The Guantanamo Bay issue is in the news, and I suspect you will see and hear much more to come.
The Guantanamo Bay issue is in the news, and I suspect you will see and hear much more to come. Accordingly, I wanted to give you a touch of my reasoning on our activities on this since it popped up last week.
In shortest form, I have serious concerns about the Department of Defense’s current activities in conducting site surveys because I believe doing so violates existing law. The 2015 Department of Defense Authorization bill, which the President signed last December, had a specific prohibition against funding the transfer of detainees – or in even spending money toward transfer-related activities prior to December 31, 2015. Conducting a site survey of the Charleston Brig or Fort Leavenworth in Kansas certainly fits in this category, given it is transfer-related activity and certainly well before December 31st. Our Founding Fathers envisioned a nation of laws and not men, and for laws to have any meaning, they must be adhered to. In this case, the President is once again proposing unilateral action outside the bounds of the law, and it’s accordingly important there be push back and he be confronted. This principle is important whether one lives in Hanahan or Houston.
In addition, moving high-level terrorist prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, which is in a remote and secure location in Cuba, to the Charleston Brig, which is next door to a middle school, residential neighborhoods, and nestled alongside one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, seems at the very least like a poorly thought-out plan.
Finally, the President is not addressing the issue he could act on unilaterally. Instead, he is focusing on images rather than action. Guantanamo Bay has become the symbol for indefinite detention, and I agree with a long list of military figures that have raised questions about its unintended consequences for our own soldiers and for the messages it sends to the world at large. I don’t believe detaining anyone for 10, 20, or 50 years without charging them at some point is consistent with American ideals. A long list of enemy combatants have been executed over the years after facing a military tribunal, and I don’t think it should be any different in this instance. The President is proposing something far different here, and moving inmates from one place of indefinite detention to another place of indefinite detention is hardly addressing the core problem.
Below you will see a letter along these lines that I sent to Deputy Undersecretary McKeon this week, and I will keep you posted as more develops on this front.
August 19, 2015
Dear Mr. McKeon,
I appreciated our conversation, the sensitivity of the issue on which you are working and your service to our country. This said, I still wanted to follow up on what I pointed out in our phone visit and that I believe the Department of Defense is premature in what it is now doing. I believe it is operating outside the will Congress and current law in even conducting site surveys. This is true in the Midwest just as it is true for your review of the Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, South Carolina as both are being surveyed for the potential transfer of detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba.
Specifically, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2015 states that, with regard to detainees at Guantanamo:
“No amounts authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Defense may be used during the period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act and ending on December 31, 2015, to transfer, release, or assist in the transfer or release to or within the United States, its territories, or possessions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other detainee. . .”
The current visits and evaluations by Department of Defense personnel are aimed at facilitating and assisting transfer. Transfer would not be possible without the site surveys. If I do survey work on a proposed road in South Carolina, I am assisting in building that road. To assess the Charleston Naval Brig may be preliminary in nature, yet they are fundamental to any future plans to close Guantanamo Prison and therefore clearly “assist in the transfer” of detainees in direct violation of the law.
However, my concerns here aren’t just legal, they are logistical as well. To transfer detainees from Guantanamo to Charleston is to take them from an isolated corner of Cuba, a maximum-security setting removed from the American population and to move them to a facility located 0.5 miles from a residential neighborhood and 0.8 miles from Hanahan Middle School.
Additionally, the Charleston Naval Brig sits less than a half-mile from the fastest growing seaport in America with foreign goods and containers arriving from more than 150 different countries. Charleston’s tremendous growth is, in large measure, due to the fact that we are an economic hub and gateway to the Southeast with the convergence of water, rail, and road transportation. This makes it ideal for industry, not a penitentiary.
I have long expressed disagreement on indefinite detention, but moving inmates from one place of indefinite detention to another is hardly addressing the core problem. Accordingly, for the legal and logistical reasons outlined above, I would ask that you not send a team to Charleston for the proposed site survey you had suggested might come our way over the next few weeks.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Representative Mark Sanford (SC-01)