In a letter to President Obama Friday, Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) called on the Obama administration to release the DIA's latest study on freed Guantanamo detainees who have returned to terrorism. In addition to objecting to the transfer of six Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo to their native country, Congressman Wolf wrote:
It is my understanding that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) may have upwardly revised its recidivism numbers on former Guantanamo Bay detainees that have returned to terrorism, but this information has not been shared with most members of Congress. I hope your administration will not suppress this information. The American people have a right to know the facts about the danger posed by released detainees. Over the past year, I have called on your administration numerous times to declassify this information. You have a moral obligation to share this with the public.
As Steve Hayes reported in the magazine this week, there are good reasons for the DIA report to be released. The number of recidivists has apparently "spiked" and there is no reason to suppress the entire report as: (a) the Bush administration already set the precedent for releasing such studies in June of last year and (b) many of the reports of recidivism can be sourced to newspapers and other publicly-available accounts.
Thus, Congressman Wolf has joined Senator Kit Bond from Missouri and Congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan in calling for the Obama administration to release any updates to the DIA's recidivism studies.
Will the Obama administration release the document? Or will it be leaked to the New York Times, just as the last version was earlier this year? Or will it be suppressed altogether?
