Free Republic

A number of Arabic and Pashtu interpreters at the terror-war detention center at Guantanamo Bay are under active investigation for omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations, among other security breaches. This could taint some of the evidence at the "9/11 trial" in New York and proceedings against other detainees. Remarkably, the Pentagon never cleaned up the "mole infestation" at its highest-security facility after the FBI busted a Muslim spy ring at Gitmo in 2003. The 2003 probe involved at least two Arabic interpreters with high-level security clearance. Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, a Syrian native, and former Army...

As his time in the White House winds down, President Barack Obama received an unusual piece of mail: a letter from accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Officials confirmed that the letter arrived at the White House to CBS News, but are declining to provide further details. Mohammed is awaiting his death-penalty trial at Guantanamo Bay, accused of planning and orchestrating the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. The Miami Herald, which first reported on the letter, says it was written in 2014, and was only delivered...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz introduced a bill on Tuesday that would declassify information about the terrorist activities of detainees at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba who have been released or transferred since Election Day. The move came after a report that the Obama administration recently struck a deal with Oman to transfer 10 detainees from Gitmo. The move brings the total number of detainees down to less than 50. Cruz and other Republicans have been heavily critical of Obama’s transfers and of his promise to close the facility before leaving office. Republicans point to a statistic that 30 percent...

The White House said Tuesday that the Guantánamo Bay detention center in Cuba will still be open when President Barack Obama leaves office, conceding that a core campaign promise will go unfulfilled. Administration officials had long insisted that the president was continuing to work toward closing the facility even when it became obvious that it would no longer be possible for practical reasons before President-elect Donald Trump takes office Friday. White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that the administration determined it wouldn’t happen when they realized they did not have enough time left to comply with the 30-day deadline...

Democratic lawmakers are calling for President Obama to close Guantanamo Bay because "Donald Trump must be deprived of the use” of the controversial prison. Representatives including New York City’s Hakeem Jeffries, Jerrold Nadler, Nydia Velazquez and Jose Serrano signed a letter sent to the White House Wednesday. Obama promised during his first presidential campaign to close the facility on Cuban soil, which was filled with suspected terrorists during the Bush administration, some of whom have stayed there for years without a trial or charges. The White House has said that it is working to move the 18 inmates who remain...

Four Gitmo detainees are slated to be transferred to Saudi Arabia in the next 24 hours, the first of the final wave of up to 20 transfers expected before Inauguration Day, two U.S. officials tell Fox News. The identities of the four detainees are not immediately known. The transfers are proceeding despite renewed opposition from President-elect Donald Trump, who tweeted on Tuesday: “There should be no further releases from Gitmo. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.”

Amnesty International is making a final push to convince President Obama to circumvent Congress and close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility before the end of his presidency. “On behalf of Amnesty International’s 1.2 million supporters in the United States, I write to make a final plea that you use all the powers of your office to close the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay,” Margaret Huang, executive director of Amnesty International USA, wrote in a letter to Obama on Tuesday. “We are gravely concerned that if you fail to do so, President-elect Trump may attempt to bring dozens or even hundreds...

The Obama administration intends to transfer 17 or 18 of the remaining 59 Guantanamo Bay detainees before the president leaves office, the New York Times reported Monday night. The prisoners will go to Italy, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. If the proposal goes through, Donald Trump would be left to deal with 10 men who were charged or convicted in military commissions, and 27 who were not charged but are deemed to dangerous to release. It is not clear if Trump will refuse to transfer detainees once he takes office. The president-elect has promised to keep Guantanamo...

An Al Qaeda operative incarcerated at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo has confirmed what Judicial Watch has been reporting for years, that a Saudi Arabian “rehabilitation” program that supposedly reforms jihadists is really a terrorist training camp. The U.S. has released dozens of Gitmo captives to the comical jihadist rehab and earlier this year considered sending another, senior Al Qaeda boss Ghassan Abdullah al-Sharbi, a dangerous Saudi national with a U.S. college education. During a hearing before President Obama’s Gitmo parole board, al-Sharbi said “you guys want to send me back to Saudi Arabia because you believe there is...

If President-elect Donald Trump decides to make good on his campaign pledge to "load up" the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with new domestic terror suspects caught in the US -- including American citizens -- legal experts say he is asking for an unprecedented constitutional showdown. Voters first received a peek at Trump's stance on Guantanamo Bay back in 2015 when talking points on various policy questions were leaked ahead of a Republican debate. On the issue of whether he would close the detention facility, the memo stated: "No. I would also take away the passports of Americans who...

