Last week, Ben Wittes posted a letter from Chairman Buck McKeon and ranking member Adam Smith of the House Armed Services Committee indicating their intention to investigate the “the circumstances and mechanisms for post-transfer security measures and assurances for humane treatment for those transferred from Guantanamo Bay.”
As you know, the committee continues to be concerned about policies and procedures governing detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. In particular, the committee is concerned with status review procedures, prosecution protocols, long-term detention authority, security protocols, and transfer issues.. Subjects pertaining to detainees at Guantanamo Bay have important implications for our national security. Detention policies are shaped by two central objectives: ensuring terrorists who may return to threaten our security are not released and those who remain at Guantanamo Bay are afforded a process that is both fair and considered credible by the international community.
So far third-party recidivism estimates have been much lower than those released by the administration, and the administration has never released more than the figures themselves. It'll be interesting to see what the HASC investigation produces.
