WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility and move its terror suspects to military prisons elsewhere, The Associated Press has learned. Senior administration officials said Thursday a consensus is building for a proposal to shut the center and transfer detainees to one or more Defense Department facilities, including the maximum-security military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where they could face trial.President Bush's national security and legal advisers had been scheduled to discuss the move at a meeting Friday, the officials said, but after news of it broke, the White House said the meeting would not take place that day and no decision on Guantanamo Bay's status is imminent. ``It's no longer on the schedule for tomorrow,'' said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council. ``Senior officials have met on the issue in the past, and I expect they will meet on the issue in the future.''
Previous plans to close Guantanamo ran into resistance from Cheney, Gonzales and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. But officials said the new suggestion is gaining momentum with at least tacit support from the State and Homeland Security departments, the Pentagon and the Intelligence directorate. Cheney's office and the Justice Department have been against the step, arguing that moving ``unlawful'' enemy combatant suspects to the U.S. would give them undeserved legal rights.
In Congress, recently introduced legislation would require Guantanamo's closure. One measure would designate Fort Leavenworth, located about 30 miles northwest of Kansas City in northeast Kansas, as the new detention facility. Another bill would grant new rights to those held at Guantanamo Bay, including access to lawyers regardless of whether the prisoners are put on trial. Still another would allow detainees to protest their detentions in federal court, something they are now denied.
| Dumb, dumb, dumb: the Constitution grants no rights to unlawful combatants captured on foreign soil. If we're to close Gitmo, fine, but ship these mooks to a prison camp at Bagram. |