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White House: Bush Administration To Blame For Ex-Guantanamo Bay Recidivists

By Michael Scherer | @michaelscherer | February 2, 2010 | +

From a letter, acquired by ABC News, from John Brennan, White House Homeland Security adviser, to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House:

We believe that significant improvements to the detainee review process have contributed to significant improvements in the results. According to the most recent report to Congress pursuant to section 319 of the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009, the Intelligence Community assesses that 20 percent of detainees transferred from Guantanamo are confirmed or suspected of recidivist activity. This figure includes 9.6 percent of detainees who are confirmed recidivists and 10.4 percent of detainees who the Intelligence Community suspects, but is not certain, may have engaged in recidivist activities. I want to underscore the fact that all of these cases relate to detainees releases during the previous Administration and under the prior detainee review process. The report indicates no confirmed or suspected recidivists among detainees transferred during this Administration, although we recognize the ongoing risk that detainees could engage in such activity.

A time line of Guantanamo releases can be found here, courtesy of the Washington Post.

Related Topics: guantanamo bay, john brennan, Uncategorized

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  • Paul-no not that one

    MS-yesterday you wrote “Should allowing a tax cut to expire on schedule be called a “tax increase”? The Associated Press says yes.”
    .
    Using Breitbart as a source.
    .
    I was wondering if this is what you were talking about-
    .
    “Reuters Pulls ‘Backdoor Taxes’ Story ”
    .

    http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/reuters-pulls-backdoor-taxes-story.php

  • textee

    You gotta love hearing these clueless loons talk “tough”, while they close GITMO and think that terrorist enemies of the United States possess U.S. constitutional “rights”.

  • FlownOver

    The Right, as ever, will return instantly to its complaint about blaming Bush’s incompetence and mendacity on Bush. As with the knee-jerk complaints of “class warfare” whenever tax burdens might be shifted in any degree back to the rich, there’s always a Republican theme ready to distract the public from considering reality.

  • FlownOver

    Anyone have a list of the Republican members of Congress who voted in favor of tax cuts limited to ten years, when they could have advocated permanent cuts instead?

    Anyone with a decent memory and any degree of honesty will recall the ten year limit was a political fig leaf to avoid admitting how badly these cuts would balloon the federal deficits if enacted without a time limit. The GOP banked then on their ability to whine about “tax increases” when their own chickens came home to roost – as is happening now.

  • http://twitter.com/michaelscherer Michael Scherer

    Paul, It was an AP story. Does it matter so much if it is posted on Breitbart? I think, no.

  • Matt

    No shame in the White House for pointing out the obvious. Cheney allowed the guy who plotted the Christmas attack to go free, not Obama.

    http://www.political-buzz.com/

  • grape_crush

    Bush Administration To Blame For Ex-Guantanamo Bay Recidivists

    That’s not how the letter reads, Michael.

  • freeinpa

    I wonder who the WaPo and liberals will blame when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed when (if they finally agree on where he is be tried) when he is released on a technicality as WH Press Secretrary Smirk Gibbs announced to the world that he will without a doubt be hung.

    A first year law student can now argument in a CIVIL court that the jury pool is contaminated.

  • charlieromeobravo

    Feel free to call them clueless loons but the rate of terrorist convictions is higher in civilian courts than in military courts and we have plenty of recent examples of terrorist convictions in civilian courts on American soil to prove that it can be done. These guys aren’t super villains like the neocons would like us all to believe. Sticking them in a hole and grossly mistreating them didn’t do anything to dissuade them that they were wrong to hate us though.

  • charlieromeobravo

    “A first year law student can now argument in a CIVIL court that the jury pool is contaminated.”

    They could argue it but how likely is that they’d win? Similar statements were made about Timothy McViegh and the first WTC bombers. Where are they now?

    It’s amazing to me that conservatives can simultaneously claim to be the true and unwavering patriots and have so little faith in the laws and due process that has served us so well over the past 200+ years.

  • kevin

    You gotta love hearing these clueless loons talk “tough”, while they close GITMO and think that terrorist enemies of the United States possess U.S. constitutional “rights”.
    .
    Constitutional rights regarding criminal proceedings are not, and have never been, limited only to citizens of the United States. There is nothing in the 4th, 5th, 6th, or 8th Amendments that proscribes non-citizens from being afforded the rights detailed therein, and there is nothing in two centuries of legislation or case law that denies them those rights either.
    .
    We’re tried literally hundreds of terrorist enemies of the United States in accordance with this history, and — aside from the constant pants wetting of people like yourself — we’ve never had a problem. Moussaoi had those rights afforded to him by the Bush administration, and was convicted. Same with shoe bomber Richard Reid, and dozens of others.
    .
    Sorry, but you’re the one who’s clueless.

  • kevin

    Right, freeinpa, and I also wonder what will happen when magical unicorns come flying out of your rear end. That’s as likely to happen as KSM walking free.
    .
    I thought conservatives believed in “law and order”? Or is it just the TV show that you all have been talking about?

  • kevin

    Speaking of which … Richard Reid, an English citizen and attempted terrorist, was read his Miranda rights within five minutes of his arrest.
    .
    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32399.html
    .
    Oh those clueless loons of the Bush administration.

