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The administration is finally revealing to the public what most of us already knew. Yesterday, unnamed administration officials first revealed that GITMO will most likely still be open come January 22,2010, when it was scheduled for closure. Today, here's what Defense Secretary Robert Gates revealed. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said trying to close down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay has proved more complicated than anticipated. Gates said "it's going to be tough" for the president to meet his goal of shutting the prison in January. He said there are difficulties in completing the lengthy review of detainee files and...

THE OBAMA administration announced last week that it did not need and would not seek new legislation to govern indefinite detention of some terrorism suspects at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In so doing, the administration has chosen the politically expedient and intellectually dishonest route.

President Barack Obama may not be able to meet his stated goal of closing the much-criticized Guantanamo Bay prison by January as his administration runs into daunting legal and logistical hurdles to moving the more than 220 detainees still there. Senior administration officials acknowledged for the first time Friday that difficulties in completing the lengthy review of detainee files and resolving other thorny questions mean the president's promised January deadline may slip. Obama's aides have stepped up their work toward closure and the president remains as committed to closing the facility as he was when, as one of his first...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three detainees held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been sent to Ireland and Yemen, the Justice Department said on Saturday, the latest transfers as President Barack Obama tries to close the facility by January. Yemeni Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed was sent to his home country, while two other detainees were sent to Ireland, the U.S. government said, adding it would not identify the two at the request of the government of Ireland. There are still some 223 detainees at the prison. Some are expected to be transferred abroad while others could...

AMERICA may break its promise to shut its military prison in Guantanamo Bay by January, officials have admitted. White House insiders warned that their self-imposed deadline was slipping as they struggled to work their way through thorny legal and logistical questions. US President Barack Obama is said to remain committed to closing the facility, a camp for international terror suspects at an American base on Cuba opened by his predecessor George W. Bush after the attacks of 11 September 2001. Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Friday that they still hoped to meet the January deadline by stepping...

It was back in May when Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had this exchange in a press briefing regarding the closure of GITMO. Q Robert, does the President still expect to close Guantanamo Bay one year after his announcement, which would be I guess January 20, 2010? And is -- MR. GIBBS: I think it's the 21st or 22nd, but, yes. Q Twenty-first, thank you. And is he still planning on issuing a detailed map, if you will, of how to get there in another two months from now? MR. GIBBS: I don't understand the second part. Q Did he not...

With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress. Even before the inauguration, President Obama's top advisers settled on a course of action they were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal. The White House has faltered in part because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities...

With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress...Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal. The White House has faltered...because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities involved in determining what to do with more than 200 terrorism suspects at the prison. But senior advisers privately acknowledge not devising a concrete plan for where to move the detainees and...

Remember when the Left scoffed at the argument from George W. Bush that claimed the authorization to use military force allowed the executive branch to hold captured terrorists indefinitely, without criminal trial? Bush’s opponents screamed about human rights and due process, and claimed that Bush had abused his power. Those critics included Barack Obama, who regularly castigated the Bush administration for its failure to provide his idea of due process to detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, as well as blasting Bush for his argument that he didn’t require Congress to act to maintain that power. Now? Change you can...

So White House advisor Greg Craig has been stuffed into a broom closet for advising Obama to close Gitmo, a position Obama himself shouted every day from every grassy knoll in the country last year. It was a ridiculous, nakedly political position, divorced from all reality, but the left-wing base just had to be appeased. A fourth grader would have had the sense to ask of and demand an answer from Obama on what he planned to do with the terrorists once he closed Gitmo, but that question apparently didn't occur to anybody with press credentials.

With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress. Even before the inauguration, President Obama's top advisers settled on a course of action they were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal. The White House has faltered in part because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities...

In late 2001, when the Pentagon decided to put detainees at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the task of setting up a camp and establishing its rules went to Marine Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert. Lehnert planned to rely on what he learned while running a camp at Guantanamo in the mid-1990s for nearly 19,000 Cubans and Haitians trying to flee to the United States. And he was determined to follow the spirit, if not the letter, of the Geneva Convention, providing decent food, banning extreme interrogation and allowing religious services. He brought in a Muslim chaplain and...

