MILITARY: Senate nixes Guantanamo closure money

By MARK WALKER - mlwalker@nctimes.com

California U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer voted along with most other members of the U.S. Senate on Wednesday to strip a defense bill of $80 million to close the terror detainee prison at Guantanamo Bay.

They did so not because they oppose the closure, they said, but because President Barack Obama has yet to provide a specific outline of how his administration will handle the 240 detainees still locked up in the U.S. Navy facility in Cuba.

The Marine Corps' brigs at Camp Pendleton and Miramar Marine Corps Air Station have been studied as possible relocation sites for some of those detainees, much to the exasperation of the local congressional delegation.

Obama is expected to provide some of the answers lawmakers say are needed when he delivers an address Thursday detailing his Guantanamo plans.

But not every question about the facility that was opened under President George W. Bush will be answered.

"The president hasn't decided where some of the detainees will be transferred," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Wednesday. "Those are decisions that the task forces are working on and that the president will lay out and discuss."

Boxer spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said the senator "feels strongly" that Guantanamo should be closed after an acceptable plan is laid out.

On the Senate floor, Feinstein said Wednesday the lack of a plan and the fact the closure money wasn't really necessary right now led her to support taking the money out of the defense bill. The amendment removing the money passed 90-6.

"How would the money be used?" Feinstein asked during her floor remarks. "Nobody knew. So it fell smack-dab into the trap that some want to spring throughout the United States: That this administration or this Senate would release detainees into the neighborhoods and communities of the United States."

Wednesday was a busy day on the Guantanamo front. In addition to the Senate vote, FBI Director Robert Mueller testified on Capitol Hill that bringing detainees into the U.S. poses a number of possible risks, even if they were kept in maximum-security prisons.

"It's a very difficult issue and people are honestly wrestling with what the best resolution is," he said.

In another development, a federal judge ruled some prisoners at Guantanamo can be held indefinitely without any charges. That aspect of Guantanamo has been heavily criticized by human rights groups who complain about a lack of due process.

U.S. District Judge John Bates, in an opinion issued Tuesday, said Congress has given the president the authority to hold anyone involved in planning, aiding or carrying out terrorist attacks.

Also, the Obama administration plans to send a top al-Qaida suspect held at Guantanamo Bay to New York to stand trial for the deadly 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, an administration official said Wednesday. The suspect, Ahmed Ghailani, would be the first Guantanamo detainee brought to the U.S. and the first to face trial in a civilian criminal court.

The Senate vote follows a similar action in the House of Representatives two weeks ago. Local U.S. Reps. Brian Bilbray, R-Solana Beach, Darrell Issa, R-Vista, and Duncan D. Hunter, R-El Cajon, have been among those calling for Guantanamo to stay open and vehemently opposing any plan that would move detainees to military bases such as Pendleton or Miramar. They say the facility that has been upgraded since it first opened remains the most secure and logical place to keep and process inmates through the legal system.

"Closing Guantanamo was low-lying fruit for the president," Bilbray said of Obama's Jan. 22 executive order directing the prison be closed by January 2010. "But now he's learning it's not easy to do these kinds of things. This gives the president time to stop and count to 10 before he tries to shut down a facility that is now second-to-none."

When Obama signed the order to close "Gitmo," he was surrounded by a group of retired generals favoring the move, including Carlsbad's David Brahms, who once served as the top legal adviser to the commandant of the Marine Corps.

The former Marine brigadier general said Wednesday he never expected that shutting down Guantanamo would be easy.

"The problem is, what the hell do you do with the detainees?" Brahms said. "(Neither) Miramar nor Pendleton are designed to hold high-level detainees, so the issue is simply, where will they be put?"

Brahms said he has no doubt that Obama will move ahead with the closure despite the current opposition in Congress.

"Whatever the worth of Guantanamo, it has become iconic to the point that it simply has to be closed if we are going to have any international credibility," he said. "My sense now is that it will take longer than a year."

Gary Solis, a military law professor at Georgetown University, said he doubts that Miramar or Pendleton will ultimately wind up with any Guantanamo prisoners.

"There's already a secure courtroom at Guantanamo and the defense and prosecutors are located in Washington," Solis said. "I don't see them moving coast to coast when there's already a physical plant in place."

Many Democrats, however, have rejected the notion that U.S. prisons can't handle the detainees. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., pointed out Wednesday that the federal prison system already houses 208 inmates convicted of international terrorism, including 142 non-U.S. citizens.

A Durbin spokesman said the figures quoted by the senator came directly from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact staff writer Mark Walker at 760-740-3529.

Ellie