Detention Policy: The Executive Branch is a "They," Not an "It"
As Bobby mentioned, I’m giving a keynote address at noon tomorrow at American University’s Washington College of Law on the question, “The Guantanamo Detainees, What Next?” In that speech I will try, among other things, to assess the significance of these five statements from senior Obama administration officials in the last two days:
- CIA Director Leon Panetta, yesterday: “We would probably move [Osama Bin La
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As Bobby mentioned, I’m giving a keynote address at noon tomorrow at American University’s Washington College of Law on the question, “The Guantanamo Detainees, What Next?” In that speech I will try, among other things, to assess the significance of these five statements from senior Obama administration officials in the last two days:
- CIA Director Leon Panetta, yesterday: “We would probably move [Osama Bin Laden and his deputy, if captured] quickly into military jurisdiction at Bagram for questioning and then, eventually, move them probably to Guantanamo.”
- White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, yesterday: President Obama “remains committed to closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, because, as our military commanders have made clear, it's a national security priority to do so. . . . I'm not going speculate about what would happen if we were to capture Osama bin Laden.”
- Defense Secretary Robert Gates, today: “The prospects for closing Guantanamo as best I can tell are very, very low given very broad opposition to doing that here in the Congress.”
- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, today, when asked where the United States would send a high-level al Qaeda terrorist captured outside Iraq or Afghanistan: “We don’t have an answer to that question.”
- Attorney General Eric Holder, today: “Our goal is to kill or to capture Osama bin Laden. . . . If he were to be captured, we would -- the national security team would get together and would determine where appropriately he would be held.”
Jack Goldsmith is the Learned Hand Professor at Harvard Law School, co-founder of Lawfare, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Before coming to Harvard, Professor Goldsmith served as Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel from 2003-2004, and Special Counsel to the Department of Defense from 2002-2003.
