Republican Report Criticizes Transfers From Guantánamo
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and MATTHEW ROSENBERG
NYT
WASHINGTON — Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday are expected to approve a report that criticizes both the Bush and the Obama administrations for taking too many risks in releasing detainees from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
A 93-page unclassified draft, obtained by The New York Times, offers a critical assessment of the evolution of detainee policies over the past decade. It calls for restrictions imposed by Congress on further prisoner transfers to remain in place, saying the executive branch needs to better assess terrorist or insurgent activities by some former detainees.
“Despite the earnest and well-meaning efforts by officials in both administrations, properly evaluating detainees and ensuring that their cases were handled appropriately by receiving countries was, and remains, a challenge,” the report said, portraying “domestic political pressures” and a “desire to earn good will abroad” as having led executive branch officials into recklessness.
Democrats on the panel circulated a draft dissent, criticizing the report as failing “to analyze in depth the strategic issues and concerns that resulted in each administration separately reaching the same conclusion: that it is in the strategic and national security interest of the United States to transfer low-risk detainees” out of the prison as part of a process to close it eventually.
(More here.)
NYT
WASHINGTON — Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday are expected to approve a report that criticizes both the Bush and the Obama administrations for taking too many risks in releasing detainees from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
A 93-page unclassified draft, obtained by The New York Times, offers a critical assessment of the evolution of detainee policies over the past decade. It calls for restrictions imposed by Congress on further prisoner transfers to remain in place, saying the executive branch needs to better assess terrorist or insurgent activities by some former detainees.
“Despite the earnest and well-meaning efforts by officials in both administrations, properly evaluating detainees and ensuring that their cases were handled appropriately by receiving countries was, and remains, a challenge,” the report said, portraying “domestic political pressures” and a “desire to earn good will abroad” as having led executive branch officials into recklessness.
Democrats on the panel circulated a draft dissent, criticizing the report as failing “to analyze in depth the strategic issues and concerns that resulted in each administration separately reaching the same conclusion: that it is in the strategic and national security interest of the United States to transfer low-risk detainees” out of the prison as part of a process to close it eventually.
(More here.)
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