9/11 a “Badge of Honor” - - New Attack Coming TOP TERRORISTS SAYS ALLAH WILL PROVIDE HIS DEFENSE by Paul L. Williams, Ph.D.thelastcrusade.orgAl Qaeda chieftain Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who is now on trial at Guantanamo Bay, wants to fire his free-of-charge American lawyers. He claims that Allah will defend him in a letter that was made public this week. Mohammed, 44, stands accused of mass murder for masterminding the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed 2,974 people.His military judge has opted to leave the defense team intact until Nov. 16, when the Obama administration is expected to decide whether Mohammed...

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors in New York, Washington and Virginia are vying to try the accused plotters of the September 11 attacks if their cases are moved into U.S. civilian courts, the chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo war crimes court said. The Obama administration said last week it would decide by November 16 whether to try Guantanamo prisoners in a revised version of the much-maligned military tribunals or in regular civilian courts. Case files for self-described 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged al Qaeda co-conspirators are already under review by U.S. attorneys...

A good friend writes:Eric Holder is a senior partner with Covington & Burling, a prestigious Washington, D.C. law firm, which represents 17 Yemenis currently held at Gitmo. From the C & B website: The firm represents 17 Yemeni nationals and one Pakistani citizen held at Guantánamo Bay. The Supreme Court will soon review the D.C. Circuit’s ruling that ordered the dismissal of a number of habeas petitions filed by Guantánamo detainees; some of our clients are petitioners in the Supreme Court case. We expect to play a substantial role in the briefing. We also plan to petition the Supreme Court...

My Op-ed in The Australian By Leah Farrall, Australia I have an op-ed piece out in today’s edition of The Australian called “Detentions come back to bite” It’s about Guantanamo blowback now having very real strategic consequences: the formation of a new strategy to kidnap civilians in Afghanistan in order to secure the release of prisoners taken by America. Sally Neighbour has a front page piece derived from my op-ed here “Afghan foreigner kidnap order by al Qaeda leader Mustafa Hamid”. I haven’t seen the broadsheet yet, so I’m not sure if the photos I provided of Hamid are on...

War On Terror: Charges against the mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole are dismissed. He will be retried, but not by a military commission that would have given him the death penalty he deserves.Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell announced on Thursday that Susan Crawford, the convening authority for military tribunals at Guantanamo, has made the decision to withdraw charges against Abd al-Rahim Hussain Mohammed al-Nashiri. This is the Saudi man believed to be the architect of the bombing of the guided missile destroyer USS Cole, killing 17 American sailors, as it sat in the Yemeni port of Aden. The...

NEW YORK - The Obama administration plans to issue new guidelines meant to provide prisoners at a U.S. detention center in Afghanistan greater latitude in challenging their detention, The New York Times reported in its Sunday edition. Citing Pentagon officials and advocates for detainees at the U.S.-run prison at Bagram Air Base, the newspaper said each of the approximately 600 detainees would be assigned a U.S. military official who would have the authority to look for evidence, including witnesses and classified material, for any detainee challenging his detention. The challenges would be heard by a military-appointed review board, the Times...

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon has begun putting into place a new program under which hundreds of prisoners being held by the military in Afghanistan will be given the right to challenge their detentions, a defense official said Sunday. Prisoners at Bagram military base are all to be given a U.S. military official to serve as their personal representative and a chance to go before new so-called Detainee Review Boards, to have their cases considered, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be able to discuss a program that has not been formally announced

Military will let Afghan detainees challenge their detentionPresident Obama is readying plans that will allow hundreds of prisoners in Afghanistan to begin challenging their detention, possibly as soon as this week, according to reports. The new system will assign a military official to each of about 600 prisoners, most of whom are being held at Bagram Air Base. The official could then gather exculpatory evidence and call witnesses before a board that has the power to decide whether the detainees should be held by U.S. or Afghan officials or be released, according to reports by The New York Times and...

