Guantanamo

"M" sent in James Bond. MacArthur ordered in the 1st Marine Division. Today, when the Department of Defense has a complex crisis requiring brawn and brains, Brigadier General Mark Martins gets the call. His latest job: Hit the reset button at Gitmo. 

During a joint hearing of the Senate and House intelligence committees yesterday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that the recidivism rate for former Guantanamo detainees has risen to an estimated 27 percent. The total number of “confirmed” and “suspected” recidivists, according to Clapper, is now 161.

On Saturday, Benjamin Wittes and Robert Chesney published another response at the Lawfare Blog to questions I think Matthew Olsen, who has been nominated for the position of National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) director, should be asked at his forthcoming Senate confirmation hearing. Wittes and Chesney spend most their time arguing against positions I do not hold, have not advocated, and are not relevant in this debate. While they concede important ground, they simply miss the “larger” point that I have made altogether.

My suggestion that Matthew Olsen answer questions about his work on the Guantanamo Review Task Force during his Senate confirmation hearing has clearly struck a nerve at the Lawfare Blog. There are two posts replying to my original piece – one by Benjamin Wittes and another by Robert Chesney.

On July 1, President Obama announced that he was nominating Matthew Olsen for the position of National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) director. Olsen has served in a number of national security-related government positions, including as the head of Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force.

Reuters has published its account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Like other versions of the story that have come out, this one says that the key information about the courier who unwittingly led authorities to bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound came from Hassan Ghul – an al Qaeda operative who was captured in Iraq.

A recently leaked threat assessment prepared at Guantanamo draws into question the Obama administration’s analysis of a detainee who was transferred to Yemen shortly before all future transfers to the unstable nation were suspended.

In the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death, the Washington Post ran a four-part series by men and women who had their “lives shattered and transformed by” the terror master. One of the contributors was especially curious: former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg.

The exact identity of Osama bin Laden’s courier, who unwittingly led to his boss’s demise, remains to be confirmed, but CNN reports that it was a Kuwaiti known as Abu Ahmad al Kuwaiti.

A recently leaked Guantanamo file names Osama bin Laden’s “designated courier.” The file, which summarizes the available intelligence on top al Qaeda operative Abu Faraj al Libbi, reads: 

A lot of parties inside the American government, from President Obama on down, will rightly claim credit for the demise of Osama bin Laden. But one party, in particular, deserves mention because its members have been repeatedly demonized in the press: the Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO). 

There are two competing versions of former Guantanamo detainee Sami al Hajj’s story. The first, which has long been endorsed by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and many other journalists/activists, portrays Hajj as an innocent Al Jazeera journalist who was wrongly swept up in the post-9/11 world. The second, compiled by intelligence analysts at Guantanamo and other foreign governments, sees Hajj as a longtime extremist and al Qaeda member who used his job at Al Jazeera as a cover for his more nefarious activities.