WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama issued sweeping orders Thursday to rein in secretive U.S. counter terror policies and end harsh interrogations, prompting immediate skepticism over how and whether they would work to keep Americans safe.
Obama’s three executive orders, coming on Day Two of his presidency, sought to show that the United States does not torture and abides by domestic and international laws governing the treatment of detainees.
“The message that we are sending the world is that the United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism,” the president said.
“And we are going to do so vigilantly, and we are going to do so effectively, and we are going to do so in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals.”
Shortly afterward, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs acknowledged that the new rules raise “very complex, very detailed questions” about how they will be carried out.
Taken together, the orders would:
• Shut down the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within one year.
• Prohibit the CIA from using coercive interrogation techniques that already are banned by the Pentagon.
• Shutter secret CIA “black site” prisons abroad where terror suspects have been held.
• End the practice of “extraordinary renditions” that transfer detainees to countries where they can be tortured.
• Scrap every legal opinion and memo issued during the presidency of George W. Bush that justify interrogation programs, including the use of waterboarding and other techniques, the CIA’s black sites and extraordinary renditions.
But questions abound over how the orders will work — a mission handed over to review groups that have only a few months to come up with answers.
Under Obama’s executive orders, one task force will study where the estimated 245 detainees now at Guantanamo should be sent when the prison closes, and under what kind of court system they could be prosecuted. Even before Obama took office, the government was wrestling with the question of whether the terror suspects were due the same legal rights accorded to U.S. citizens.
That issue is at the heart of whether some of the detainees should be imprisoned on U.S. soil or prosecuted in civilian criminal courts instead of military tribunals.
House Republicans introduced legislation Thursday to bar Guantanamo detainees from being released or transferred to detention facilities inside the United States.
Supermax to get a look
The Obama administration is looking at three military prisons — in Kansas, California and South Carolina — along with the civilian Supermax prison in Colorado as potential sites for the Guantanamo detainees.
“I don’t know of any city that would be thrilled to have Khalid Sheik Mohammed or Abu Zubaydah living down the street,” Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., said of two high-level al-Qaeda operatives who are being held at Guantanamo.
Another review panel will have 180 days to study whether interrogation techniques allowed under the U.S. Army Field Manual would be effective in extracting life-saving intelligence from hardened terrorists.
That panel could recommend “additional or different guidance” about certain interrogation methods, potentially opening the door to using some that are not specifically outlined in the Army manual.
That would not, however, allow “enhanced interrogation techniques” to be reintroduced, according to a senior Obama administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly.
The U.N. human-rights chief welcomed Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo and urged the new administration to review its approach to detaining people in other countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq.
Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, also called for a thorough investigation into allegations of torture at Guantanamo and said detainees who were innocent or arbitrarily detained should be adequately compensated “for the six or seven years of their lives that have been lost.”
Pillay called it “a good day for the rule of law.”
The private Center for Victims of Torture lauded Obama’s interrogation order but raised concerns about what the task force might endorse in the future.
“We want to ensure that the task force which the president has charged with reviewing interrogation policy engages in an open process and that any changes to interrogation rules are transparent,” said Douglas Johnson, the group’s executive director.
Nominee urges caution
Retired Adm. Dennis Blair, Obama’s nominee as director of national intelligence, said during his confirmation hearing Thursday before a Senate panel that “we need to be very careful about how we do this.”
Yet despite pledging that torture would not be allowed on his watch, Blair would not tell the senators whether he believed waterboarding was a form of torture.
A form of simulated drowning, waterboarding was authorized by the Bush administration to be used on three high-profile al-Qaeda detainees after their capture following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The Pentagon will work with the Justice Department to solve the thorny legal and practical questions surrounding the military detention and interrogation policies. Obama also directed the Justice Department to review the case of Qatar native Ali al-Marri, who is the only alleged enemy combatant currently being held on U.S. soil.
The government says al-Marri is an al-Qaeda sleeper agent.
As for closing Guantanamo, the American public is split. About half want the prison shuttered on a priority basis, and 42 percent do not. And it’s split along party lines. Two-thirds of Democrats want it done on a priority basis, compared with just a quarter of Republicans.
Closing of prison a challenge
One supporter of closing Guantanamo is retired Navy Adm. John Hutson, who met with the new president before the orders were issued. Hutson emerged confident, saying there is plenty of time to come up with an effective, alternate system to the Bush administration’s strategy.
“The president is quite determined to go through each of these cases individually, bring all the evidence together in one place, which has not been done up until now, so that fresh eyes can look at them and figure out what to do with each person,” said Hutson, who was the Navy’s top uniformed lawyer from 1997 to 2000.
But that may be easier said than done.
“Clearly the challenge that faces us, and that I’ve acknowledged before, is figuring out how do we close Guantanamo and at the same time safeguard the security of the American people?” Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters.
“And that’s the challenge that we will continue to face,” Gates said. “I believe that there are answers to those questions, but we clearly have a lot of work to do.”
