Bipartisan Experts Tell Congress to Let Guantanamo Detainees Come to US

By Jonathan Winer

On July 10, a group of national security and terrorism experts including prominent officials of both the Clinton and Bush Adminstrations wrote Congress urging that Guantanamo be closed, that detainees be brought to the U.S. for trial, and that the U.S. be prepared to accept and resettle a small number of any non-dangerous Guantanamo detainees who could not be returned to their home countries because of the threat of persecution.

The experts made three findings. First, that closing Guantanamo will be a net benefit to our counterterrorism efforts. Second, that doing so, would "likely require bringing some terrorists to the U.S. for trial, detention, or, if appropriate, resettlement." Finally, the experts stated that "America should not be afraid to bring Guantanamo detainees to the U.S," and that "transferring some Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. will aid the fight against terrorists.

In laying out the rationale for trying the detainees in the US, the experts noted that the U.S. has successfully tried numerous accused terrorists in the U.S, with 216 inmates currently housed in federal prisons for crimes related to international terrorism, including the masterminds of the first World Trade Center bombing, the terrorist who plotted to bring down multiple US airliners, and terrorists who planned to blow up bridges and tunnels in New York.

As set forth in the letter, the experts, who included former senior military officers, intelligence officers, law enforcement personnel, and political appointees from both parties, Message to Congress 7_10_09.pdf also reminded Congress that no terrorist has ever escaped from a U.S. prison.

Signatories included M.E. (Spike) Bowman, former Senior Counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Deputy Director of the National Counterintelligence Center; Frank Cilluffo, formerly Special Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and now the Director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University; Major General Albert C. Harvey, who chairs the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security and is a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve (Ret.); Robert Hutchings, former Chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council; former Republican Congressman and Brigadier General David R. Irvine, formerly Deputy Commander for the 96th Regional Readiness Command; Brian Jenkins former Security Advisor to the National Commission on Terrorism and a Member of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety; Dr. David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group; Brigadier General Mark T. Kimmit, who served as Assistant Secretary off State for Political Military Affairs and Deputy Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy; David H. Laufman, who served as Chief of Staff to the Deputy Attorney General, as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and as a military and political analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency; James A. Lewis who served for many years in the intelligence community and is now Director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS); John MacGaffin, who held senior positions with the CIA and FBI and has been involved in matters of intelligence collection, law enforcement, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and security for over 40 years; Daniel Marcus, former General Counsel of the 9/11 Commission and Associate Attorney General at the Department of Justice; Ronald Anthony Marks , former senior CIA official and as Intelligence Counsel for U.S. Senators Bob Dole and Trent Lott.; Mary McCarthy, formerly National Intelligence Officer for Warning and as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs; Rear Admiral James E. McPherson, JAGC, U.S. Navy (Ret.), who served as the Judge Advocate General of the Navy from 2004 until his retirement in 2006; Paul Pillar, who served as Deputy Chief of the Director of Central Intelligence’s Counterterrorist Center and as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East; William S. Sessions, who served as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Ali Soufan, a former FBI Supervisory Special Agent who investigated and supervised highly sensitive and complex international terrorism cases, including the East Africa Bombings, the attack on the USS Cole, and the events surrounding 9/11; Suzanne E. Spaulding, former Executive Director of the National Commission on Terrorism, Assistant General Counsel at CIA, Minority Staff Director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and General Counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Philip Zelikow, who served as Counselor of the Department of State, executive director of the 9/11 Commission, on President Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and as co-director of Harvard’s Intelligence and Policy Project. The signatories also included three contributors to the CT Blog, Michael Jacobson, Matthew Levitt, and this writer.

The experts would seem to have the support of history. Some members of Congress may find it useful to be reminded that the U.S. today holds one of the worst-of-the-worst safely in the United States, the blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman, serving a life sentence in federal prison as a result of his involvement in bringing about the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

Before arresting, trying, convicting, and sentencing Abdel-Rahman, the U.S. did a poor job protecting itself from his incitements to murder. He was a known terrorist in Egypt when he was issued a tourist visa to visit the US in July 1990 despite being listed on a US State Department terrorist watch list. On the way to the U.S., he visited Saudi Arabia, Peshawar, and Sudan, hooking up with antecedent comonents of Al Qaeda. Once in the U.S., he issued a fatwa declaring it lawful to rob banks and kill Jews in America, encouraging Muslims to "destroy [the non-Muslim] economy, burn their companies, eliminate their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, kill them on the sea, air, or land." He organized followers who joined him in conspiracies which included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, conspiracy to use explosives against New York landmarks, and plotting to assassinate U.S. politicians. On October 1, 1995, he was convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison. His inmate registration number is 34892-054, and he has been held at ADX Florence, Colorado and at the Butner Federal Correctional Center in Butner, North Carolina. Unlike domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh who the U.S. executed without incident in June 2001 for the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the blind Shekih is merely sentenced to life.

The U.S. has demonstrated that it can safely hold Sheikh Rahman within its territory. We have yet to be advised of a concrete reason why this would not be the case of even the most vicious people who have been held at Guantanamo.