The Wonk Room

Not Ft. Leavenworth?»

Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

How to close Guantanamo is a very challenging and emotive issue that draws on the memories of 9/11 and justifiable anxieties about future terrorist attacks. One aspect of this saga that deserves to be addressed with rational analysis is the concern that locating some of the Guantanamo detainees within the territorial boundaries of the United States for incarceration is a dangerous risk that could pave the way for terrorist attacks on the homeland.

In my report released yesterday, I recommend that the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, among a few other possible locations, could imprison a small number of the Guantanamo detainees. Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), reacted swiftly and harshly to that prospect, describing my analysis as “misleading and inaccurate” and asserting that “Fort Leavenworth has neither the space nor the security arrangements to handle detainees from Guantanamo Bay.”

This statement seems at odds with Ft. Leavenworth’s mission and “Can Do” motto. The Disciplinary Barracks is the only maximum security facility in the entire military prison system. While the old prison at Ft. Leavenworth was commonly referred to as “the Castle,” that stone and brick facility was replaced in 2002 by a “new state-of-the-art, 515-bed” detention center complete with a special housing unit for maximum security prisoners. The maximum security wing is isolated from the rest of the facility, three guards are assigned to each inmate, and every inch of the prison is covered by video surveillance.

Another possible location I identify is the brig at the Naval Base in Charleston, South Carolina. Although it is only a medium security facility, it has already been the home of designated enemy combatants Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi, and currently holds Ali Al-Marri. If Charleston, a lower security level facility, can accomplish that mission, it seems logical that Ft. Leavenworth could safely and securely imprison some of the Guantanamo detainees.

The number of detainees at issue here is relatively small, in the neighborhood of 50 detainees with the majority of those ending up at the “supermax” penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. Sen. Brownback clearly believes that Ft. Leavenworth can not handle even a small number of Guantanamo detainees. He should know then, that the candidate he enthusiastically endorsed for president of the United States, Senator John McCain, has repeatedly pledged that he would close Guantanamo and move all of the approximately 270 remaining detainees to Ft. Leavenworth. Read the rest of this entry »

Report: Scalia’s Claim That Released Gitmo Prisoners Have Killed Americans Is An ‘Urban Legend’»

A new report from the Seton Hall University School of Law explodes the myth that some 30 detainees released from Guantanamo Bay prison have “returned to the battlefield” against American forces.

This conservative urban legend was recently parroted by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissent from the Court’s Boumediene decision. Scalia wrote that granting habeas corpus rights to Gitmo detainees “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed,” and supported this view by asserting that “at least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantanamo Bay have returned to the battlefield.”

The new Seton Hall report (pdf) states that “Justice Scalia’s claim of 30 recidivist detainees is belied by all reliable data” :

Despite being repeatedly debunked, this statement has been reflexively accepted as true by Members of Congress and much of the American public. Justice Scalia is only the most recent disseminator of an urban legend that refuses to die.[…]

[Scalia’s] source was a year-old Senate Minority Report, which in turn was based on misinformation provided by the Department of Defense.

Justice Scalia’s reliance on these sources would have been more justifiable had the urban legend he perpetuated not been (one would have thought) permanently interred by later developments, including a 2007 Department of Defense Press Release and hearings before the House Foreign Relations Committee less than two weeks before Justice Scalia’s dissent was released.

Among the report’s conclusions:

– According to the Department of Defense’s published and unpublished data and reports, not a single released Guantánamo detainee has ever attacked any Americans.

– Despite national security concerns, the Department of Defense does not have a system for tracking the conduct or even the whereabouts of released detainees.

While there is little evidence that fighters interred at Guantanamo Bay — that is, those who were fighters before they got there — have attacked Americans, there is quite a bit of evidence that, for those falsely imprisoned there and for many young Muslims watching around the world, Guantanamo has a politically radicalizing effect. Maintaining Guantanamo and other illegal detention sites hurts America’s image abroad, and calls into question America’s support for human rights and the rule of law. There is no good argument against closing it down.

Cross-posted on ThinkProgress.

McCain Doesn’t Understand McCain’s Position on Guantanamo»

Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling affirming the Guantanamo detainees’ constitutional right to habeas corpus further narrowed the legal distinction between holding them in Cuba and in the United States. The Bush administration picked Guantanamo precisely because it believed the American military base on the eastern tip of Cuba was beyond the reach of any court. With that notion rightly put to rest, supporters of closing Guantanamo like John McCain should be encouraged, as there is now much less of an argument against moving some of the detainees to the military prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, as he proposes.