  • freeinpa

    kevin

    Conservatives do believe in law and order. Its only when liberals have their hands in the matter it becomes law and disorder.

    ”
    Before being appointed to the post of US Attorney General, Eric Holder was a partner at the law firm Covington and Burling. C & B represented 17 terrorist detainees at Guantanemo Bay”

    “Eric Holder played a leading role in one of the most infamous events of a presidency filled with infamy: the pardon of billionaire fugitive Marc Rich.”

    ==

    Nothing like law and order —liberal style

  • charlieromeobravo

    “Conservatives do believe in law and order.”

    Until it gets in the way of busting phantom super villains then it’s secret wiretap and torture time.

    Regarding Holder…

    And Timothy McVeigh had lawyers, Richard Reid had lawyers, the first WTC bombers had lawyers. What’s you’re point? Just out of curiosity, where are those 17 today? Did Holder actually work on those cases? I don’t know one way or the other but if there was some question about his involvement in those cases why was he appointed so easily? I followed those hearings with half an ear and never heard a word of protest from the R’s on that topic.

    And Marc Rich? Seriously? And you guys complain that Obama blames Bush too much and his Presidency has only been done for a year?

  • pintortwo

    Before being appointed to the post of US Attorney General, Eric Holder was a partner at the law firm Covington and Burling. C & B represented 17 terrorist detainees at Guantanemo Bay.
    .
    The Law requires a fair trial, are you suggesting that the suspicion of terrorism is enough to deny the law? What style of Law and Order do you advocate?
    .
    Marc Rich should not have been pardoned. Clinton was wrong. The pardon process has been abused too often.
    .
    Are you equally upset over the Scooter Libby’s commuted sentence?
    .
    (Please provide links)

  • apollyon07

    ^ MS, great point, though I don’t think the source is even as much important as the content. If a tax cut expires, taxes go up. So isn’t the EFFECT the same as a tax increase? If so, what difference would the distinction make anyway?

  • newfreedomblog

    Am I missing the entire point of your post Michael, that the Obama Administration is attempting to blame Bush for all the detainees who have returned to terrorism and that Obama has not had one yet?
    .
    Didn’t the same ABC report also say this??
    .

    Representative Wolf (R-VA) has said that Ayman Batarfi, a detainee from Yemen transferred to that country by the Obama administration last December, “has worked closely with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and trained with a microbiologist who taught al Qaeda how to produce anthrax in August 2001, according to unclassified Pentagon documents from 2004.”

    .
    And then the NYT has this…
    .

    “Timeline: 2009
    A chronology of detainees’ captures, arrivals, transfers and deaths. This timeline is incomplete; The New York Times was only able to determine the year of capture for 419 of the 779 detainees. The date of arrival is only included for the 198 detainees who are still at Guantánamo.”

    .
    http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/timeline/2009
    .
    Is this correct Michael?

    Brennan said, apparently in response to this assertion, that during the January 13 briefing, Wolf “made allegations that one detainee repatriated to Yemen had been involved in weapons of mass destruction. As it has done in every case, the task force thoroughly review all information available to the government about this individual and concluded that there is no basis for the assertions Representative Wolf made during this session.”

  • kevin

    Marc Rich? That’s the best you’ve got?
    .
    Let me get this straight — we’re not allowed to point out that eight years of Bush’s policies got us into this mess, even when Republicans keep insisting on more of the same. But you all are still humping the dead corpse of the Marc Rich pardon from the Clinton administration?

  • spob

    This is such f’in garbage. This scum Brennan acts as if the Bush Administration released these terrorists in a vacuum. With “patriots” like Barack Obama screaming bloody murder about GTMO’s deleterious effect on national security, and lib majority bogus decisions like Boumeddiene (and it would have been 5-4 the other way had we gotten Bork), Bush was under a ton of political pressure. I don’t recall Obama criticizing any GTMO release.
    .
    Bush has to take some blame for this–but it isn’t like he wasn’t getting tons of pressure from Barack and his fellow travelers.

  • spob

    KSM has a pretty powerful speedy trial issue. It will be interesting to see how that one is resolved. If, of course, Obama doesn’t back down here, which certainly is possible.

  • rustyreturns

    and to add if I may, also due to the activist LIBERAL Judges who demanded they be released with the aid of the ACLU!!

  • 3xfire3

    With Obama’s job performance being in the tank, with little if any success in his first year, is it not time for him to Man Up and stop blaming all of his problems on Bush. Real men take responsibilities for their own actions.
    After a year in office it’s time to take responsibility for his own accomplishments as well as mistakes and failures.
    If he chooses to continue to blame Bush for everything he is going to experience a lot more Massachusetts. Americans expect their president to take responsibility not blame others for their shortfalls. I believe the saying is “the buck stops here”.

  • michaelfury
  • 3xfire3

    With Obama’s job performance being in the tank and with little if any success in his first year, is it not time for him to Man Up and stop blaming all of his problems on Bush. Real men take responsibilities for their own actions.
    After a year in office it’s time to take responsibility for his own accomplishments as well as mistakes and failures.
    If he chooses to continue to blame Bush for everything he is going to experience a lot more Massachusetts. Americans expect their president to take responsibility not blame others for their shortfalls. I believe the saying is “the buck stops here”.

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