The Senate Armed Services Committee will move forward next week with legislation that effectively would bar further transfers of suspected terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in spite of administration opposition, Chairman John McCain said Thursday.
The Arizona Republican, who in the past has supported closing the prison, said the legislation is needed because President Obama has failed to offer a coherent plan to deal with detainees without harming national security.
“We will continue to act unless we can work in close coordination with the administration to come up with a plan,” McCain said.
The bill by Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., would bar the release or transfer of any detainees judged to be medium- or high-risk — the vast majority of the 122 who remain at Guantanamo — and would require greater justification for any other release or transfer. It also would bar transfers of any Guantanamo prisoner to Yemen, home country of the largest group of remaining detainees and where the recent collapse of the government amid factional fighting has set back U.S. anti-terrorism efforts.
Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., has introduced companion legislation in the House.
The simmering dispute over Guantanamo detainees has heated up in recent months amid a surge of releases — 44 over the past 18 months — that Republican lawmakers see as putting national security at risk to fulfill a political promise by Obama.
But administration officials told the Armed Services panel Thursday that the risks from freed detainees is much smaller than the risk of keeping the prison open.
“The president and his national security team all believe that the continued operation of the detention facility at Guantanamo weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key allies, and is used by violent extremists to incite local populations,” said Brian McKeon, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.
“It is no coincidence that the recent ISIS videos showing the barbaric burning of a Jordanian pilot and the savage execution of a Japanese hostage each showed the victim clothed in an orange jumpsuit, believed by many to be the symbol of the Guantanamo detention facility.”
McKeon noted that only six of 88 prisoners released since January 2009 had returned to the fight, and one other had been suspected of doing so, which he attributed to the thoroughness of the process for reviewing each detainee’s case, along with conditions negotiated with the countries that have agreed to receive them.
But when asked by senators to make public the information used to decide which detainees to release, as well as the conditions under which countries agree to receive them, McKeon declined, saying much of that information was classified.
“I think that’s basic information that the American people deserve to know,” Ayotte responded, noting that no U.S. soldier should ever have to face an extremist on the battlefield who had been released after being captured.
Her point was punctuated by a vivid comment from freshman Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who fought Islamist extremists while serving in combat in Iraq as an Army officer in 2006.
“As far as I’m concerned, every last one of them can rot in hell,” he said. “But if they don’t do that, they can rot in Guantanamo Bay.”
