Charlie Savage
July 22, 2015
Obama’s Plan for Guantánamo Is Seen Faltering
WASHINGTON — President Obama is enjoying a winning streak lately, with the Supreme Court reaffirming his signature health care law and Iran agreeing to curbs on its nuclear program. But one longstanding goal continues to bedevil him: closing the wartime prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The administration’s fitful effort to shut down the prison is collapsing again. Ashton B. Carter, in his first six months as defense secretary, has yet to make a decision on any newly proposed deals to transfer individual detainees. His delay, which echoes a pattern last year by his predecessor, Chuck Hagel, is generating mounting concern in the White House and State Department, officials say.
Last week, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, convened a cabinet-level “principals committee” meeting on how to close the prison before the president leaves office in 18 months. At that meeting, Mr. Carter was presented with an unsigned National Security Council memo stating that he would have 30 days to make decisions on newly proposed transfers, according to several officials familiar with the internal deliberations.
But the meeting ended inconclusively. Mr. Carter did not commit to making a decision on pending transfer proposals by a particular date, including the repatriation of a Mauritanian and a Moroccan. Nor was it clear whether he accepted the 30-day deadline, those officials said.
The approval process is complicated by statutes restricting the transfer of detainees. They ban bringing detainees to a prison inside the United States and require the defense secretary to notify Congress, 30 days before any transfer, that its risks have been substantially mitigated.
The law effectively vests final power in the defense secretary and makes him personally accountable if something goes wrong.
“The chances of getting it done on Obama’s watch are getting increasingly slim,” said Robert M. Chesney, a University of Texas law professor who worked on detainee policy for the administration in 2009.
52 lower-level prisoners are recommended for transfer if security conditions can be met.
64 higher-level prisoners are not recommended for transfer.
Ten of the prisoners from this group have been charged or convicted before a military commission.
The other 54 have not been charged with committing a specific crime but are deemed too dangerous to release.
“Whatever hope there is depends on quick progress in transferring as many detainees as possible,” he said. “But there is still going to have to be a deal with Congress for the remainder for long-term custody in the United States.”
Mr. Obama has called closing Guantánamo a “national imperative,” arguing that it fuels anti-American sentiment and wastes money.
Lisa O. Monaco, Mr. Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, said in a written statement that Mr. Obama remained “steadfast in his commitment” to close the prison.
“This is a goal that the entire national security team is working together to fulfill — from the White House to the Departments of Defense, State and Justice as well as the intelligence community,” she said. “The safety of Americans is our first priority, and each transfer decision involves careful vetting and negotiation of detailed security arrangements. These deliberations take time because these are important decisions.”
Officials say interagency tensions with Mr. Carter have not reached the levelsthey did by last fall with Mr. Hagel, who eventually resigned under pressure. At the end, Mr. Hagel cleared a backlog of proposed deals, leading to more than two dozen transfers between November and January.
The last of them was a group of four Yemenis who were resettled in Oman. That group was the first part of a 10-detainee deal, and Mr. Carter, in June, permitted an additional six Yemenis to go, completing the deal with Oman. Mr. Carter has approved no other transfers.
The Guantánamo population is now 116 detainees, of whom 52 are recommended for transfer if security conditions can be met. Most have been held for about 13 years. Most of the 52 lower-level detainees are from Yemen; because it is in chaos, the American government is trying to resettle them, not repatriate them.
Lee S. Wolosky, the new State Department envoy for negotiating transfer deals, said in a statement that the government was talking with multiple countries about “the transfer of a large number of detainees” from the list.
“This process will ramp up further in the coming weeks, as reducing the detainee population through foreign transfers is a critical component to our broader efforts to close the detention facility,” he said.
But it would be up to Mr. Carter to approve such deals. The deputy secretary of defense, Robert O. Work, said in a statement that the Pentagon would “continue to work with the national security team and the Congress to close the facility in an efficient and responsible manner.”
Many congressional Republicans oppose closing Guantánamo, and say newly captured detainees should be taken there, which Mr. Obama has refused to do.
They have also criticized the transfer of lower-level detainees, warning of “recidivism.” The government says that as of January, seven of the 115 detainees transferred under Mr. Obama are suspected or confirmed to have engaged in militant actions after their release.
In February, at Mr. Carter’s confirmation hearing, two Republican senators asked him to commit that he would not succumb to pressure by the White House over Guantánamo transfers. “I understand my responsibilities under that statute, and I’ll, as in everything else I do, I’ll play it absolutely straight,” Mr. Carter said.
The House and Senate Armed Services Committees are meeting to resolve differences between their versions of the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which includes the detainee transfer restrictions.
The House bill would further tighten the standards, most likely shutting down any more transfers. The Senate version would largely extend existing restrictions. The White House has threatened to veto both versions.
The Senate version also sets up a process, proposed by Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, for closing the prison: The administration would submit a plan to Congress, and if both chambers approve it, the ban on bringing the remaining detainees to domestic soil would be lifted.
Mr. Carter and Ms. Monaco have promised to give Mr. McCain a plan, and officials said they may do so next week. But the administration has been putting forward a closing plan for years, and radical changes to it are not expected.
Its plan has been to transfer all lower-level detainees, while bringing those deemed too dangerous for release to a military prison on domestic soil. Of the latter group, some would be prosecuted while the rest would be held as wartime prisoners, with periodic parole-like reviews.
That plan has previously failed to persuade skeptics of Mr. Obama’s Guantánamo policy, particularly in the House.
A Republican congressional staff member said Mr. Obama’s critics also wanted to see, as part of the plan, discussion of how law-of-war detention would be used to hold and interrogate terrorism suspects captured in the future.
The administration has developed a model of first interrogating new captives for a period for intelligence purposes, often on a ship, and then transferring them to civilian courts for prosecution. It considers that model to be one of its policy achievements.
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