WikiLeaks, which has been sitting on an enormous cache of classified U.S. government documents, released another batch of materials to U.S. and European news “partners” including The New York Times. According to press reports, the documents include “intelligence assessments of nearly every one of the 779 individuals who have been held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2002. In them, analysts have created detailed portraits of detainees based on raw intelligence, including material gleaned from interrogations.” A Pentagon official stated, “[i]t is unfortunate that several news organizations have made the decision …
Following Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement Monday that the United States would try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-conspirators in military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, The Heritage Foundation’s Senior Legal Fellow, Cully Stimson, testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday on the 9/11 trials. Stimson’s message? The right decision on military commissions has finally been made; now Congress and the White House must stand by it and fully resource them to ensure their success: [T]he administration and Congress must take every reasonable step to ensure that the trial …
Bowing to political realities, the Obama administration reversed itself and announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM), the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, would be tried at Guantanamo in a military commission, instead of in a federal court in the United States. The decision comes as the 10-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks is months away, and on the eve of a House Judiciary hearing on military commissions and the 9/11 case. The victims of 9/11 deserve justice, and it was high time for the administration to make a decision. …
Yesterday Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama Justice Department would appeal a U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson’s order to release 9/11 terrorist operative Mohamedou Ould Slahi. This is a good decision by Holder. Our nation would be less safe if Slahi was released from U.S. custody. But the very need for the appeal underscores how the Obama administration’s larger approach to detainee treatment is seriously undermining our national security. Former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and current National Review Institute senior …
Following Barack Obama’s inauguration last year, the newly-elected commander-in-chief sought to impose his vision of “change” on U.S. counter-terrorism policies. On his third day in office, the President signed an executive order directing that Guantanamo Bay prison be closed within a year. The decision was complemented by an additional order to ban enhanced interrogation techniques, effectively removing life-saving procedures from the intelligence gathering toolbox. While the President’s attempts to transform American counter-terror strategy were welcomed with open arms by his political allies in Congress, others were less enthusiastic. President Obama …
Following his speech, Senator McConnell sat down with us In The Green Room, where he discussed how the Administration should be handling Guantanamo Bay detainees and reflected upon how the Administration’s “wrong-headed” approach to terrorism led to the mishandling of the case of Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Politico reported yesterday that “The second-ranking House Democrat signaled Tuesday that the White House is reconsidering a plan to move Guantanamo detainees to a prison in northwest Illinois … Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he agrees that the Obama administration should reassess the plan to move terrorist suspects from the Cuba military base to Thomson Correctional Facility in the state’s northwest corner.” If Hoyer is sincere and his assessment of the White House is accurate … well, that it is almost too much to hope for. Could the president actually be …
Days before President Obama plans to present his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, Osama Bin Laden sent his own message to the American people. According to CNN “A new audio tape allegedly from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden claims responsibility for an attempt to blow up a plane en route to Michigan on Christmas Day and warns the United States of more attacks.” The report added, “The tape, which aired on Al Jazeera on Sunday, says ‘the United States will not dream of …
Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said: “Morale is the greatest single factor in successful wars.” So why did President Obama choose last night’s address to further disintegrate what morale is left in the fight in Iraq? Choosing the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York was on first blush a wise decision. These are the young men and women who will put their lives on the line, or may have already, to defend the President’s decisions. This is not the “enemy camp” as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews described …
Edwin Meese III, the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy and Chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation as well as the United States Attorney General between 1985 and 1988 released the following statement today on the proposed trials of terrorists in New York City, including confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. “It is clear that foreign terrorists and terrorist groups have committed acts of war against the United States, and that our national security requires that we respond accordingly. This means that …
