The House vote, 288-127, puts the spotlight on the Senate, which hasn't taken up the issue and is consumed with other high-profile issues such as gun control and immigration. The lack of enthusiasm in the Senate and objections by the White House mean that the legislation is in limbo despite an aggressive push by lobbyists representing nearly every corner of industry.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, is widely backed by industry groups that say businesses are struggling to defend themselves against aggressive and sophisticated attacks from hackers in China, Russia and Eastern Europe.

Hackers haven't been able to deliver crippling blows to the U.S. economy or infrastructure, but they have been able to wreak havoc on some key commercial systems. Most recently several news outlets including the New York Times acknowledged that their systems had been penetrated, while banks are said to be quietly fighting daily intrusions. North Korea was recently held responsible for a cyberattack that shut down tens of thousands of computers and servers at South Korean broadcasters and banks.

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The bill stalled last year after privacy advocates said it would open American's private Internet records like bank accounts and email to agencies such as the FBI and National Security Agency.

But with fresh accusations from industry that the Chinese government is hacking into U.S. networks and stealing billions of dollars in trade secrets, Reps. Mike Rogers of Michigan and Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland say they think the bill can become law with some changes.

The House panel plans to mark up the legislation on Wednesday, with a floor vote possible next week. Its prospects in the Senate and at the White House are unclear.

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Spokesmen for both Obama and Boehner said the two men agreed to not release details of the conversation, but emphasized that the lines of communication remain open.

The meeting comes as the White House and Congress try to break an impasse over finding a way to stop a combination of automatic tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to kick in at the beginning of the year.

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Obama was expected to sign the bill into law next week, although changes to military policy probably wouldn't take effect for at least several months. Under the bill, the president and his top military advisers must first certify that lifting the ban won't hurt troops' ability to fight. After that, the military would undergo a 60-day wait period.

Repeal would mean that, for the first time in American history, gays would be openly accepted by the armed forces and could acknowledge their sexual orientation without fear of being kicked out.

More than 13,500 service members have been dismissed under the 1993 law.

"It is time to close this chapter in our history," Obama said in a statement. "It is time to recognize that sacrifice, valor and integrity are no more defined by sexual orientation than they are by race or gender, religion or creed."

The Senate voted 65-31 to pass the bill, with eight Republicans siding with 55 Democrats and two independents in favor of repeal. The House had passed an identical version of the bill, 250-175, earlier this week.

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The 63-33 test vote all but guarantees the legislation will pass the Senate, possibly by day's end, and reach the president's desk before the new year.

The House had passed an identical version of the bill, 250-174, earlier this week.

Repeal would mean that, for the first time in American history, gays would be openly accepted by the military and could acknowledge their sexual orientation without fear of being kicked out.

More than 13,500 service members have been dismissed under the 1993 law.

Rounding up a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate was a historic victory for President Barack Obama, who made repeal of the 17-year-old policy a campaign promise in 2008. It also was a political triumph for congressional Democrats who struggled in the final hours of the postelection session to overcome GOP objections on several legislative priorities before Republicans regain control of the House in January.

"As Barry Goldwater said, 'You don't have to be straight to shoot straight,'" said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., referring to the late GOP senator from Arizona.

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McCain's statement, given Thursday at a Senate hearing, puts him at odds with Adm. Mike Mullen, the military's top uniformed officer. Mullen was expected to tell McCain and others on the Senate Armed Services Committee that "war does not stifle change" but rather "demands it."

McCain said he still has concerns about objections among some combat troops to repealing the policy. He also criticized the study for looking only at how the law could be repealed, instead of whether doing so would benefit the military.

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The findings were confirmed by two people familiar with them. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the results hadn't been publicly released.

The study found that 70 percent of troops believed that repealing the law would have mixed, positive or no effect, while 30 percent predicted negative consequences. Opposition was strongest among combat troops, with 40 percent saying it was a bad idea. That number climbs to 46 percent among Marines.

The study found that 92 percent of troops who worked with a gay service member believed their experience to be good, very good or to have had no impact.

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The report, not slated for release until after Dec. 1, concluded that allowing gays to serve openly would pose little harm to the military.

Details on the 370-page study were first reported Wednesday by The Washington Post and subsequently confirmed by other news organizations, including The Associated Press.

None of the information was classified. Opponents of repeal accused the Pentagon of leaking selective details to sway public perception.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said in a statement Friday that "anonymous sources now risk undermining the integrity of the process."

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Some gay activist groups were planning to send people to enlist at recruiting stations to test the Pentagon's Tuesday announcement.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in California whose ruling last week brought the 17-year policy the closest yet to being overturned was likely to reject the government's latest effort to halt her order telling the military to stop enforcing the law.

The Justice Department will likely appeal her decision.

The Defense Department has said it would comply with U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips' order and had frozen any discharge cases. But at least one case was reported of a man being turned away from an Army recruiting office in Austin, Texas.

Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said recruiters had been given top-level guidance to accept applicants who say they are gay.

Recruiters also have been told to inform potential recruits that the moratorium on enforcement of the policy could be reversed at any time, if the ruling is appealed or the court grants a stay, she said.

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The Defense Department has been bracing for a possible leak of as many as many as 400,000 documents from a military database on the Iraq war. In July, the self-described whistleblower organization obtained and released nearly 77,000 records on Afgahnistan.

The documents are mostly field reports, summarizing actions taken by troops and intelligence gathered.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has told Congress that the July leak did not expose the nation's most sensitive intelligence secrets. But, he also maintained that the release still put put U.S. interests at risk because it exposed the names of some Afghans who had cooperated with U.S. forces.

