Bush chooses to keep Guantánamo
open, officials say
"The administration is now proceeding on the
assumption that Guantánamo will remain open
not only for the rest of Bush's presidency but also
well beyond"
By
Steven Lee Myers
International Herald Tribune, October 20, 2008
go to original
See Article III.7
Establishment of an Unconstitutional, Parallel Legal
System
| |
Protesters in Ireland call for closing
Gitmo. Bush has decided to leave the facility
open.
Source: Indymedia.ie
|
WASHINGTON -- Despite his stated desire to close
the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, President
George W. Bush has decided not to do so, and never
considered proposals drafted in the State Department
and the Pentagon that outlined options for transferring
the detainees elsewhere, according to senior administration
officials.
Bush's top advisers held a series of meetings at
the White House over the summer after a Supreme Court
ruling in June cast doubt on the future of the American
detention center. But Bush adopted the view of his
most hawkish advisers that closing Guantánamo
would involve too many legal and political risks to
be acceptable, now or anytime soon, they said.
The administration is now proceeding on the assumption
that Guantánamo will remain open not only for
the rest of Bush's presidency but also well beyond,
the officials said, as the site for military tribunals
of those facing charges for terrorism-related crimes
and for the long prison sentences that could follow
convictions.
The effect of Bush's stance is to leave in place
a prison that has become a reviled symbol of the administration's
war on terror, and to leave another contentious foreign
policy decision to confront the next president. Both
presidential candidates, Senators John McCain and
Barack Obama, have called for closing Guantánamo
and could reverse Bush's policy, though probably not
quickly, since neither has spelled out precisely how
to deal with some of the thorniest legal consequences
of shutting the prison.
Bush's aides insist that the president's desire is
still to close Guantánamo when conditions permit,
and the White House has not announced any decision.
But administration officials say that even Secretary
of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, the most powerful advocates for closing the
prison, have quietly acquiesced to the arguments by
more hawkish advisers, including Vice President Dick
Cheney.
A senior administration official who spoke on condition
of anonymity to discuss the administration's internal
deliberations argued that it would be much more difficult
to fulfill those campaign promises than either candidate
has stated.
"This may not be the ideal answer, but what
we are trying to do is work with the system we've
got," the officials said.
Bush's decision followed an internal review of the
implications of the Supreme Court's ruling in June
that the remaining 250 detainees at Guantánamo
have the right to make habeas corpus appeals in U.S.
courts. The ruling, in Boumediene v. Bush, undercut
a core rationale for keeping the prison off American
soil, raising expectations that Bush might at last
move to close it, a prospect he first raised in June
2006.
Instead, he has harshly criticized the ruling, including
at least twice in fund-raising speeches for Republicans.
When he met with his senior legal and national security
advisers in the White House, no options for closing
the prison were on the agenda, the administration
officials said.
"This is an administration that believes very,
very strongly in certain things it has done,"
said Matthew Waxman, a professor at Columbia Law School
in New York who previously served in the Defense Department
overseeing detainee polices, "and Guantánamo
is one that some administration officials at high
levels believe was right all along."
Both Cheney and his chief of staff, David Addington,
one of the architects of the administration's detention
policy, have made it clear in the internal discussions
this year that keeping Guantánamo open under
a new president would validate the administration's
decisions dealing with terrorists, the officials said.
Closing Guantánamo would likely mean abandoning
prosecutions against some detainees and risking the
release of others who still pose a threat to the United
States and its allies. An administration official
who favors closing the prison suggested that the next
president might reconsider after having access to
the classified evidence that the Bush administration
believes justifies the indefinite detention of dozens
of detainees.
"The new president will gnash his teeth and
beat his head against the wall when he realizes how
complicated it is to close Guantánamo,"
the official said.
McCain has suggested moving the detainees to Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas, home of the U.S. Army's prison.
His remarks prompted a public letter in June from
the two Republican senators from Kansas, Sam Brownback
and Pat Roberts, objecting to the idea on a variety
of grounds, mostly involving security.
McCain's campaign did not respond to repeated requests
for comments about plans for Guantánamo.
Obama's declined to comment specifically, but his
platform promises to abolish military tribunals and
conduct a review to determine which prisoners to prosecute,
which to hold under the laws of war and which to release.
His proposal does not specify where detainees would
be held before or after that review.
Other alternative sites that have been mentioned
include the U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston,
South Carolina, and the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative
Maximum Facility, known as "supermax," in
Florence, Colorado.
Beyond political opposition in those regions, the
officials involved in the administration's discussions
said that bringing the detainees to U.S. soil would
allow additional legal challenges beyond habeas corpus
and raise the prospect that judges could free them
in the United States.
The prospect of that became more acute on Oct. 8,
when a federal judge ordered the release of 17 Uighurs
from China who were swept up in 2002 and held in Guantánamo
ever since. The administration had already dropped
efforts to declare the men as enemy combatants, but
refused to return them to China because of concerns
about the treatment they would receive there, trying
unsuccessfully to find a third country willing to
accept them.
The judge, Ricardo Urbina, ordered the detainees
brought to his court in Washington in advance of freeing
them, but the Justice Department appealed and won
a stay, giving the administration time to offer an
alternative plan to release them.
One official said that the Justice Department's arguments
- that the 17 men remained dangerous - complicated
diplomatic efforts to find a country other than China
willing to accept them.
The government's lawyers filed the arguments for
a continued stay last Thursday, and a ruling could
come at any time.
Since the Supreme Court decision in June, Bush and
his aides have remained focused on legal strategies
for coping with the wave of habeas corpus appeals
now flooding the federal court system, and seeking
new legislation that would allow the government to
continue to hold foreign terrorists without charge,
either in the United States or overseas.
A version of that legislation was introduced by Senators
Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and Joseph Lieberman
of Connecticut, two of McCain's closest friends and
advisers. But the legislation stalled through the
summer and autumn, and appears unlikely to be adopted
during the current session of Congress.
The senior administration official involved in the
deliberations said that the Supreme Court's ruling
did not grant judges the authority to release detainees
in the United States, comparing it to allowing an
undocumented immigrant to live in the country legally
without legal standing.
That official and others said that officials from
the Department of Homeland Security, along with the
Justice Department, had argued most vigorously for
keeping Guantánamo open largely because a ruling
like the one in the Uighur case could result in foreign
fighters being freed into American communities.
"The federal courts have an absolute right to
release these people, but the court didn't say where,
and what does that mean, to release them," the
senior official said. "And in our view, the Supreme
Court didn't say, and the district courts don't have
the power, to order the United States to bring somebody
from a foreign country - a foreigner - into the United
States in complete disregard for our immigration law."
Advocates for closing Guantánamo argued that
Bush was still following the same flawed logic that
has made it a reviled symbol, especially abroad.
Waxman, the former defense official, acknowledged
the difficulties of closing the prison and the risks
involved, but he argued that after seven years, a
radical change was required.
"Whatever consequence they're worried about,"
he said of the administration's concerns, "has
to be weighed against the damage we continue to incur
by keeping the status quo."
