In September, US State Department officials invited a foreign delegation to the Guantanamo Bay detention centre to persuade the group to take detainee Tariq Ba Odah to their country. If they succeeded, the transfer would mark a small step toward realising President Barack Obama’s goal of closing the prison before he leaves office.
The foreign officials told the administration they would first need to review Ba Odah’s medical records, according to US officials with knowledge of the episode. The Yemeni has been on a hunger strike for seven years, dropping to 34kg from 67kg, and the foreign officials wanted to make sure they could care for him.
For the next six weeks, Pentagon officials declined to release the records, citing patient privacy concerns, according to the US officials. The delegation, from a country administration officials declined to identify, canceled its visit. After the administration promised to deliver the records, the delegation travelled to Guantanamo and appeared set to take the prisoner off US hands, the officials said. The Pentagon again withheld Ba Odah’s full medical file.
Today, nearly 14 years since he was placed in the prison and five years since he was cleared for release by US military, intelligence and diplomatic officials, Ba Odah remains in Guantanamo.
In interviews with multiple current and former administration officials involved in the effort to close Guantanamo, it was found that the struggle over Ba Odah’s medical records was part of a pattern. Since Obama took office in 2009, these people said, Pentagon officials have been throwing up bureaucratic obstacles to thwart the president’s plan to close Guantanamo.
In other cases, the transfers of six prisoners to Uruguay, five to Kazakhstan, one to Mauritania and one to Britain were delayed for months or years by Pentagon resistance or inaction, officials said.
To slow prisoner transfers, Pentagon officials have refused to provide photographs, complete medical records and other basic documentation to foreign governments willing to take detainees, administration officials said. They have made it increasingly difficult for foreign delegations to visit Guantanamo, limited the time foreign officials can interview detainees and barred delegations from spending the night at Guantanamo.
Partly as a result of the Pentagon’s maneuvers, it is increasingly doubtful that the incumbent US president will fulfill a pledge he made in the 2008 presidential election: to close the detention centre at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. When Obama took office, the prison held 242 detainees, down from a peak of about 680 in 2003. Today, with little more than a year remaining in his presidency, it still holds 107 detainees.
Pentagon officials denied any intentional effort to slow transfers.
The Pentagon’s slow pace in approving transfers was a factor in President Obama’s decision to remove Chuck Hagel from his position of secretary of defence in February, former administration officials said. And in September, amid continuing Pentagon delays, President Obama upbraided Defence Secretary Ashton Carter in a one-on-one meeting, according to administration officials briefed on the encounter.
Since then, the Pentagon has been more cooperative. Administration officials said they expect to begin transferring at least 17 detainees to foreign countries in January.
Military officials, however, continue to make transfers more difficult and protracted than necessary, administration officials said. In particular, they cite General John F Kelly, in charge of the US Southern Command, which includes Guantanamo. They said that Kelly, whose son was killed fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, opposes the president’s policy of closing Guantanamo, and that he and his command have created obstacles for visiting delegations.
Kelly, however, denied that he or his command has limited delegation visits.
Even if Obama manages to transfer all low-risk detainees to other countries, closing Guantanamo won’t be easy. Several dozen prisoners considered too dangerous to release would have to be imprisoned in the US, a step Republicans in Congress adamantly oppose because, they say, it would endanger American lives.
The Bush administration faced no political opposition on transfers and was able to move 532 detainees out of Guantanamo over six years, 35% of whom returned to the fight, according to US intelligence estimates. The Obama administration has been able to transfer 131 detainees over seven years, 10% of whom have returned to the fight.
Priority from the start
Two days after Obama was sworn in as president in 2009, he signed an executive order mandating an immediate review of all 242 detainees then held in Guantanamo and requiring the closure of the detention centre. A year later, a task force that included the Defence Department and US clandestine agencies unanimously concluded that 156 detainees were low enough security threats to be transferred to foreign countries.
Members of Congress, meanwhile, seized on reports that transferred detainees had returned to the fight to demand that Guantanamo remain open.
In late 2010, Congress passed a law requiring the secretary of defence to personally certify to Congress that a released detainee “cannot engage or re-engage in any terrorist activity.”