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An e-mail sent Thursday by the military's Judge Advocate Generals is the first acknowledgment from the Pentagon that it plans to abide by the ruling. Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters the military "will of course obey the law." He said any changes were effective Tuesday when the ruling was issued.

Separately, a lawyer in the case and a person in the government said the administration would ask the federal judge to allow the "don't ask, don't tell" law to continue in force pending an appeal of her order to end it.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration will ask a federal judge to allow the "don't ask, don't tell" law on gays in the military to continue in force pending an appeal of her order to end it, a lawyer in the case and a person in the government familiar with the discussions said Thursday.

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Pentagon officials say that no one in the military or families of victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have ever protested.

The chapel opened in November 2002. It's located less than 80 feet from where hijacked American Airlines flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon, killing 184 people.

The chapel hosts a weekly worship service for Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Mormons, Protestants, Catholics and Episcopalians. Some 300 to 400 Pentagon employees are estimated to use the chapel each week.

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McChrystal is the former commander of the Afghanistan war. He was fired in July by President Barack Obama because of disparaging comments he and his aides made about their civilian bosses.

Yale announced Monday that McChrystal's seminar will "examine how dramatic changes in globalization have increased the complexity of modern leadership." McChrystal said in a statement accompanying the release that he was looking forward to sharing his "experiences and insights as a career military officer."

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Arguing for patience, Petraeus said that it was only in the last few weeks that the war plan had been fine-tuned and given the resources that it required. "For the first time," he said, "we will have what we have been working to put in place for the last year and a half."

Petraeus spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday and in interviews with The Washington Post and The New York Times. On the job as war commander for only a few weeks, he is trying to reassure Americans that the 9-year-old war is worth fighting, and to argue that President Barack Obama's redrawn strategy is only beginning to take root.

"It's a gradual effort. It's a deliberate effort," Petraeus said. "There's no hill to take and flag to plant and proclamation of victory. Rather, it's just hard work."

Petraeus took the job from cashiered Gen. Stanley McChrystal with the understanding that some U.S. forces will come home next summer, as Obama has promised.

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The announcement was the first major step by Gates to find $100 billion in savings in the next five years. Gates says that money is needed elsewhere within the Defense Department to repair a force ravaged by years of war and to prepare troops for the next fight.

The plan prompted swift political pushback from lawmakers fearful that jobs would be lost in their districts.

"At the end of the day, Secretary Gates and his team will have to convince members of this committee that these efforts will not weaken our nation's defense," said Rep. Buck McKeon of California, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.

Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, said he could see "no rational basis" for eliminating Norfolk's Joint Forces Command, which was created in 1999 to improve the services' ability to work together and find efficiencies.

"In the business world, you sometimes have to spend money in order to save money," said Warner.

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John Metzler ran the cemetery for 19 years before he was forced out because of the scandal. He told a Senate committee on Thursday that it pains him that his team didn't do its job. He expressed his "sincere regrets to the families."

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill said at the hearing that as many as 6,600 graves at Arlington could be unmarked or mislabeled because managers didn't do their job properly.

That's much higher than the estimate last month from Army investigators, who said about 211 remains were affected.

Metzler's former deputy, Thurman Higginbotham, also appeared. Higginbotham says he plans to assert his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

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The documents are described as battlefield reports compiled by various military units that provide an unvarnished look at combat in the past six years, including U.S. frustration over reports Pakistan secretly aided insurgents and civilian casualties at the hand of U.S. troops.

WikiLeaks.org, a self-described whistleblower organization, posted 76,000 of the reports to its website Sunday night. The group said it is vetting another 15,000 documents for future release.

Col. Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, said the military would probably need "days, if not weeks" to review all the documents and determine "the potential damage to the lives of our service members and coalition partners."

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The finding by investigators, released Friday by the Pentagon, is particularly alarming because many of the individuals would have access to the nation's most heavily guarded secrets. Among those implicated in the probe were individuals tied to the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Security Agency.

The Boston Globe first reported the results of the investigation after obtaining documents through the Freedom of Information Act.

Some of the individuals have been prosecuted while other cases remain in limbo.

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The Veterans Affairs Department plans to announce Monday it will no longer require veterans to prove what might have triggered their illness. Instead, they would have to show that they served in combat in a job that could have contributed to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Veterans advocates and some lawmakers have argued that it sometimes could be impossible for a veteran to find records of a firefight or bomb blast. They also have contended that the old rule ignored other causes of the disorder, such as fearing a traumatic event even if it doesn't occur. That could discriminate against female troops prohibited from serving on front lines and against other service members who don't experience combat directly.

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The deployment of the nuclear-powered carrier, one of the world's largest warships, would represent a major show of force by the U.S., which has vowed to protect South Korea and is seeking to blunt aggression from North Korea.

An international investigation last month blamed North Korea for torpedoing a South Korean navy vessel, the Cheonan, in March, killing 46 sailors.

Two U.S. defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been made, said that a decision on deployment was likely by week's end.

Last week, the Pentagon announced that it was planning two major military exercises with South Korea to take place in the "near future." The exercises were to focus in part on anti-submarine operations.

The officials said the George Washington's deployment would be separate from the upcoming exercises.

The latest plans to bolster military cooperation in the Yellow Sea was aimed specifically at sending a message to North Korea that the U.S. would help defend South Korea if necessary.

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