Obama ignored chances to rescue Bergdahl on the ground because he WANTED a terror trade to help close down Guantanamo Bay, claim Pentagon sources
- 'The president wanted a diplomatic scenario that would establish a precedent for repatriating detainees from Gitmo,' a Pentagon official says
- He described a conversation with a State Department liaison who said 'the president isn't going to leave office with Gitmo intact, and this was the best opportunity to see that through'
- Obama has promised to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention camp since 2008 and tried to order it shuttered on his first day in office
- The White House hurried its decision-making about retrieving Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, leaving intelligence officials too little time to assess how damaging it would be to release five Taliban leaders in exchange for him
- Military commanders, meanwhile, were unwilling to mount a dangerous rescue operation to save a presumed U.S. Army deserter
- The result, sources say, was the perfect storm as Obama aims to be rid of 'Gitmo' before he leaves office in 2017
The Obama administration passed up multiple opportunities to rescue Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl because the president was dead-set on finding a reason to begin emptying Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a Pentagon official.
'JSOC went to the White House with several specific rescue-op scenarios,' the official with knowledge of interagency negotiations underway since at least November 2013 told MailOnline, referring to the Joint Special Operations Command. 'But no one ever got traction.'
'What we learned along the way was that the president wanted a diplomatic scenario that would establish a precedent for repatriating detainees from Gitmo,' he said.
The official said a State Department liaison described the lay of the land to him in February, shortly after the Taliban sent the U.S. government a month-old video of Bergdahl in January, looking sickly and haggard, in an effort to create a sense of urgency about his health and effect a quick prisoner trade.
'He basically told me that no matter what JSOC put on the table, it was never going to fly because the president isn't going to leave office with Gitmo intact, and this was the best opportunity to see that through.'
SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEOS
CLUB GITMO: The military prison on the island of Cuba holds 149 prisoners, now that President Obama has sent five top Taliban commanders to Qatar in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl
Military Police guard Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees at the infamous Camp X-Ray in the Guantanamo Bay prison complex; suspected terrorists get meals, medical care and entertainment at U.S. taxpayer expense, but they can be held indefinitely
President Obama is in Poland marking the 25th anniversary of that country's first partly free elections, but America is buzzing about his decision to grant freedom to five hardened terrorists in order to retrieve a reported Army deserter
While military commanders wavered on the value of rescue plans, a second Pentagon source said Wednesday, they were advised by their chain of command that the White House was pushing hard for a prisoner swap, over the objections of the intelligence community.
That official told MailOnline that at least two separate intelligence agencies cautioned against taking the January video at face value.
The Daily Beast reported Monday, however, that the White House moved the process along too fast to permit a formal intelligence assessment of the impact of allowing what some on Capitol Hill are now calling the Taliban's 'dream team' to return to the Middle East.
Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio told Fox News on Wednesday that the Obama administration 'bypassed the intelligence community' to make the deal, adding that 'I believe he bypassed Congress because this was done for political reasons. There was no policy justification for this.'
The result, according to multiple published reports, was an environment in which the White House could insist on moving forward quickly on the basis that a soldier's health was at immediate risk – using that justification also to explain its failure to keep Congress informed.
The White House has yet to explain why the deterioration of Bergdahl's health, seen in a video in January, was sufficient reason to steamroll a decision that ended up taking four months to execute.
In a video distributed Wednesday morning by the Taliban, Bergdahl appeared to be strong and in good health as he was handed over to U.S. Special Forces on Saturday
The Washington Times reported that a congressional aide said JSOC never forwarded specific military rescue plans to the White House, judging independently that President Obama was more interested in a diplomatic solution.
But both the Times' sources and MailOnline's also agreed that commanders on the ground were not in favor of sending Special Forces into the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region and risking their lives to rescue a presumed deserter from the terrorist Haqqani network.
'Military commanders were loath to risk their people to save this guy,' a former intelligence official told the Times. 'They were loath to pick him up and because of that hesitancy, we wind up trading five Taliban guys for him.'
Prisoner swap: Abdul Waq-Hasiq, left, and Norullah Noori, right, were freed from Guantanamo Bay and given a hero's welcome in Qatar
Former combatants: The prisoners, including Khirullah Khairkhwa, left, and Mohammed Nabi, right, will remain under a loose form of house arrest in the Arab country for one year as part of the terms of their release
Evidence suggests that at least six soldiers were killed in the search for Bergdahl after he walked away from his unit on June 30, 2009, and another eight perished in a bloody eastern Afghanistan battle later that year because their air support and relief infantry units were occupied in the search.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, however, said Wednesday in Brussels that he does 'not know of specific circumstances or details of U.S. solders dying as a result of efforts to find and rescue Sergeant Bergdahl.'
Less than 48 hours after Bergdahl, then an Army private, disappeared, military commanders in Afghanistan were offered terms to reclaim him. It's unclear why that opportunity fell through.
RELEASED: Mohammad Fazi is believed to have been at the command of a mass killing, and the United Nations has sought his prosecution for war crimes
According to field reports published online by WIkileaks, soldiers conducting a Key Leader Engagement (KLE) discussion with tribal elders and Afghanistan National Police in Paktika province weretold of a Taliban offer for his safe return.
