Submitted by: Kathy Hawkins
Democrats Launch New Study on Housing Gitmo Terrorists in U.S.
by creeping
The idea of closing down Guantanamo Bay and transferring its detainee population to the United States was supposed to be dead. But someone forgot to tell Congress’ independent research agency. At the behest of a powerful senator, it’s exploring “the ability to house Guantanamo detainees in the U.S.,” according to an internal document acquired by Danger Room. The results are slated for publication eight days after the presidential election.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is working on a report identifying “policies, plans and procedures” for transferring detainees from Guantanamo Bay and exploring Defense and Justice Department “facilities in the United States that are most likely to meet the requirements for housing Guantanamo Bay detainees.” The study seeks to detail “the characteristics and capacity of U.S. correctional and detention facilities” as well as “potential challenges that could affect the transfer of the Guantanamo Bay detainees to facilities within the U.S.”
President Obama’s efforts to close Guantanamo Bay ran into a buzzsaw of congressional opposition early in his administration. Funding bills for a host of applicable federal agencies, since signed into law by Obama, forbid transferring detainees from Guantanamo into any prison or detention center inside the United States. Congress has also blocked cash for an administration proposal to purchase a maximum-security prison in Illinois to house the detainees (although last week, the Justice Department quietly purchased that very prison).
“These are similar questions to the ones we asked back in 2008 and 2009,” a former U.S. official tells Danger Room. “Maybe with different leadership and different times come different answers.”
All of which makes it more notable that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the influential Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, requested the GAO study. Feinstein prompted the agency, apparently as far back as September 2008, to ask about the technical requirements for keeping the suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay detained and whether “existing facilities” inside the U.S. have the “capacity to hold the current Guantanamo Bay population.” The report, Feinstein’s office confirms, is slated for completion in November, although it would not substantively comment further.
“We do have work underway on Guantanamo and alternative detention options, but it is not complete. We expect to be done by mid-November. That work will need to undergo a classification review, so it is unclear when it might be publicly available, if at all,” GAO spokesman Ned Griffith tells Danger Room.
The fact that GAO is conducting the study points to the biggest obstacle to closing Guantanamo: Congress.
Really? We seem to post almost daily on Obama, Clinton and Holder ignoring, bypassing and steamrolling Congress. Watch these efforts closely
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