Obama’s First Steps… is that right, Greg?

Warning: Long Post :)

It was very odd to watch the signing of the executive orders that Obama issued yesterday. On two of the orders he paused during his explanation and asked for clarification on the order that he was signing, from his legal counsel Greg Craig. It just sounded strange.

Then during excellent questioning about the implications of the executive orders, Robert Gibbs, the White House Pres Secretary, also said that he would have to refer to Greg,

QUESTION: Just so the American people have an understanding, if, for example,
U.S. forces were to capture Osama bin Laden or someone less well known, but of
operational significance, are they to understand, the American people, that only
the Field Manual and the Field Manual only will be the interrogation method used
to interrogate a target as valuable potentially as Osama bin Laden or someone of
that operational significance?
GIBBS: Well, as it relates to your first
question, let me get some guidance from -- from Greg and members of the NSC.

So who is Greg Craig?

Mr. Craig is quite a high profile lawyer.

One of his major clients over the years was John Hinckley Jr. If you aren’t familiar, he is the man who tried to assassinate President Reagan shortly after he took office. He was key in securing Hinckley’s (much deserved) insanity plea.

He was also involved in the Elian Gonzalez case that received so much press attention. Elian of course immigrated to this country from Cuba on a raft with others, including his mother who did not survive the trip. American law is that if their feet reach land they can stay (claim asylum). Elian was taken in by his family in Florida, but Mr. Craig represented Elian’s father in Cuba and argued that he should be sent back. We all remember the dramatic pictures of the boy being ripped from his family’s arms at gunpoint and taken back to Cuba.

He also represented a Panamanian legislator wanted in the US for killing a US soldier and the attempted murder of another.

Most recently he secured asylum in the US for two former Bolivian government officials who were under indictment in Bolivia for the murder of 67 protestors by the Bolivian government in 2003.

Seems like a strange pick for a White House council. More concerning to me is that Mr. Craig seems to be the lead person in the Obama White House advising the President about terrorists held by the US Government.

So what did the executive orders do yesterday?

First a little background.

The War on Terror is tricky. First of all we are not fighting uniformed soldiers of a sovereign or even formally organized country or even a single ‘group’. Rather we are fighting a collection of people who for one reason or another, mainly religious, hate the United States and will oppose us even if it means sacrificing their lives or the lives of those they love. So, they are tough to track down. They hide among innocent civilians and blend in very well. We are currently holding 245 of these people in Guantanamo. We originally held several hundred, but the rest have been ‘processed’ meaning that they have been tried by a military court, released to a foreign government, or released and sent back to their home country. At least 61 of those released have been found again on the battlefield (mostly in Afghanistan). Some were released to Saudi Arabia, where they were run through an anti-jihadi program meant to undo brain washing. This is partly sponsored by the US. One of those was just identified by Al Qaeda as the deputy leader of AQ in Yemen. You see the problem. We don’t want to release these people and have them show up on the battlefield next month shooting American soldiers.

Some of these people could be tried and convicted in normal American courts. Of course to do that we would need to bring in a great deal of evidence that has been collected. We would also need to disclose the techniques use for gathering some of that evidence. This would expose our techniques to the enemy, who would cut off our pipeline of information making future efforts more difficult.

Basically what it comes down to is a difficulty of handling these detainees. So the Bush administration had opted for military courts where information could be kept secret and the terrorists would wait their turn at Gitmo.

This is not popular with the left in America because these people aren’t getting ‘due process’ in their eyes. Whether or not they should really be allowed ‘due process’ is another question.

In any case, the executive orders yesterday called for the closing of Gitmo in 1 year. They also required, “The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future.”

So then, what do we do with these bad guys? Well, the orders also set up a special task force responsible for reviewing all of the cases on these individuals and selecting either to release them, release them to a foreign government, prosecute them in American criminal courts, or plan d, which the task force is responsible for defining. Basically they are pushing for the release, or release to a foreign government, of most of these individuals which is hidden in the words, “New diplomatic efforts may result in an appropriate disposition of a substantial number of individuals currently detained at Guantánamo.” The ones that they choose to prosecute in American courts, or continue to hold, could be coming to a prison in near you.

The wisdom of this decision is yet to be seen. We may find out the answer on the battlefields of Afghanistan, in the investigation following the next terrorist attack, or in reflection decades from now. Personally I’m hoping for the last of the three.

Unfortunately what we have seen so far from those released is not encouraging.

The history of people, like Greg, providing the advice to the president don’t offer much hope either.