) * Department of Defence (Ireland) * Department of National Defense (Philipp ...
, and administration of detainees held in Guantanamo Bay,
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, including: *Prohibiting " cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" of any prisoner of the U.S. government, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. *Requiring military interrogations to be performed according to the U.S. Army Field Manual for Human Intelligence Collector Operations. *Directing the Department of Defense to establish
Combatant Status Review Tribunals The Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) were a set of tribunals for confirming whether detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp had been correctly designated as "enemy combatants". The CSRTs were estab ...
(CSRTs) for persons held in Guantanamo Bay. *Giving the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals authority to review decisions of CSRTs. *Requiring that ''
habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...
'' appeals for aliens detained at Guantanamo be per the DTA, though offering no specific provisions for it. *Giving immunity to government agents and military personnel from civil and criminal action for using interrogation techniques that "were officially authorized and determined to be lawful at the time they were conducted."


Legislative details

The amendment affected the
United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...
Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2006 (DOD Act); the amendment is commonly referred to as the ''Amendment on (1) the Army Field Manual and (2) Cruel, Inhumane, Degrading Treatment, amendment #1977'' and also known as the ''McCain Amendment 1977''. It became the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (DTA) as Division A, Title X of the DOD Act. The amendment prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, by confining interrogations to the techniques in
FM 34-52 Intelligence Interrogation The US Army Field Manual on Interrogation, sometimes known by the military nomenclature FM 34-52, is a 177-page manual describing to military interrogators how to conduct effective interrogations while conforming with US and international law. It ha ...
. Also, section 1005(e) of the DTA prohibits aliens detained in Guantanamo Bay from applying for a writ of ''
habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...
''. Certain portions of the amendment were enacted as . Amendment 1977 amended the passed by the
United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the Lower house, lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the United States Senate, Senate being ...
. The amendment was introduced to the Senate by Senator
John McCain John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American politician and United States Navy officer who served as a United States senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018. He previously served two terms ...
( R-
Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
) on October 3, 2005, a
S.Amdt.1977
The amendment was co-sponsored by a bi-partisan group of senators, including
Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin Graham (born July 9, 1955) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from South Carolina, a seat he has held since 2003. A member of the Republican Party, Graham chaired the Senate Committee ...
,
Chuck Hagel Charles Timothy Hagel ( born October 4, 1946)Gordon H. Smith Gordon Harold Smith (born May 25, 1952) is an American politician, businessman, and academic administrator who served as a United States Senator from the state of Oregon. A Republican, he served two terms in the Senate from 1997 to 2009. On Septe ...
, Susan M. Collins,
Lamar Alexander Andrew Lamar Alexander Jr. (born July 3, 1940) is a retired American lawyer and politician who served as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 2003 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he also was the 45th governor of Tennessee from ...
, Richard Durbin,
Carl Levin Carl Milton Levin (June 28, 1934 – July 29, 2021) was an American attorney and politician who served as a United States senator from Michigan from 1979 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the chair of the Senate Armed Services C ...
, John Warner,
Lincoln Chafee Lincoln Davenport Chafee ( ; born March 26, 1953) is an American politician. He was mayor of Warwick, Rhode Island from 1993 to 1999, a United States Senator from 1999 to 2007, and the 74th Governor of Rhode Island from 2011 to 2015. He was a m ...
, John E. Sununu, and Ken Salazar. On October 5, 2005, the United States Senate voted 90–9 to support the amendment. The Senators who voted against the amendment were
Wayne Allard Alan Wayne Allard (born December 2, 1943) is an American veterinarian and politician who served as a United States Representative (1991–1997) and United States Senator (1997–2009) from Colorado, as well as previously a Colorado State Senator ...
(R-CO), Christopher Bond (R-MO),
Tom Coburn Thomas Allen Coburn (March 14, 1948 – March 28, 2020) was an American politician and physician who served as a United States senator for Oklahoma from 2005, until his resignation in 2015. A Republican, he previously served as a United St ...
(R-OK),
Thad Cochran William Thad Cochran (; December 7, 1937 – May 30, 2019) was an American attorney and politician who served as a United States Senator for Mississippi from 1978 until his resignation due to health issues in 2018. A Republican, he previously ...
(R-MS),
John Cornyn John Cornyn III ( ; born February 2, 1952) is an American politician and attorney serving as the senior United States senator from Texas, a seat he has held since 2002. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the Senate majority whip for ...
(R-TX),
James Inhofe James Mountain Inhofe ( ; born November 17, 1934) is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from Oklahoma, a seat he was first elected to in 1994. A member of the Republican Party, he chaired the U.S. Senate Committe ...
(R-OK),
Pat Roberts Charles Patrick Roberts (born April 20, 1936) is a retired American politician and journalist who served as a United States senator from Kansas from 1997 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, Roberts served 8 terms in the U.S. House of Re ...
(R-KS),
Jeff Sessions Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (born December 24, 1946) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 84th United States Attorney General from 2017 to 2018. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as United States ...
(R-AL), and
Ted Stevens Theodore Fulton Stevens Sr. (November 18, 1923 – August 9, 2010) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a U.S. Senator from Alaska from 1968 to 2009. He was the longest-serving Republican Senator in history at the time he left ...
(R-AK).