SNIP Al Qaeda thug Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and former No. 2 henchman of Osama bin Laden, looks oddly like his monstrous mentor after six years of captivity. SNIP But, KSM, as he's known in intelligence circles, doesn't look any worse for wear in photographs taken in July during a visit by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Guantanamo Bay. A healthy-looking Mohammed has grown a long bin Laden-like beard, while sporting a red-checkered turban. The last the world saw of him six years ago, he was disheveled, paunchy, in a stretched T-shirt...

The first photographs of the self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind at Guantanamo Bay have cropped up on the Internet, and experts say the images of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are being used by terrorist groups to inspire attacks against the United States. The photographs, taken in July by the Red Cross at the Guantanamo detention centre in Cuba, show Mohammed in a white robe, a red-patterned headdress and a long salt-and-pepper beard. They are the first known images of Mohammed since shot taken upon his capture in Pakistan in March 2003 showing him in a white T-shirt, with disheveled hair and a moustache....

Apparently one of the three Swedish men who were caught in Pakistan last week, is according to information received by SvT Rapport, Mehdi Ghezali, who for several years was kept imprisoned on the Guantanamo base. According to Pakistani authorities the Swedes were apprehended together with seven Turks and and one Russian, and are suspected of collaboration with al-Qaida. According to informants the prisoners have been transferred to Islamabad. The 30 year old Mehdi Ghezali was caught near the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan in December 2001, and was shortly thereafter handed over to the US military. He was released from...

SNIPPET: "How Did the Posting of the Photos Actually Play Out? 1. At some point in July 2009, International Red Cross delegates photographed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi. These photos were taken as part of a service that the ICRC has provided to at least the 107 detainees at Guantanamo who opted in. The service includes provide their families with photographed evidence that the detainee is alive and not being mistreated. 2. Specifically, each detainee selects their two favorite poses and print copies of those photographs along with a note from the ICRC are transmitted by the...

This week on "Take AIM," Accuracy in Media's Thursday morning show on BlogTalkRadio, Congressman Mike Rogers (R-MI) discusses health care reform. Commander Kirk Lippold, senior military fellow with Military Families United, discusses the Obama administration's release of Guantanamo Bay detainees, as well as his experiences as commanding officer of the USS Cole when it was attacked. AIM chairman Don Irvine and media analyst Roger Aronoff host. Listen live on Thursday, September 10, at 11:00 am Eastern here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Accuracy-In-Media/2009/09/10/Take-AIM For more information about our guests, see www.mikerogers.house.gov and www.militaryfamiliesunited.org. Take AIM airs every Thursday at 11:00 am Eastern on BlogTalkRadio. Can't...

Two parts of the Obama administration are giving conflicting reports on the dangers posed by terrorist detainees to Congress and the U.S. courts, executive branch sources tell HUMAN EVENTS. In effect, the Obama administration is keeping two sets of books on the terrorist prisoners. According to rules established earlier this year, the Obama administration is required to send Congress notification of its intent to move or release any inmates at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba facility at least fifteen days before the action is accomplished. These notifications, called “risk assessments,” were supposed to give members of Congress sufficient information for them...

Link only, per FR copyright and excerpt rules

Republican Senator John McCain has denounced the use of torture on terrorism suspects during the administration of former president George W. Bush. "I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan," said McCain. In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, the Arizona senator said that the enhanced interrogation techniques also helped al Qaeda recruit additional members. "I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq,” said McCain, who added that he...

Note: The following text is a quote: United States Transfers Two Guantanamo Bay Detainees to the Government of Portugal The Department of Justice today announced that two Syrian nationals have been transferred from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the control of the government of Portugal. As directed by the President’s Jan. 22, 2009 Executive Order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of these cases. As a result of that review, the detainees were approved for transfer from Guantanamo Bay. On Aug. 6, 2009, in accordance with Congressionally-mandated reporting requirements, the Administration informed Congress of...

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator John McCain, a torture survivor from his days as a captive during the Vietnam War, says his private comments about harsh interrogation methods were misrepresented by the Bush Administration in a recently released legal document intended to justify a six-day-long course of sleep deprivation for one CIA detainee in November of 2007. The newly declassified memo by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel mentions a secret briefing McCain and other members of Congress received sometime before October 17, 2006. The memo says the lawmakers were told about six CIA interrogation techniques, including prolonged sleep deprivation....

