The Guantanamo Non-Answer That Says a Whole Lot

Over the weekend, Lisa Monaco, Special Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, announced some details of the plan that the White House is presently crafting to shut down detainee/interrogation operations at Guantanamo Bay.

The Hill reports:

…There are currently 116 detainees at the facility, and under the new plan some of them would be moved to the U.S.

Monaco said the plan was to transport the 52 detainees deemed eligible for transfer to countries with appropriate security arrangements.

According to Monaco, those who are deemed “too dangerous to release” would be subject to periodic review boards for transfer eligibility. In 10 instances, 13 review boards have already resulted in individuals being moved to the so-called “transfer bucket.”

“So we are going to whittle down this group to what I refer to as the ‘irreducible minimum’ who would have to be brought here,” Monaco said.

“That group, who either can’t be prosecuted, or are too dangerous to release, we are going to continue to evaluate their status.”

Under the law of war, Monaco said, those remaining after review would be transferred to U.S. military prisons or supermax security prisons, and be subjected either to prosecution in military commissions or Article III courts…

The White House is crafting this plan ostensibly in response to Sen. John McCain’s inclusion of provisions in the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that require the Obama administration to submit a Gitmo closure plan to Congress for approval.  By contrast, the House does not open the door for Gitmo’s closure as the Senate does, and instead tightens existing restrictions on the transfer of Gitmo detainees.  The NDAA is presently undergoing conference negotiations, and it remains unclear whether McCain’s provisions on this subject will survive that process.

But the fate of these provisions in Congress may not matter.

The Hill observes further:

…When asked if the president would take executive action to transfer detainees to the U.S. if Congress did not work with the administration, Monaco twice avoided a direct answer, drawing a stir from the crowd…

It’s easy to see why Monaco is ducking such questions.  Look at the Obama administration’s record when it comes to working with Congress, and acting within the parameters of our constitutional system, on national security matters.

The Obama administration already previously cut Congress out of the loop in a high-profile Gitmo detainee release — there were no consultations with Congress regarding the transfer of five senior Taliban detainees held there in exchange for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, despite a clear statutory requirement that Congress receive thirty days notice of such transfers.  More recently, the administration took its ill-conceived Iran deal to the United Nations Security Council for a vote, before Congress has a chance to review it and vote to approve or disapprove, per the agreement hammered out in the Corker-Cardin legislation that Obama himself signed into law.

And who could forget Obama’s amnesty end-run around Congress and immigration laws in November of 2014, showing total disregard for Congress’s fundamental role in determining who gets admitted to the United States?

Make no mistake, President Obama is in full legacy mode – and one piece of his legacy may well be that he ran over Congress, the Constitution, and the will of the American people on his way to facilitating the release of some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists.

Exit question: If 52 of these remaining detainees are perfectly good-to-go for transfer to other countries, why aren’t other countries jumping at the chance to take them in and help President Obama put that nasty George W. Bush-era stain of Gitmo to bed?  Could it be because of stuff like what happened in Belgium just last Friday?:

Belgium has arrested two former detainees of Guantanamo prison on charges of terrorism, saying the men are suspected of seeking recruits to fight in Syria, the federal prosecutor’s office said on Friday.

“The two men, who were held at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval base in Cuba between 2001 and 2005, were under police surveillance and were arrested in the early hours of Thursday in the Belgian city of Antwerp along with three others.

“”They were in a car, we believe waiting to commit a robbery,” said Jean-Pascal Thoreau, a spokesman for Belgium’s federal prosecutor…