"I've always preferred my idea of a commission of inquiry to look at all these issues," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Sunday.

Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., head of the intelligence committee, suggested that the George W. Bush administration broke the law by concealing a CIA counterterrorism program from Congress.

The Wall Street Journal, anonymously citing former intelligence officials, reported Monday the secret program was a plan to kill or capture al-Qaida operatives.

The Journal's sources said the plan, which was halted by CIA Director Leon Panetta, was an attempt to carry out a presidential finding authorized in 2001 by President George W. Bush.

The Journal said the agency spent money on planning and maybe some training, but it never became fully operational. The plan was highly classified and the CIA has refused to comment on it.

The assertion that Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the program kept secret from Congress came amid word that Attorney General Eric Holder is contemplating opening a criminal probe of possible CIA torture.

"There are no neat or easy answers here," Obama said in a speech in which he pledged anew to "clean up the mess at Guantanamo" that he said the nation had inherited from the Bush administration.

Obama conceded that some of the detainees would end up in U.S. prisons and insisted those facilities were tough enough to house even the most dangerous inmates.

Obama decried arguments used against his plans.

"We will be ill-served by the fear-mongering that emerges whenever we discuss this issue," he declared.

Speaking at the National Archives, Obama said he wouldn't do anything to endanger the American people.

Results for Tuesday's special election posted on the California's secretary of state's website showed more than 60 percent of voters rejected the five fiscal measures on the ballot.

A sixth measure barring pay increases for state officials amid deficits was approved by about 74 percent of the voters.

Surveys in recent weeks had found little support for the fiscal measures, and Schwarzenegger all but conceded defeat by joining President Obama in Washington on Tuesday for his announcement on auto emission rules instead of campaigning for the measures through election day.

The White House confirmed the meeting but said it did not indicate a finalization of the president's review process.

"I don't think we're at the point where the president says, `What do you think about these two people?'" White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told The Associated Press on Monday. "The president pledged very early on to consult broadly, and I think Wednesday's meeting does that."

Obama is to talk at the White House with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, said the Republican leader hopes this is the start of the consultation process and that Obama "follows the lead of previous presidents and has many such meetings over the coming weeks before a nomination is announced."

The White House has ruled out that Obama will name his Supreme Court pick this week.

Souter is retiring in June, and Obama wants to have a nominee confirmed when the next Supreme Court session starts in October.

"The president is free to nominate whomever he likes," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "But picking judges based on his or her perceived sympathy for certain groups or individuals undermines the faith Americans have in our judicial system."

McConnell's Republicans are turning to a conservative Southerner as their point man on Obama's nominee, signaling that they won't shy away from a protracted fight despite risks of being cast as obstructionist.

Sen. Jeff Sessions' ascension as the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee comes more than 20 years after the panel rejected him for his own federal judgeship during the Reagan administration over concerns that he was hostile toward civil rights and was racially insensitive.

Coincidentally, Sessions, R-Ala., replaces Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a moderate who was one of just two Republicans in 1986 to oppose Sessions as a U.S. district court judge. Specter left the GOP last week to become a Democrat, creating the vacancy atop the committee just as Justice David Souter announced his retirement.

The court will hear arguments April 29 about whether federal oversight of election procedures should continue in 16 states, mainly in the South, with a history of preventing blacks, Hispanics and other minorities from voting.

In 2006, as Republicans sought to improve their standing with minorities in advance of congressional elections, the GOP-controlled Congress extended for 25 years the Voting Rights Act provision that says the Justice Department must approve any changes in how elections are conducted. Republican President George W. Bush signed the extension into law.

But some Republicans said the extension was not merited and that some states were being punished for their racist past. A legal challenge has made its way to the high court.

GOP Govs. Sonny Perdue of Georgia and Bob Riley of Alabama have asserted in court filings that the continued obligation of their states to get advance approval for all changes involving elections is unnecessary and expensive in view of significant progress they have made to overcome blatant and often brutal discrimination against blacks.

Perdue pointed out that President Barack Obama did better in Georgia than did Democratic nominees John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000.