Says Abuse of Detainees Helped al Qaeda Recruit Terrorists, But Opposes Investigation into "Enhanced" Interrogations. BY MICHELLE LEVI Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he thinks it is a "serious mistake" for the administration to focus on the past when investigating the interrogation techniques of the CIA under President Bush on "Face the Nation" Sunday. "For us now to go back, I think, would be a serious mistake. "I believe that the president was right when he said we ought to go forward and not back. I worry about the morale and effectiveness of the CIA. I worry about this thing...

A former Guantánamo guard who had flown to the UK to address a support group for inmates of the camp is to be deported back to the US this morning after being denied entry on arrival at Heathrow airport yesterday. Terry Holdbrooks, who has been an outspoken critic of the US government over the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo, said that immigration officials told him he was being refused entry because he was unemployed and living in rented accommodation in the US, raising suspicions he would not leave the UK. The former soldier, who converted to Islam after discussions with...

President Barack Obama said, "Nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal, supermax prisons, which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists," during his May 21, 2009 speech at the National Archives. In this morning's Washington Post, they report a 2006 Department of Justice memo states that convicted al Qaeda prisoners in Supermax at Florence, Colorado "coordinated the beginning of a hunger strike" and developed "a sophisticated method to resist compulsory feeding" by communicated via "tapping on the pipes." (Has no one at the Bureau of Prisons ever heard of the Hanoi Hilton and how John McCain et al communicated by...

If you liked the Valerie Plame non-outing, you'll love this: A Spy 'Outing' Game For Real 84rules August 27, 2009

"Sleep deprivation, "insult slaps," water dousing and "walling," or slamming a detainee's head against a wall, were techniques used by CIA interrogators to break high-value detainees, according to an agency memo." Holder decision "promises political headaches for President Barack Obama, came after the Justice Department's ethics watchdog recommended considering prosecution of CIA employees or contractors for interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan that went beyond approved limits." Cheney said ""The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions," he said in a statement."

SAVOR the silence of America's self-serving champions of privacy. For once, the American Civil Liberties Union has nothing bad to say about the latest case of secret domestic surveillance -- because it is the ACLU that committed the spying. Last week, The Washington Post reported on a Justice Department inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guantanamo detainees. According to the report, the pictures of covert CIA officers -- "in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes" -- were shown to jihadi suspects tied to the 9/11...

Report Shows Tight C.I.A. Control on Interrogations By SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI WASHINGTON — Two 17-watt fluorescent-tube bulbs — no more, no less — illuminated each cell, 24 hours a day. White noise played constantly but was never to exceed 79 decibels. A prisoner could be doused with 41-degree water but for only 20 minutes at a stretch. The Central Intelligence Agency’s secret interrogation program operated under strict rules, and the rules were dictated from Washington with the painstaking, eye-glazing detail beloved by any bureaucracy. The first news reports this week about hundreds of pages of newly released documents...

It seems most people are in favor of holding onto our little slice of island paradise, our island retreat from the stress of jihad. Add closing Gitmo to the growing list of harebrained Obama schemes to remake America that are being soundly rejected by the American people... One of the more interesting things to note about President Obama is that ideas that once sounded fairly reasonable to many people no longer sound so good once he gets into the details. Lots of good news in the poll results. If Obama had to spend ten minutes explaining why it was a...

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohammed Jawad is in Afghanistan and will be released into his family's custody today. Jawad was arrested by Afghan police in December 2002 for allegedly throwing a grenade into a vehicle containing two U.S. troops and an Afghan interpreter. In July, a judge granted his writ of habeas corpus; Justice Department officials had 22 days to determine whether they would attempt to try Jawad in a criminal court in the U.S. Despite talk of new evidence, ultimately they didn't file any new charges.

President Obama has approved the creation of an elite team of interrogators to question key terrorism suspects, part of a broader effort to revamp U.S. policy on detention and interrogation, senior administration officials said Sunday. Obama signed off late last week on the unit, named the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG. Made up of experts from several intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the interrogation unit will be housed at the FBI but will be overseen by the National Security Council -- shifting the center of gravity away from the CIA and giving the White House direct oversight. (snip) Holder...

