The White House on Wednesday declined to say what a senior Pentagon official told a Republican senator that got the senator to lift his hold on Eric Fanning, who this week became the first gay leader of a U.S. military service branch.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said Tuesday that he decided to stop an eight-month blockade of Fanning’s nomination from Senate approval after he received assurances from Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work that it was now too late for the administration to transfer prisoners from the facility in Cuba to Kansas. Shortly after Roberts lifted his hold on Fanning Tuesday, the Senate easily confirmed him by voice vote.
The White House on Wednesday declined to get into the details of the conversation between Roberts and Work, referring all questions about it to the Pentagon.
“I don’t have any insight to share about private conversations between Sen. Roberts and the [Department of Defense],” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. “The good news is that DoD has explained exactly what was communicated to Sen. Roberts.”
Work released a statement Tuesday but it did not exactly confirm Roberts account of the conversation he had with him.
“I explained to Sen. Roberts that we are trying to achieve the goal of closure with the support of congress, and we recognize that there is limited time left to achieve that support, both in terms of lifting congressional restrictions and winning approval of funds to execute closure,” Work said in a statement.
Earnest sidestepped questions asking whether the administration now believes it is too late to move the detainees to Kansas’ Fort Leavenworth or anywhere else on U.S. soil. Instead, he insisted that the administration’s position has not changed on its desire to close the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay.
“Nothing about the administration’s position about the need to close the Guantanamo prison has changed,” he said.
The administration is still working with “partners around the world” to transfer as many detainees as possible out of the facility, Earnest said. The administration also believes it is possible to transfer the remainder of the detainees to U.S. soil “without posing a threat to our national security.”
“Sen. Roberts knows there are dangerous, convicted, hardened terrorists serving time on American soil right now and that does not pose a threat to our national security … but actually makes our country safer,” he said.
“We continue to believe that it is possible and it should be a priority of the U.S. government to succeed in closing that prison,” Earnest continued. “The president continues to strongly believe that that should be a priority and that that would be possible if our efforts to achieve this goal were not being thwarted by obstructionists in Congress.”
Republicans in Congress for several years have included language in the must-pass defense authorization bill that would prevent Obama from moving detainees to U.S. soil or modify any U.S. facility to house detainees.
The Obama administration Monday vowed to veto the legislation over efforts to shift billions from war spending to pay for military readiness, as well as the Guantanamo Bay restrictions. The administration vetoed the defense bill over similar issues last year but came back and signed it after the spending provisions in it were modified, but the Guantanamo Bay restrictions remained.