Gitmo Prisoners ‘Thought It Was the End of the World’ on Election Night, Asked for Tranquilizers BY: Chandler Gill December 1, 2016 10:53 am Prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba “thought it was the end of the world” the night of the presidential election and asked their guards for tranquilizers and sleeping pills, CBS correspondent Margaret Brennan reported Thursday. David Remes, the lawyer of one of the prisoners at Guantanamo, recounted to Brennan what his client told him about election night. “He said that many detainees thought that it was the end of the world and felt...

Obama IRS Official Admits Cincinnati Office Targeted Groups Based on ‘Guilt by Association’ Judicial Watch Goes to Court For Records about Exchange of GTMO Prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl Clinton Accountability Goes Forward Obama IRS Official Admits Cincinnati Office Targeted Groups Based on ‘Guilt by Association’ We know now, right from the horse’s mouth, how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has targeted Tea Party and conservative groups during the Obama administration. In the notes of a top IRS official, written down during a 2011 interoffice meeting, we discovered that Cincinnati office agents were targeting organizations requesting tax-exempt status based...

Never mind closing Guantanamo. It might be getting bigger. President Barack Obama is running out of time to fulfill his longstanding promise to shutter the prison at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Sixty inmates remain in the facility and only a third are cleared for release. If Obama can’t close it, his successor likely won’t. Donald Trump has not only pledged to keep Guantanamo open, in April he said that “we’re gonna load it up with some bad dudes, believe me. We’re gonna load it up.” …

Another campaign promise?

The voters who put Barack Obama in office expected some big changes. From the NSA's warrantless wiretapping to Guantanamo Bay to the Patriot Act, candidate Obama was a defender of civil liberties and privacy, promising a dramatically different approach from his predecessor. But six years into his administration, the Obama version of national security looks almost indistinguishable from the one he inherited. Guantanamo Bay remains open. The NSA has, if anything, become more aggressive in monitoring Americans. Drone strikes have escalated. Most recently it was reported that the same president who won a Nobel Prize in part for promoting nuclear...

I was wondering how I was going to respond to John Oliver's ignorant Guantanamo diatribe. It's longer than it should be, but I went through it, taking notes. Frankly, I might not have watched this at all. But the first report I've seen on it mentioned an "innocent" detainee without naming him. I knew he wasn't really innocent, of course, but my curiosity got the best of me. So, I watched it all. Still, I thought there's simply too much there, and too much wrong, for me to write a quick post. Fortunately, Mike Brown of Inverse selected a few...

<p>The Category 5 Hurricane Matthew continues moving across the Caribbean, and is scheduled to smash into the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by Tuesday evening.</p> <p>Hurricane Matthew reached Category 5 status in the early hours of Saturday morning, becoming the first to do so since Hurricane Felix in 2007. At its peak that day, Matthew’s 160 miles-per-hour winds were as powerful as Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, which is rated as “the most destructive storm in the U.S. modern history.”</p>

The commander of the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay on Saturday ordered the evacuation of families and other so-called “non-essential personnel” from the remote outpost in southeast Cuba ahead of Hurricane Matthew. “A mandatory evacuation has been called for all non-essential personnel,” said Guantánamo base spokeswoman Julie Ripley, in a statement issued just before 1 p.m. “The location will be announced once details are finalized. This includes dependents, school-aged children, special needs families, and their pets.”

The Obama administration is threatening to veto a House bill that would prohibit all transfers out of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The veto threat, in the form of a statement of administration policy, reiterates the administration’s longstanding argument that closing the facility would improve national security. It says detainee transfers to foreign countries happen only after a comprehensive review process.

White House Won’t Say if It Pays Other Countries to Accept Guantanamo Bay Transfers David Rutz BY: August 26, 2016 1:40 pm White House spokesman Josh Earnest would not say Friday whether the United States pays other countries to accept in transfers from the Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison, despite being asked directly twice. The Obama administration transferred 15 prisoners earlier this month, leaving just 61 remaining at the Cuba detention facility. The 12 Yemenis and three Afghans were sent to the United Arab Emirates. Since taking office in 2009, President Obama has repeatedly stated his goal to close Gitmo. Fox...