Detainee transfers out of Guantanamo slowed to a trickle. In 2011 and 2012, only a handful were released under an exception to the new law that allowed court-ordered releases to bypass the newly legislated requirements. By January 2013, the outlook was so bleak that the State Department shuttered the office tasked with handling the closure of Guantanamo.
Pentagon thwarts Obama’s effort
In May 2013, President Obama unveiled a new push to close the prison. He appointed two new envoys, one at the Pentagon and one at the State Department, to oversee the prison’s closure. One of their top priorities was to transfer as many prisoners as possible to countries willing to take them.
The State Department then proposed that four low-risk Afghan detainees be transferred back to Afghanistan. US officials had offered in secret peace talks with the Taliban in 2012 to swap the four Afghans for captured American soldier Bowe Bergdahl. Taliban negotiators said they didn’t want the four men because the four weren’t senior Taliban members.
When the State Department added the four Afghans to a list of detainees prioritised for transfer in the summer of 2013, Defence Department officials resisted. However, with the White House’s backing, the State Department moved forward. By spring 2014, the four Afghans were about to be sent home. Then, General Joseph Dunford, commander of US forces in Afghanistan at the time, sent a memo to the State Department warning that the release of the four detainees would endanger his troops in Afghanistan.
When State Department officials read Dunford’s memo, they realised he was citing intelligence about a different group of Afghans who were more senior Taliban. State Department officials pointed out the error, but it was too late. The transfer was halted.
The four men were finally flown back to Afghanistan on December 20, 2014 -- nearly five years after they were cleared for release. Since then, none have returned to the fight, according to US intelligence officials.
Video games
Pentagon obstacles delayed and nearly derailed other transfers. In early 2014, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev offered to take as many as eight Guantanamo detainees. The Central Asian leader, eager for a counterweight to an increasingly assertive Russia, hoped to strengthen his relationship with Washington.
Kazakhstani officials asked to send a delegation to Guantanamo for three days to videotape interviews with prisoners before deciding which ones to accept. Kazakhstani psychologists and intelligence experts wanted to study the interviews for signs of deception.
According to multiple current and former administration officials, Pentagon officials forbade the delegation to videotape the interviews, nixed plans for a multi-day visit, ordered detainee interviews shortened, and put new restrictive classifications on documents requested by the Kazakhstanis.
After two weeks of failed talks, the Kazakhs said they were cancelling the visit and wouldn’t take any detainees. An alarmed White House intervened, ordering the Pentagon to compromise, according to current and former administration officials.
The Kazakhstanis would be allowed two hours with each detainee, the Pentagon said, and would be allowed to stay one night at Guantanamo. They said the Kazakhstanis would not be allowed to bring recording equipment with them. Instead, the US military agreed to videotape the interviews and provide the Kazakhstanis with copies of the tapes. The Kazakhstanis visited the prison.
Six weeks later, the Kazakhstanis still hadn’t received the videos. The White House ordered the Pentagon to hand over the videos. The Pentagon complied, and sent the videos to the State Department, but with a new classified designation on it, “Secret/NOFORN,” which means it is illegal to share the material with a foreign country. Administration officials complained again. Days later, the video came back with a more lenient classification. The video was sent to the Kazakhstanis. Two days later, the Kazakhstanis called Washington. The videos had been processed to look as if it had been shot through dimpled glass. For the Kazakhstanis, who wanted to scrutinise detainees’ body language and facial expressions, the videos were useless.
For a third time, White House officials intervened to force the Pentagon to compromise. Finally, in December, nearly a year after the process began, the five prisoners were transferred to Kazakhstan.
In private meetings, some Pentagon officials have been dismissive of Obama’s policy. After the president publicly pledged early this year to respond to a five-year-old British request for the repatriation of British detainee Shaker Aamer, a senior Pentagon official mocked that vow at an inter-agency meeting on transfers. Aamer was finally transferred to Britain in October.
Ba Odah, the hunger-striking detainee, is now in his late 30s. Multiple members of the National Security Council have intervened to demand that the Pentagon turn over his complete medical file. The Pentagon has held firm, citing patient privacy concerns.