Battallion Command was radioed that officers had 'just finished with the KLE with 2 x elders from Mest and the Mest ANP commander. The elders were asked by the Taliban to [arrange] a trade between the U.S. and Taliban.'
'The Taliban terms are 15 of their Taliban brothers in U.S. jail and some money in exchange for Pvt Bergdahl,' a transcript of the radio traffic read. 'The elders assured me that Pvt Bergdahl is alive and that he is not being harmed.'
Police offered help the tribal elders with money for a car, fuel and light weapons in order to make the exchange, but it never happened.
It's also unclear whether the 'U.S. jail' the Taliban referred to was Guantanamo Bay or a local holding facility in Afghanistan.
Obama's promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has been controversial since he first made it in 2008, and his January 22, 2009 executive order calling for it to be shuttered in a year – his first such order as president – was met with eye-rolls in Washington.
But political momentum has slowly gathered on the president's side, even as military and foreign policy concerns continue to make the task seem impossible.
First the Justice and Defense departments were ordered in late 2009 to acquire a defunct prison in Illinois as a replacement, but six months later Congress blocked funding for any project that would move Guantanamo Bay's detainees to U.S. soil.
Then in 2011 Obama ordered the creation of a formal review process for detainees and green-lighted the military tribunals that prisoners could turn to for due process before he canceled them upon taking office in 2009.
In early 2013 the State Department announced that it had closed down its office in charge of handling Guantanamo's closure. But in January a group of 31 retired U.S. military officers grabbed the national spotlight with a letter urging Obama to shut down the camp and move its population somewhere else.
'As long as it remains open, Guantanamo will undermine America's security and status as a nation where human rights and the rule of law matter,' they claimed.
Obama's latest political stroke came around the same time, when he signed the latest National Defense Authorization Act into law. It loosened the requirements he must satisfy before he can transfer detainees from Guantanamo to foreign nations.
The fly in the ointment is that he is required to tell Congress 30 days in advance of relocating any of Guantanamo's prisoners – something his administration failed to do before cutting a deal that sent five Taliban ringleaders to Qatar in exchange for Bergdahl's safe return.
Closing the military prison at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay has been a policy goal of the Obama administration since its first day, when the president signed a futile executive order demanding its closure within a year
California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein told The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the existence of the secret Taliban videos, that there still 'certainly was time to pick up the phone and call and say "I know you all had concerns about this, we consulted in the past, we want you to know we have reviewed these negotiations",'
Ultimately, White House Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken called Feinstein to apologize for the lack of notice, claiming that it was an 'oversight.'
Other members of Congress were quick to suggest on Wednesday that the Berghdal prisoner swap was thin cover for the president's desire to empty Guantanamo's cells.
South Caroline Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told The Washington Examiner that Obama was floating a 'trial balloon,' to test the political waters for a larger prison release.
And Oklahoma GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe said Tuesday on TheBlaze TV that 'this president has an obsession – has two obsessions, I guess I should say – that he wants to turn into his legacy when he leaves office.'
'One of those happens to be to close Gitmo.'
With five Taliban leaders now in Qatar and a year to work with – the length of time that country's emir has said he will keep them under a loose form of house arrest – an only somewhat forgiving clock has started ticking.
Penned in: Detainees at 'Gitmo' are denied the constitutional rights of criminal defendants and can be subject to military tribunals instead; public interest lawyers working on behalf of some of them have alleged torture at the hands of intelligence operatives there
IMPEACHMENT: South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters on Wednesday that President Obama will face a push to remove him from office if he transfers more prisoners out of Guantanamo Bay without including Congress in the decision-making process
'Obama now has the tool he's always wanted,' a former U.S. intelligence official who is now a private government contractor told MailOnline on Wednesday.
'The question is how many of these Taliban guys he can sneak past the goalie while Congress is busy hassling him about the IRS, the VA and Obamacare.'
Already, Graham has threatened to invoke Congress's ultimate nuclear option – impeachment – if Obama relocates any more Guantanamo detainees without putting Capitol Hill in the loop.
He warned The Hill that 'it's going to be impossible for them to flow prisoners out of Gitmo now without a huge backlash.'
'There will be people on our side calling for his impeachment if he did that.'
None the four senior congressional leaders who serve as chairmen or ranking minority members on the two intelligence committees were notified. And of the four most senior House and Senate members, only Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was apparently told about the prisoner exchange ahead of time.
Reid complained Wednesday that Republicans in Congress have blocked Democrats' attempts to pass a bill closing the Guantanamo Bay prison for good.
Graham countered that he has added language to the pending defense authorization bill – the successor to the 2013 legislation that included the 30-day notification rule – forbidding Congress from closing Guantanamo without a public up-or-down vote.
Shutting down the facility would still require a decision about where to relocated the remaining detainees, whose reported number is now 149.
Graham also said his legislative language would deny the Defense Department the option of sending any of them to Yemen, a small Arab nation that has served as a crossroads for al-Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups to train together and cross-pollinate their missions and tactics.
Liberal advocacy groups have leaped for joy at the prospect of closing the facility.
Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress told Politico that the Bergdahl case marks 'the first time' the Obama White House has 'followed through on their repeated separation-of-powers objections to the transfer restrictions. Hopefully, [there’s] more to come.'
'The Obama administration’s backbone on Gitmo and assertion of its executive branch prerogatives finally seem to have solidified,' American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero added.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment