How is this possible?
President Obama’s plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials — barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees — discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.
Instead, they found that information on individual prisoners is “scattered throughout the executive branch,” a senior administration official said. The executive order Obama signed Thursday orders the prison closed within one year, and a Cabinet-level panel named to review each case separately will have to spend its initial weeks and perhaps months scouring the corners of the federal government in search of relevant material.
Several former Bush administration officials agreed that the files are incomplete and that no single government entity was charged with pulling together all the facts and the range of options for each prisoner. They said that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were reluctant to share information, and that the Bush administration’s focus on detention and interrogation made preparation of viable prosecutions a far lower priority.
But other former officials took issue with the criticism and suggested that the new team has begun to appreciate the complexity and dangers of the issue and is looking for excuses.
No comprehensive case files? New team doesn’t understand the complexity and dangers of the issue? Obviously not that dangerous since files are scattered willy-nilly across various agencies. Was anyone in charge of this situation? Is there any rational explanation for why these files weren’t housed in one place? And if we believe the claim that these prisoners are a direct threat to our safety then why such sloppy record keeping?
Again and again, we are told that Guantanamo is necessary, important, vital. Keeping track of who’s detained there? Not so much.