Closing Gitmo: Bad File Management Creates Obstacle to Swift Resolution?

by Damozel |  In other words, fresh evidence emerges that the Bush administration, in addition to be constitutionally challenged, paranoid, and morally derelict, was also negligent in its procedures when it wasn't straight-up incompetent.  There it is.  Nothing new there.  From The Washington Post (via memeorandum):

President Obama's plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials -- barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees -- discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.

Instead, they found that information on individual prisoners is "scattered throughout the executive branch," a senior administration official said. The executive order Obama signed Thursday orders the prison closed within one year, and a Cabinet-level panel named to review each case separately will have to spend its initial weeks and perhaps months scouring the corners of the federal government in search of relevant material.

Several former Bush administration officials agreed that the files are incomplete and that no single government entity was charged with pulling together all the facts and the range of options for each prisoner. They said that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were reluctant to share information, and that the Bush administration's focus on detention and interrogation made preparation of viable prosecutions a far lower priority.... 

Charles D. "Cully" Stimson, who served as deputy assistant defense secretary for detainee affairs in 2006-2007, said he had persistent problems in attempts to assemble all information on individual cases. Threats to recommend the release or transfer of a detainee were often required, he said, to persuade the CIA to "cough up a sentence or two."

A second former Pentagon official said most individual files are heavily summarized dossiers that do not contain the kind of background and investigative work that would be put together by a federal prosecution team. He described "regular food fights" among different parts of the government over information-sharing on the detainees.

A CIA spokesman denied that the agency had not been "forthcoming" with detainee information, saying that such suggestions were "simply wrong" and that "we have worked very closely with other agencies to share what we know" about the prisoners. While denying there had been problems, one intelligence official said the Defense Department was far more likely to be responsible for any information lapses, since it had initially detained and interrogated most of the prisoners and had been in charge of them at the prison. (WaPo; emphasis of course added)

Not that all former Bush administration officials concur with the Obama administration's criticisms.

Some have taken more of a "wait-till-you-have-to-deal-with-all-these-complex-issues-then-you'll-see" stance.

 Those officials charge that Obama's people are just using the Bush administration as an excuse in order to "back-pedal" on Guantanamo. (WaPo)

One of these said ""Unless political appointees decide to overrule the recommendations of the career bureaucrats handling the issue under both administrations, he predicted, the new review will reach the same conclusion as the last: that most of the detainees can be neither released nor easily tried in this country. ""(WaPo)

Do you find the allegations that the Bush administration didn't bother to keep files on the detainees hard to believe?  Wait, really?  Were you living under a rock for the last eight years?

At The Guantanamo Blog, H. Candace Gorman says wryly, "What a surprise."  And propounds a theory about why there are no complete files:  "[b]ecause they have no evidence to justify the seven years of detention for the vast majority of these men (hence more than 500 released and most of the rest waiting for the release that is coming..) and the whole operation has been run by morons."  But not only morons:  morons who firmly believed that the American people are so cowardly that they would rather the government detain the terrorist suspects forever than risk giving them due process of law.

  At Obsidian Wings, Hilzoy says:

Hmm. Incoming officials say there are no files. Some Bush administration ex-officials agree, but others say that there are files, and that the Obama administration is just making excuses. Who is right?

As it happens, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote that deciding what to do with individual detainees at Guantanamo "will require going through all their files and evaluating the evidence against them". About an hour later, CharleyCarp, who is in a position to know, and who is, in my experience, absolutely trustworthy, replied:

"There aren't files. No one believes this at first, and it takes a long time to accept it, but really, that's it: no files. There are databases that can be searched . . ."

It takes, well, a special kind of administration to detain people for years on end without bothering to assemble case files on them. I'm just glad they're finally gone.

The Talking Dog says --- and correctly --- that files or no files or negligently incomplete files, we "must hold the President's feet to the fire" regarding Guantanamo.

The reason that the Government's "evidence" is "in disarray" is because if it were well-organized, it would be obvious to all that it is, as the courageous Col. Stephen Abraham called it, "garbage". Nothing more than a bunch of guilt-by-association accusations, often derived from torture, or from other sources that the Government itself believes unreliable.

Look people: why should we believe the Bush Administration ON ANYTHING? Of the decisions that have gone that far, in actual "on the merits" hearings, detainees are winning 90% of them, even in courts that have demonstrated their predisposition to be hostile to the detainees at every turn heretofore. Now why might that be? Might it be because there is no there there... that the Bush Administration held mennot because they were or are dangerous, but because it would be embarrassing to release them?...

The Bush Administration has, indeed, left a mess. But the default has got to be that if, after more than seven years, we cannot quickly ascertain a legal basis to hold someone... we probably don't have one....

And on this most critical of all issues-- literally the soul of our nation is on the line-- backsliding will NOT be acceptable.

Meanwhile Althouse swallows the "just making excuses" argument hook, line, and sinker.  

Memeorandum has blogger responses....

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