During the question and answer period today, White House counterterrorism official John Brennan further hinted that a preventive detention policy might not actually come to pass. While he reiterated the military's authority to detain enemies captured on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, he described the prospects for future preventive detention as "dwindling" and indicated the U.S. might instead rely on foreign governments to handle such situations.
This is the second time we've gotten an indication that a preventive detention policy, which seemed like a certainty after President Obama's national security speech in May, might not actually happen. When he spoke before the Senate two weeks ago, Assistant Attorney General David Kris revealed that after going through half of the cases of detainees at Guantanamo, none had yet been put in the so-called "fifth category" of detainees who can't be tried or released. It's always been the case that the "legacy cases"--those detainees captured during the Bush administration who were detained on the basis of intelligence or torture provided the biggest justification for the policy.
Brennan seemed less sanguine about the prospect of Gitmo being closed on time. When asked, he said that "it is our full intention to close down Guantanamo Bay per the president's direction, and we are doing everything possible to meet that direction, and meet that deadline," but added that "I don't have a crystal ball--at this point it's unknowable ... what the conditions on the ground will be." Where have we heard that before?
On Congress' role, Brennan said that "Congress can help...or hinder our efforts on this." During the pause, the audience laughed, acknowledging the tension between the administration's goals and Congress' skittishness about moving terrorist suspects to the mainland.
-- A. Serwer