Signing statement by President Bush

President Bush signed the bill into law on December 30, 2005. In his
signing statement A signing statement is a written pronouncement issued by the President of the United States upon the signing of a bill into law. They are usually printed along with the bill in ''United States Code Congressional and Administrative News'' (USCCAN). ...
, Bush said: The ''
Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'' quoted an anonymous senior administration official saying,
Of course the president has the obligation to follow this law, (but) he also has the obligation to defend and protect the country as the commander in chief, and he will have to square those two responsibilities in each case. We are not expecting that those two responsibilities will come into conflict, but it's possible that they will.


Criticism

The Act sets the Army's standards of interrogation as the standard for all agencies in the Department of Defense. It prohibits all other agencies of the U.S. government, such as the
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
, from subjecting any person in their custody to "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment." However, the Act does not provide detailed guidelines that spell out the meaning of that phrase. In an effort to provide clarification, Congress passed legislation in 2008 to similarly constrain the intelligence community to the Field Manual's techniques. McCain voted against this bill and recommended that President Bush follow through on his threat to veto it, arguing that the CIA already could not engage in torture but should have more options than afforded to military interrogators. That bill was passed by both chambers of Congress but, once vetoed, failed to pass with sufficient votes to override the executive veto."H.R.2082: Major Congressional Actions"
, 110th Congress, March 11, 2008 The Detainee Treatment Act cited the U.S. Army's Field Manual on interrogation as the authoritative guide to interrogation techniques, but did not cite a specific edition of the Manual. The contents of the Manual are controlled by the Department of Defense, and thus the executive branch controls whether a given technique will be permitted or banned. The Manual has been revised since the Amendment became law. The Department of Defense has claimed that none of the techniques permitted by the new Field Manual 2-22.3 is classified. Also, the Detainee Treatment Act's anti-torture provisions were modified by the Graham-Levin Amendment, which was attached to the $453-billion 2006 Defense Budget Bill. The Graham-Levin Amendment permits the Department of Defense to consider evidence obtained through torture of Guantanamo Bay detainees, and expands the prohibition of ''
habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...
'' for re-detainees, which subsequently leaves detainees no
legal recourse A legal recourse is an action that can be taken by an individual or a corporation to attempt to remedy a legal difficulty. * A lawsuit if the issue is a matter of civil law * Contracts that require mediation or arbitration before a dispute can go ...
if they are tortured. Critics say these two actions deflate the Detainee Treatment Act from having any real power in stopping torture by the United States government, and these were the reasons why President Bush and McCain "conceded" to congressional demands. The media credited their concession to "overwhelming congressional support" for the measure. Amnesty International claims that the amendment's loopholes signal that torture is now official US policy. The Republican senators
Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin Graham (born July 9, 1955) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from South Carolina, a seat he has held since 2003. A member of the Republican Party, Graham chaired the Senate Committee ...
and
Jon Kyl Jon Llewellyn Kyl ( ; born April 25, 1942) is an American politician and lobbyist who served as a United States Senator for Arizona from 1995 to 2013 and again in 2018. A Republican, he held both of Arizona's Senate seats at different times, ser ...
have been criticized for their ''
amicus curiae An ''amicus curiae'' (; ) is an individual or organization who is not a party to a legal case, but who is permitted to assist a court by offering information, expertise, or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case. The decision on ...
'' brief filed in the ''
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ''Hamdan v. Rumsfeld'', 548 U.S. 557 (2006), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay violated both the Uniform Code of Mili ...
'' (2006) case, in which they argued that the Detainee Treatment Act's passage sufficed to deny the Supreme Court jurisdiction over the case. Language in the '' Congressional Record,'' which is cited in the
majority opinion In law, a majority opinion is a judicial opinion agreed to by more than half of the members of a court. A majority opinion sets forth the decision of the court and an explanation of the rationale behind the court's decision. Not all cases have ...
, was inserted by Graham and Kyl into the Record for the day on which the amendment passed ''after the legislation had already been enacted.'' The language in question was worded in such a manner as to imply it had been recorded in live debate. The revised Record contains such phrasing as Kyl's "Mr. President, I see that we are nearing the end of our allotted time" and Sen.
Sam Brownback Samuel Dale Brownback (born September 12, 1956) is an American attorney, politician, diplomat, and member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party who served as the United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Fr ...
's "If I might interrupt". Brownback has not responded to press inquiries. Justice Scalia's dissent noted this incident as an example on which he has based his longstanding hostility to the use of legislative history in court decisions. Scalia wrote:


