[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 84 (Monday, June 8, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H6294-H6298]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        GUANTANAMO BAY DETAINEES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. WOLF. Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak about an issue of 
great importance to our country.
  Shortly after I returned from a trip to Algeria in 1998, where 
thousands had been killed from terror attacks in the wake of the two 
U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa where 267 people were killed, including 
one of my constituents from McLean, Virginia, who was serving at the 
Nairobi Embassy, I authored a bill creating the National Commission on 
Terrorism.
  The commission's report in June of 2000 provided evidence of the 
growing threat of international terrorism and the steps needed to 
combat the threat. A Congressional Research Service report described 
the main finding of the commission this way: ``It calls on the U.S. 
Government to prepare more actively to prevent and deal with a future 
mass casualty, catastrophic terrorist attack.''
  Regrettably, the commission's recommendations were not implemented 
until after the attacks on 9/11 when 3,000 people were killed, 
including 30 from my congressional district.
  I was disappointed that both the Clinton administration and, later, 
the Bush administration did not take more seriously the recommendations 
of the commission. I take seriously the responsibility of congressional 
oversight, especially in matters with potential national security 
implications. Profound national security issues were, of course, thrust 
to the forefront on 9/11.
  Following the attacks, Congress granted the President the authority 
``to use all necessary and appropriate force against those who planned, 
authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks against the United 
States.''
  In the ensuing war on terror, many individuals were captured and 
transferred to Guantanamo Bay. On January 22, 2009, in an attempt to 
fulfill his campaign pledge, President Obama issued an Executive order 
requiring that Guantanamo be closed no later than 1 year from the date 
of issuance. However, in the weeks and months following, the Justice 
Department, under the direction of Attorney General Eric Holder, has 
failed to provide necessary information to Congress regarding their 
plans for implementing this order.
  It is important for the American people to know the full details on 
all of the detainees currently housed at Guantanamo Bay. They are not 
simply felons who are serving their time with

[[Page H6295]]

the future of release; they are hardened terrorists who are bent on 
killing Americans.
  The detainees already released have had a high rate of recidivism. On 
March 11, The Washington Post detailed how a detainee recently released 
from Guantanamo Bay is now the operations commander of the Taliban 
forces that are attacking U.S. and NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. 
There also have been reports that 61 of the detainees who were 
processed and released from Guantanamo Bay were recaptured--fighting 
American forces.
  If those individuals were deemed safe to release from custody, yet 
they returned to terrorist activities, including killing Americans, 
what does that say about how dangerous the detainees at Guantanamo Bay 
still must be?
  A recent New York Times article indicated that one out of every seven 
low security prisoners released from Guantanamo Bay was recaptured, 
fighting American forces on foreign battlefields. What does this say 
about the threat from the medium and high security risk detainees still 
being held?
  I was also troubled to read that five Guantanamo detainees described 
themselves as ``terrorists to the bone'' and stated in a court filing 
that they describe their roles in the 9/11 attacks as a ``badge of 
honor.'' These dangerous individuals simply cannot be transferred 
anywhere near large civilian populations.
  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the architect of the 9/11 attacks, and he 
took pleasure in beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
  Ramzi Binalshibh was identified as one of the planners of 9/11, and 
he was supposed to be one of the hijackers until he was denied entry 
into the United States. Walid bin Attash is believed to be the 
mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in the year 
2000.
  I am also concerned about the danger these individuals would pose 
were they to be placed in U.S. prisons or jails. These individuals are 
responsible for planning the deaths of thousands of Americans.
  In the case of El Sayyid Nosair, court tapes show that conspirators 
provided assurances that, in the event some were captured, the others 
would work to free them. In addition, during the year 2000 trial of 
Mahmud Salim, one of the terrorists accused of the 1998 bombing of the 
U.S. Embassy in Kenya, he stabbed New York prison guard Louis Pepe in 
the eye during a prison escape attempt.
  Al Qaeda saw the rights given to its members to meet with counsel as 
an opportunity to carry out a violent escape attempt. Mr. Salim was one 
of the original followers of Osama bin Laden, and was the highest 
ranking al Qaeda member held in the U.S. at the time.
  In addition to trying to escape from prison, al Qaeda members have 
communicated with confederates while in prison. It is my understanding 
that Nosair was involved in plotting the 1993 World Trade Center 
bombing while in custody in Attica State Prison. In addition, Osama bin 
Laden has publicly credited Sheikh Abdel Rahman with issuing the fatwa 
that approved the 9/11 attacks while he was in Federal prison, despite 
the high security confinement conditions imposed on him. It also 
emerged later that, with the assistance of his lawyer, Rahman was 
continuing to send instructional messages to the Islamic Group, his 
Egyptian terrorist organization.
  In 2004, NBC News reported that, despite their incarceration in 
maximum security conditions, convicted World Trade Center bombers were 
communicating by mail with the terrorists in Madrid, Spain. Many, many 
people died in that attack.
  There would certainly be strong reasons to believe that detainees 
currently held at Guantanamo who are known to have rioted and to have 
grossly abused prison guards would use their access to counsel and to 
investigators to convey messages to their allies.
  I am also concerned about the extra costs that will be incurred in 
preparing prisons and courthouses for possible trials. I understand 
that the courthouses in which prior terrorism cases were litigated and 
the prisons where defendants were held had to be ``hardened'' to 
accommodate terrorism prosecutions and the attendant threats they 
entailed for participants and the public.
  A recent New York Times article indicated that one out of every seven 
prisoners released from Guantanamo Bay and determined to be low 
security risks were recaptured on foreign battlefields, fighting 
American forces.
  What does this say about the danger posed by the medium and high 
security risk detainees still being held?

