Far from Alone on Keeping Guantanamo Open

On July 24th, the Senate Judiciary Committee convened a hearing “Closing Guantanamo: The National Security, Fiscal, and Human Rights Implications”, at which Frank Gaffney, President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy, testified in favor of keeping Gitmo open for purposes of detaining and interrogating captured enemy combatants (Frank’s written testimony can be found here).  As one might expect given the current makeup of the Judiciary Committee, Frank was the only witness out of the five on his panel who was invited to make the case for keeping Gitmo open — and make it he did, unswervingly.

While Frank was the lone witness brought in to make this case during the hearing, he is far from alone in his concerns that transferring detainees out of Gitmo will threaten national security.

Although some during the hearing made the familiar (but false) assertion that there is “national security consensus” that Gitmo should be closed, a letter to President Obama organized by the Center in 2009 should cast doubt on such a declaration.  In that letter, 36 distinguished retired military leaders, along with several civilian national security leaders including former CIA Director R. James Woolsey and others, laid out the case for keeping the detainees at Gitmo.  A similar case was also made in a letter to President Obama last year, signed by Woolsey, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and others.

And while supporters of keeping Gitmo open may have been outnumbered on the Judiciary Committee’s panel of witnesses, it has been a very different story in the House of Representatives, just in the past few weeks alone.  The day before the Senate hearing, the House rejected — by a vote of 175 to 247 — an amendment offered by Rep. Jim Moran (D-Virginia) that would have removed all language from the Defense Appropriations bill that prohibits the release or transfer of Gitmo detainees.

Just last month, the House passed Rep. Jackie Walorski’s (R-Indiana) amendment to the Defense Authorization bill — by a vote of 236-188 — blocking the use of federal funds to transfer Gitmo detainees to Yemen.  That vote came just days after the House defeated yet another misguided attempt by Rep. Moran to bring about the closure of Gitmo, one that would have removed language from the Military Construction Appropriations bill that prevents federal funds from being used to expand U.S. prisons to house Gitmo detainees — that amendment went down by a vote of 170-254.

Support for keeping the Gitmo detainees exactly where they are is real, justified, and as the House has shown, bipartisan.  Don’t be fooled by witness-stacking or groundless assertions of “consensus” to the contrary.