The Pentagon on Tuesday said it’s up to Congress to figure out a number of details about how Guantanamo Bay can be closed as lawmakers blasted the administration’s plan for its lack of specifics.
After the Pentagon released its plan to close Gitmo, press secretary Peter Cook said Congress will have the “ultimate say” in whether and how Gitmo closes, including which site the department selects for detaining the prisoners who can’t be released.
“Congress is going to have to decide ultimately whether this plan moves forward and in what shape, but we think we presented them with a pathway, a range of options,” Cook said.
The Pentagon conducted site visits last year at several state, federal and military prisons in Kansas, South Carolina and Colorado. Members of Congress from those states strongly condemned the plan. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, is blocking President Obama’s pick to be Army secretary over an objection to moving Gitmo detainees to his state.
“The intention to send terrorists to the mainland is just another of the Obama administration’s misguided strategic national security decisions,” Roberts said in a statement last month. “Closing Guantanamo will never endear radical Islamic fundamentalists to America. It will simply move these detainees and their security risks north, to one of the communities in our states.”
In addition, lawmakers criticized the Pentagon’s plan as being overly vague. The plan includes 13 possible sites, but doesn’t recommend one. Instead, a senior administration official said the plan lays out a prototype facility that would have certain required characteristics.
“What we received today is a vague menu of options, not a credible plan for closing Guantanamo, let alone a coherent policy to deal with future terrorist detainees,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said in a statement. “Rather than identify specific answers to those difficult questions, the president has essentially passed the buck to the Congress.”
But Cook said the plan is intentionally vague to leave room to take congressional input into account.
“Until we get some of those other design questions answered and we get input from members of Congress, that’s prevented us to some extent from being able to provide a specific recommendation,” he said.
An administration official also told reporters that laws passed by Congress prohibiting detainees from being moved to the U.S. had prevented the Pentagon from providing more concrete cost estimates.
