Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told members of congress Thursday that the United States has no contingency plans for detaining and trying Osama bin Laden if he were captured, saying, “the honest answer to that is, we don’t know” — an admission that baffled some legal experts and defense analysts. Gates admitted that, more than two years after President Obama signed an executive order directing the closure of the Guantanamo Bay facility, the chances of actually shutting it down were “very, very low.” He also told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that capturing bin Laden or other top al Qaeda leaders outside of the Afghanistan war zone would lead to further complications. “If we capture them outside the area where we are at war and are not covered by the existing war authorizations, one possibility is for a person to be in the custody of their home government,” he said. “Another possibility is that we bring them to the United States.”
Professor Jeffrey F. Addicott, a former senior legal adviser to the Green Berets and current director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, said the administration’s inability to clarify the legal position on detainees is detrimental to the war effort.
“Schizophrenia has seized the Obama administration for the last two years,” Addicott said. “From Day One they’ve had a total lack of understanding of the legal ramifications on the war on terror. We’re at war we have the right to detain them indefinitely until the war ends, that’s the law.”
CIA Director Leon Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday that bin Laden would be held at Guantanamo Bay prison, which appeared to contradict Gates’ statements.
James Carafano, senior defense analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington, said, “It is unbelievable that the two are not on the same page and that a plan does not exist. [And] It’s difficult to comprehend that we don’t have a plan for the one person who led us to war in Afghanistan in the first place.
“This is how you tie yourself in knots,” Carafano said. “Plan A, they declare that they’re going to close Gitmo. So, it’s politically unacceptable to use Gitmo, which leads to no plan because of political correctness. Or plan B, they just don’t have a plan at all.”
Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner’s national security correspondent. She can be reached at [email protected].
