President Bush confirmed for the first time Wednesday that the United States has held some suspected terrorists captured overseas -- including alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- at covert jails run by the CIA. But the 14 such prisoners still in custody have now been transferred to the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he said.

The president's remarks came in a speech from the East Room of the White House in which he requested legislation to nail down the procedures by which such detainees can be tried before military tribunals. The need for such specific congressional authorization was reaffirmed when the Supreme Court ruled June 29 that Congress has never authorized the president to set up such trials.

The justices also ruled the tribunals as proposed at that time would have violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which affords such protections as the right to be present at trial, and the Geneva Conventions, which the court said may give detainees the same rights as U.S. citizens facing military trial.

The Supreme Court's ruling has "put in question the future of the CIA program," Mr. Bush said. He said he wants that program to continue "within the letter of the law" and will ask Congress to authorize it, arguing interrogations at the secret prisons have "given us information that has saved innocent lives by helping us stop new attacks -- here in the United States and across the world."

The devil is in the details, and a substantial debate can now be expected in Congress about aspects of the president's plan.

In his Wednesday address, for instance, the president sought authorization to use at these trials information that was obtained under coercion. But three Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- Chairman John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- have already introduced their own legislation to authorize the tribunals, and that legislation would ban the use of evidence obtained by coercion.

The procedures used by the CIA "were tough, and they were safe and lawful and necessary," Mr. Bush said, denying they constituted torture.

But the ban proposed by Sens. Warner, McCain and Graham is intended to prevent the use of information that may have been obtained by torture in foreign countries.

Another area of disagreement is likely to arise from Mr. Bush's proposal to bar defendants from court hearings where classified evidence is discussed. During Senate Armed Services Committee hearings in July, administration witnesses advocated such a step, but committee members voiced opposition.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer said Wednesday that Democrats are likely to support the more restrictive Warner-McCain-Graham proposal.

"Democrats welcome the Bush administration's long-overdue decision to try some of the alleged masterminds of the Sept. 11 attacks and other hideous terrorist acts," responded Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "The last thing we need is a repeat of the arrogant, go-it-alone behavior that has jeopardized and delayed efforts to bring these terrorists to justice for five years."

If the senator is advancing the old John Kerry chestnut that the administration should have sat on its hands while awaiting an unlikely endorsement of forceful action from some amorphous "consultation" with a gaggle of compromised, collaborationist, hand-wringing European "allies" ... well, go sell it in New England.

But if Sen. Reid means the administration is to be congratulated for acknowledging the authority of the Supreme Court and the Constitution, agreeing to consult with Congress in the light of day, seeking its authorization and hammering out policies that are in our great humane traditions and are thoroughly understood and approved by the representatives of a majority of the electorate, then Sen. Reid is right.

Yes, the terrorists by their nature, in their weakness and depravity, abjure, sidestep and ridicule the military conventions of the civilized world -- as when they quite literally fire from hospitals or from behind women and children, hoping for an opportunity to condemn their opponents' "barbarity" if this results in the very collateral casualties they seek.

It may be worth noting that in many cases we now debate the proper treatment of men who -- according to the conventions of civilized war -- could have been lined up against a wall and shot on the spot as out-of-uniform saboteurs the moment they were apprehended.

But the time has indeed come to put these characters on trial or send them home. Precisely how to do that should prove a useful and enlightening and politically healthy debate.

The president has now launched that process, and is to be applauded for doing so.