[House Document 115-15]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




115th Congress, 1st Session - - - - - - - - - - House Document 115-15
 
THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION EFFORTS TO CLOSE THE GUANTANAMO BAY DETENTION 
                                FACILITY

                               __________

                             COMMUNICATION

                                  from

                   THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

                              transmitting

THE ADMINISTRATION'S DESCRIPTION OF ITS EFFORTS TO CLOSE THE GUANTANAMO 
                         BAY DETENTION FACILITY

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  January 20, 2017.--Referred to the Committee on Armed Services and 
                         ordered to be printed
                                  ______

                         U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 

69-011                         WASHINGTON : 2017                          
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                                           The White House,
                                      Washington, January 19, 2017.
Hon. Paul D. Ryan,
Speaker of the House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
    Dear Mr. Speaker: For 15 years, the United States has 
detained hundreds of people at the detention facility at 
Guantanamo Bay, a facility that never should have been opened 
in the first place. Rather than keeping us safer, the detention 
facility at Guantanamo undermines American national security. 
Terrorists use it for propaganda, its operations drain our 
military resources during a time of budget cuts, and it harms 
our partnerships with allies and countries whose cooperation we 
need against today's evolving terrorist threat. By any measure, 
the costs of keeping it open far exceed the complications 
involved in closing it.
    As President, I have tried to close Guantanamo. When I 
inherited this challenge, it was widely recognized that the 
facility--which many around the world continue to condemn--
needed to close. Unfortunately, what had previously been 
bipartisan support for closure suddenly became a partisan 
issue. Despite those politics, we have made progress. This 
Administration established a comprehensive, interagency review 
process to assess whether the transfer of a detainee is in the 
national security interest of the United States. Under this 
rigorous process, we have transferred 196 detainees from 
Guantanamo with arrangements designed to keep them from 
engaging in acts that pose a threat to the United States and 
our allies. Of the nearly 800 detainees at one time held at the 
facility, today only 41 remain.
    The Department of Defense has also provided the Congress 
with a comprehensive plan to finally close Guantanamo once and 
for all. In addition to calling for us to continue to identify 
and effectuate secure transfer opportunities, it calls for the 
continued periodic review of the threat posed by individuals 
still detained, the use of all legal tools to deal with the 
remaining detainees still held under law of war detention, and 
the identification of a secure location in the United States to 
hold remaining detainees who are subject to military 
commissions or who we have determined must continue to be 
detained because they pose a continuing significant threat to 
the United States. I have included an update to that plan here.
    The restrictions imposed by the Congress that prevent us 
from imprisoning detainees--even to prosecute and secure a life 
sentence--in the United States make no sense. No person has 
ever escaped one of our super-max or military prisons here, 
ever. There is simply no justification beyond politics for the 
Congress' insistence on keeping the facility open. Members of 
Congress who obstruct efforts to close the facility, given the 
stakes involved for our security, have abdicated their 
responsibility to the American people. They have placed 
politics above the ongoing costs to taxpayers, our 
relationships with our allies, and the threat posed to U.S. 
national security by leaving open a facility that governments 
around the world condemn and which hinders rather than helps 
our fight against terrorism.
    If this were easy, we would have closed Guantanamo years 
ago. But history will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect of 
our fight against terrorism and those of us who fail to bring 
it to a responsible end. Once again, I encourage the Congress 
to close the facility and permit more of our brave men and 
women in uniform serving at Guantanamo Bay to return to meeting 
the challenges of the 21st century around the globe. There 
remains bipartisan support for closing Guantanamo and we can do 
so in a responsible and secure way that also saves the American 
taxpayer money. Guantanamo is contrary to our values and 
undermines our standing in the world, and it is long past time 
to end this chapter in our history.
            Sincerely,
                                                      Barack Obama.


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