The Senate, after an eight-month delay, confirmed Eric Fanning as Army secretary Tuesday, making him the highest-ranking openly gay official in Pentagon history.
The Senate easily passed Fanning’s confirmation by voice vote after Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said he will no longer block Fanning’s nomination.
Roberts lifted a hold on Fanning’s nomination earlier Tuesday after a top Pentagon official reassured him that President Obama will not try to unilaterally close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and move the detainees to Kansas.
After talking to Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, the official responsible for leading plans to relocate detainees to U.S. soil in order to close the facility at Guantanamo, Roberts said he was given enough assurances to release Fanning for full Senate consideration.
Work, he said, assured him that “the clock has run out” on the administration’s efforts to relocate the detainees to Kansas.
“I have pledged to the people of Kansas that I would do everything in my power to stop President Obama from moving terrorist detainees to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., the intellectual center of the Army,” he said. “I believe today I can tell Kansas that the threat from this administration will go unfulfilled.”
Roberts cautioned that the Pentagon’s assurances would do nothing to change Obama’s “ongoing insistence that he will close the facilities before he leaves office.”
“But I take Deputy Secretary Work at his word,” he said. “He understands the significant and costly changes that would need to be made at Fort Leavenworth to change the post’s mission.”
“He understands the myriad of challenges that Fort Leavenworth poses after reviewing earlier analyses,” he added. “Most importantly, he understands the legal restrictions to move the detainees to Fort Leavenworth” by Jan. 20, 2017.
The National Defense Authorization Act, approved by the House Armed Services Committee and being debated by the full House, included provisions barring the administration from spending funds to move any remaining detainees to U.S. soil or modify any facility in the United States to house detainees. That provision mirrors language the GOP-controlled Congress has included in the same measure from previous years.
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.
