A White House spokesman wouldn’t say Monday when the Obama administration will present Congress with a plan to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but said a plan would be put forward “relatively soon.”
“I wouldn’t put a timeframe on it,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday. “This is something that obviously we’ve been working on for some time” and “a lot work” has gone into the planning. That work includes scoping out possible sites in Colorado, Kansas and South Carolina to house the remaining 112 prisoners who are thought to have some tie to terrorist groups.
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“So, there’s been some legwork on this project that’s been visible,” he said.
Earnest reiterated that the plan is to work with Congress to shutter the facility, but again left open the possibility of looking for other ways if lawmakers don’t cooperate.
The “focus of our efforts right now is on Congress,” he said. “I’m not aware of any ongoing effort to devise a strategy using only the president’s executive authority to accomplish this goal. But I certainly wouldn’t, as I mentioned last week, take that option off the table.”
Earnest said Obama is dedicated to following through on his first-term campaign promise to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
“[O]ur top priority is to work with Congress to get this done; and I’m certainly not going to take off the table any fallback options that may or may not be available to the president,” he said. Earnest also stressed that he’s not aware of any legal analysis outlining how Obama could move ahead if Congress continues to block funding for closing the facility and transferring prisoners onto U.S. soil.
