WASHINGTON - February 15, 2008 - The Bush regime asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to review an appeals court decision that it said had created a “serious threat to national security” by requiring the government to supply extensive evidence supporting the classification of more than 180 Guantanamo detainees as enemy combatants.

The regime asked the court to choose one of two options: either accept its appeal for expedited review, with arguments taking place in May and a decision to come in the current term, or defer action until the justices decide the case on the rights of the Guantánamo prisoners that is currently before them.

Under either option, the regime is seeking a stay of the lower court’s ruling, which it characterized as “serious legal error.”

The ruling, issued last July by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, became final on Feb. 1 when the full appeals court rejected the regime’s request for reconsideration by a vote of 5 to 5.

On Wednesday, the appeals court granted a stay until Feb. 21 to permit the regime to seek relief in the Supreme Court.

The new case, Gates v. Bismullah, and the case already pending before the Supreme Court, Boumediene v. Bush, deal with separate but intertwined aspects of the legal system Congress has created to deal with the Guantánamo prisoners. The pending case questions whether Congress had the constitutional authority to bar the federal courts from hearing petitions for habeas corpus filed on behalf of those who are challenging their open-ended confinement.

The new case deals with the method Congress established for detainees to contest their designation, by military panels called Combatant Status Review Tribunals, as enemy combatants. These designations may be appealed to the District of Columbia Circuit. The question is what evidence the government must present to the appeals court to defend the tribunal’s conclusion.

The appeals court ruled that the government must provide “all the information” that the tribunal was “authorized to obtain and consider,” regardless of whether the tribunal actually did consider the evidence. When the government argued before the appeals court that it had not preserved evidence that it did not present to the tribunals, the judges’ response was that the government in that case was obliged to convene new tribunals.

The decision will require “an enormous outlay of government resources” and “impose extraordinary compliance burdens,” the regime told the Supreme Court on Thursday. It added that it should not have to undertake this task at this point, because the pending Boumediene case “will almost certainly directly impact this case” and might “change the scope of the government’s task.”

If the Supreme Court rules in the Boumediene case that the prisoners do have a basic right to habeas corpus, the justices must then decide whether the appeals process at issue in the new case serves as a satisfactory alternative to a formal habeas corpus proceeding. The detainees’ lawyers have argued vigorously that it does not. The answer to that question, in turn, may well depend on what the appeals process actually consists of, which is the question in the new case.