That’s why I find his reaction to the Boumediene decision so odd. McCain unleashed a full broadside at the court the day after the ruling, calling it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country… Our first obligation is the safety and security of this nation, and the men and women who defend it. This decision will harm our ability to do that.”

At issue in Boumediene is whether habeas rights extended to Guantanamo. There has never been any doubt that any individual in the United States possesses habeas rights. McCain is on the record saying, as president, he “would immediately close Guantanamo Bay, [and] move all the prisoners to Fort Leavenworth.” That action would have exactly the same effect as the Court’s decision in Boumediene.

McCain goes on to claim that his plan to close Guantanamo the Supreme Court’s ruling is “going to have the courts flooded with so-called, quote, Habeas Corpus suits against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material.” This would be silly if it wasn’t so tragic. Garden variety habeas petitions from inmates in American prisons may more often deal with diet than detention, but the detainees at Guantanamo are not asking for better food, many believe that they are wrongly imprisoned and are contesting the lawfulness of their confinement. Read the rest of this entry »

FLASHBACK: In 2003, McCain Blasted Administration’s Indefinite Detention Of Detainees»

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees have the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts. The Bush administration and its allies quickly criticized the decision:

President Bush: “It was a deeply divided court and I strongly agree with those who dissented. The dissent was based upon those serious concerns about U.S. national security.” [Link]

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ): “The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worstdecisions in the history of this country. Senator Graham, and Senator Lieberman, and I…made it very clear that these are enemy combatants, these are people who are not citizens. They do not and never have been given the rights that citizens of this country have. [6/13/08]

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): “I am deeply disappointed in what I think is a tremendously dangerous and irresponsible ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. … The court has conferred upon civilian judges the right to make military decisions.” [Link]

McCain and Graham’s objections sharply contrast with their positions in 2003, when they wrote a letter to then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, urging him to swiftly resolve the status of Guantanamo detainees:

The treatment of the detainees is not an issue. However, a serious concern arises over the disposition of the detainees - a considerable number of whom have been held for two years. […]

Yet, we firmly believe it is now time to make a decision on how the United States will move forward regarding the detainees, and to take that important next step. A serious process must be established in the very near term either to formally treat and process the detainees as war criminals or to return them to their countries for appropriate judicial action.

On Dec. 13, 2003, the New York Times also reported that McCain said, “They may not have any rights under the Geneva Conventions as far as I’m concerned, but they have rights under various human rights declarations. And one of them is the right not to be detained indefinitely.”

Five years after their letter, just “one detainee has received a verdict.” Approximately 270 are still detained there and “about half are considered too dangerous to release, even though the government does not have enough evidence to charge them.”

This Supreme Court ruling will inevitably lead to a “flood of new litigation” challenging the Bush administration’s right to hold these detainees. Detainees will then finally get a decision as to their status — exactly as McCain and Graham requested.

In light of these 2003 remarks, it’s unclear why McCain considers this Supreme Court ruling the “worst decision in history,” except for the fact that it isn’t what the Bush administration wanted.

– Ken Gude and Amanda Terkel

Close Guantanamo And Start Over»

Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, the Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

In the Wall Street Journal this morning, Rear Admiral Mark H. Buzby, the former commander of the Joint Task Force overseeing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, claims the conditions at Guantanamo are far better than general impression of the prison camp. He’s right, even objective accounts from neutral observers about the physical conditions at Guantanamo describe an improved living environment.

Of course, it demonstrates how bad things were when you take to the pages of a major national newspaper to claim credit for doing what you are supposed to be doing—it is the responsibility of the detaining power to provide humane and secure conditions of confinement. But the problems at Guantanamo are much deeper than calories or comforts; all the air conditioning and movies will not change the fact that many of these detainees have been held for more than six years without any meaningful opportunity to contest the lawfulness of their detention in an impartial hearing.

All the good work to try and improve conditions at Guantanamo is undone when one of the judges in the military commissions who had started to show some independence is fired. Just last week, Col. Peter Brownback was removed from the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr after he resisted pressure from prosecutors to set an early trial date, insisting they provide the defense access to potential evidence.

The chief judge, Col. Ralph Kohlmann, claimed that Brownback’s dismissal had nothing to do with his rulings in the Khadr case, and that may be true. But here is where Kohlmann and Buzby and the Pentagon and the Bush administration fail to grasp the nature of the problem: the perception of Guantanamo is fixed with the constant stream of negative stories amplified drowning out the examples of positive change. There is no rehabilitation of Guantanamo; the only pathway back to respectability is to close Guantanamo and start over.