The ACLU’s campaign on behalf of Islamic terrorists now includes helping them to identify CIA operatives, who can be targeted for assassination after the liberals who run things set the terrorists free. Lawyers have provided pictures of covert officers to detainees charged with organizing the all-but-forgotten 9/11 attacks.

Security: The ACLU sneakily photographing CIA officers near their homes, then showing the shots to the imprisoned planners of the 9/11 attacks. A fruitcake fantasy? The government is looking into exactly this.When the Washington Post three and a half years ago uncovered the CIA's "black prisons" program, in which enhanced interrogation was used against terrorist detainees to foil future atrocities, we forcefully argued that such secret wartime operations ought never be outed. The Post may have won a Pulitzer for its revelation, but we feel more strongly than ever today. And a new story in that same newspaper gives new...

The Justice Department has questioned attorneys who represent Gitmo detainees about the practice of showing photographs of CIA personnel, including covert officers, to detainees charged with organizing the 9/11 attacks. The investigation reportedly pertains to three lawyers who are said to have shown their clients the photos in an effort to identify CIA officers and contractors who interrogated these terrorists. The photos were taken by researchers hired by a joint project of the ACLU and the National Assocation of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In some cases, the photographers are said to have taken the pictures sureptitiously outside the homes of CIA...

Developing: ACLU and others gathered the names and photographs of CIA operatives and showed them to some detainees at Gitmo. No link yet. Will update when it's published.

So we’re hearing that ACLU attorneys allegedly showed photos of CIA agents to Guantanamo Prison terrorist detainees (Ed Morrissey, “ACLU, Gitmo Lawyers, exposed CIA agent identities to terrorists,” August 21, 2009, http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/21/aclu-gitmo-lawyers-exposed-cia-agent-identities-to-terrorists/). If they did, it’s one of the most blatant examples of protecting the criminal instead of the innocent. It’s also an act of treason. Morrissey reports that some photographs of CIA agents were shown in front of their homes. It’s hard enough to fathom a hostile world, but to know that Americans who possess a warped version of liberalism are threatening our country’s safety is especially disheartening –...

Justice Dept. Looking Into Whether Attorneys Broke Law at Guantanamo - The Justice Department recently questioned military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay about whether photographs of CIA personnel, including covert officers, were unlawfully provided to detainees charged with organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to sources familiar with the investigation... The photos were taken by researchers hired by the John Adams Project, a joint effort of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, to support military counsel at Guantanamo Bay, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of...

Many of the 300 people who attended today's meeting in Standish, Michigan were already against moving Gitmo's detainees there; the rest left with more questions than they came with, according to town hall organizer and long-time Standish resident Dave Munson. I spoke with Mr. Munson this afternoon, after the meeting. He said, "The Department of Defense needs to come up here and be honest with us about how this would effect our community." ...U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Holland and a candidate of Michigan governor in 2010, took the podium first and urged the people to push for transparency. Hoekstra has...

There is going to be a town hall meeting in Standish, Mi. today. Michigan citizens concerned about the controversial federal plan to transfer Guantanamo Bay terrorist detainees to the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility will hold an emergency town hall meeting this Thursday, August 20, at 12:00 noon, in Resurrection of the Lord Church, 423 W. Cedar St., Standish, Michigan. The meeting is open to the public and press.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration plans to transfer six prisoners abroad from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. official said on Wednesday, part of the effort to close the controversial facility by early 2010. The detainees include those previously ordered released by U.S. courts or whose release has been approved through the Obama administration's review process, a Justice Department official said, declining to give further details. The administration notified Congress around August 6-7 of the planned moves, starting a 15-day waiting period before the transfers can begin. One, Mohammed Jawad, could be sent back to Afghanistan as...

President Barack Obama plans an all-out push for health care reform legislation after Labor Day — but he is likely to find Congress and the media distracted by a series of thorny national security problems, including Guantanamo and Iran, which are set to come roaring back onto the national agenda.