See also

*
United Nations Convention Against Torture The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (commonly known as the United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT)) is an international human rights treaty under the review of the United Nation ...
*
Ethical arguments regarding torture The prohibition of torture is a peremptory norm in public international lawmeaning that it is forbidden under all circumstancesas well as being forbidden by international treaties such as the United Nations Convention Against Torture . It is gene ...
*
Ticking time bomb scenario The ticking time bomb scenario is a thought experiment that has been used in the ethics debate over whether interrogational torture can ever be justified. The scenario can be formulated as follows: Suppose that a person with knowledge of an immi ...
*
Unlawful combatant An unlawful combatant, illegal combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent is a person who directly engages in armed conflict in violation of the laws of war and therefore is claimed not to be protected by the Geneva Conventions. The Internati ...
*
Military Commissions Act of 2006 The Military Commissions Act of 2006, also known as HR-6166, was an Act of Congress signed by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006. The Act's stated purpose was "to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of ...
*
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ''Hamdan v. Rumsfeld'', 548 U.S. 557 (2006), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay violated both the Uniform Code of Mili ...
* Guantanamo captives' appeals in Washington DC Courts *
Military Commissions Act of 2009 The Military Commissions Act of 2009, which amended the Military Commissions Act of 2006, was passed to address concerns by the United States Supreme Court. In ''Boumediene v. Bush'' (2008) the court had ruled that the Military Commissions Act ...
*
Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010 The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010 (S. 3081) is a bill introduced by United States Senator John McCain, sponsored by Joe Lieberman and eight other Republican senators. Its counterpart in the House is H.R. ...


References


External links


Bush, McCain and 'torture'
- Robert J. Caldwell, ''The San Diego Union-Tribune'' - September 24, 2006
Text of Amendment

Senators who voted for and against the amendmentMcCain statement
*Editoria

WSJ Opinion Journal (October 30, 2005)

Matthew R. McNabb, National Security Crimes Blog *Umansky, Eri
''Detention Tension''
Slate (November 2, 2005)
Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (White House)
JURIST A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Uni ...
, (December 31, 2005)
McCain Undermined: The 'Obedience to Orders' Defense
JURIST A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Uni ...
, (January 6, 2006)
No Habeas at Guantanamo? The Executive and the Dubious Tale of the DTA
JURIST A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Uni ...
, (March 6, 2006)
Why the McCain Torture Ban Won't Work: The Bush legacy of legalized torture
by Professor
Alfred W. McCoy Alfred "Al" William McCoy (born June 8, 1945) is an American historian and educator. He is the Fred Harvey Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.TomDispatch Thomas M. Engelhardt (born 1944) is an American writer and editor. He is the creator of Type Media Center's tomdispatch.com, an online blog. He is also the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of the 1998 book, ''The End of V ...
, February 8, 2006
Invisible Men: Did Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl mislead the Supreme Court? by Emily Bazelon
''
Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'', March 27, 2006
The criticized amicus brief filed by Senators Graham and Kyl on Dec. 21, 2005Smintheus, "Has McCain Flip-Flopped on Torture?" Daily Kos, April 11, 2008
*Human Rights First
Undue Process: An Examination of Detention and Trials of Bagram Detainees in Afghanistan in April 2009 (2009)
*Human Rights First
Tortured Justice: Using Coerced Evidence to Prosecute Terrorist Suspects (2008)
*Human Rights First
Leave No Marks: Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and the Risk of Criminality
{{John McCain United States federal defense and national security legislation George W. Bush administration controversies John McCain Torture in the United States Acts of the 109th United States Congress Riders to United States federal appropriations legislation