                              {time}  1945

  There have been numerous documented accounts of al Qaeda members 
using violence in prison attempting to escape. Newsday and the Buffalo 
News reported that during the 1995 trial in New York of Omar Abdel 
Rahman, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, 
terrorist confederates of Nosair were plotting to break him out of 
Attica State Prison in New York. An appeals court brief for the trial 
of Nosair detailed the lengths al Qaeda could go to break out of 
prison. The appeals court brief states: Mohammad Saad later described 
to Emad Salem a plan to break El Sayiid Nosair out of jail. He surmised 
that if he and Salem or others could get jobs with a contractor 
providing Attica Prison for sanitation or food services and if Nosair 
could get a prison job that would physically situate him in the 
appropriate area, they might be able to snatch Nosair and hide him in a 
nearby apartment until it became safe to move him.
  The brief goes on to discuss several conversations Nosair's friends 
had with him while he was in Attica.
  Another portion of the brief talks about plans to murder someone who 
antagonized Nosair's supporters during the trial as well as the trial 
judge. It also discusses Nosair getting angry that his friends were not 
trying to free him: ``The four had 5-hour meetings in the visitor's 
room during which Nosair railed at the evils of the United States and 
upbraided his callers for `sitting doing nothing' while he sat in jail 
for having done his part in jihad. When told of Saad's jailbreak 
scheme, Nosair recanted that there had only recently been a great 
escape opportunity when he had been escorted to the prison hospital by 
two guards armed merely with pistols.''
  Nosair observed that the group should be targeting ``the big heads,'' 
including Judge Alvin Schlesinger, who had presided over the trial and 
meted out Nosair's sentence and New York City Assemblyman Doug Hikind. 
Nosair said the judge should even be kidnapped and held as a bargaining 
chip to trade for Nosair's release or killed.
  The same brief goes into detail on the details these operatives had 
covered in order to help escaped prisoners leave the United States. Two 
agents detained Ibrihim el-Gabrowny and attempted to frisk him 
explaining that they were there to execute a search warrant and that he 
should relax. El-Gabrowny because increasingly belligerent, ultimately 
struck both agents and was thus placed under arrest.
  On his person, the agents found an envelope containing a stack of 
documents which included Nosair's American passport, an Egyptian 
airport document bearing Nosair's photograph, five passports issued by 
the government of Nicaragua in July of 1991 depicting Nosair, his wife, 
and three children with false names assigned to each, five fraudulent 
Nicaraguan birth certificates exhibiting the same false names in which 
the passports had been issued, a Nicaraguan driver's license issued to 
Nosair and his wife in the same false names.
  An indictment filed in Federal court against Lynne Stewart in the 
case of U.S. v. Sattar discusses how the blind sheik killed tourists in 
Egypt in an attempt to force his release from prison. The indictment 
states: ``On or about November 17, 1997, six assassins shot and stabbed 
a group of tourists visiting an archeological site in Luxor, Egypt. 
Fifty-eight foreign tourists were killed along with four Egyptians, 
some of whom were police officers. Before making their exit, the 
terrorists scattered leaflets espousing their support for the Islamic 
Group and calling for the release of Abdel Rahman. Also the torso of 
one victim was slit by the terrorists and a leaflet calling for Abdel 
Rahman's release was inserted.''
  On or about November 18, 1997, a statement issued in the name of the 
Islamic Group said: ``A Gama'a unit tried to take prisoner the largest 
number of foreign tourists possible with the aim

[[Page H6296]]

of securing the release of the general emir of the Gama'a al-Islamiyya, 
Dr. Abdel-Rahman.'' The statement continued: ``But the rash behavior 
and irresponsibility of government security forces with regard to 
tourist and civilian lives led to the high number of fatalities.'' The 
statement also warned that the Islamic Group ``will continue its 
military operations as long as the regime does not respond to our 
demands.'' The statement lists the most important demands as ``the 
establishment of God's law, cutting relations with the Zionist entity 
Israel and the return of our sheik and emir to his land.''
  On or about October 13, 1999, a statement in the name of Islamic 
Group leader, Rifa'i Ahmad Taha Musa, a.k.a. Abu Yasir, who was a co-
conspirator not named as a defendant herein, vowed to rescue Abdel 
Rahman and said that the United States' ``hostile strategy to the 
Islamic movement would drive it to `unify its efforts to confront 
America's piracy.' ''
  In or about March of the year 2000, individuals claiming association 
with the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group kidnapped approximately 29 hostages 
in the Philippines and demanded the release from prison of Abdel Rahman 
and two other convicted terrorists in exchange for the release of those 
hostages and threatened to behead the hostages if their demands were 
not met. Philippine authorities later found two decomposed, beheaded 
bodies in an area where the hostages had been held and four hostages 
were unaccounted for.
  On or about September 21, 2000, an Arabic television station, al 
Jazeera, televised a meeting of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahir. 
Sitting under a banner which read, ``Convention to Support Honorable 
Omar Abdel Rahman,'' the three terrorist leaders pledged ``made to free 
Abdel Rahman from incarceration in the United States.'' During the 
meeting, Mohammed Abdel Rahman, a.k.a. Asadallah, who is a son of Abdel 
Rahman, was heard encouraging others to ``avenge your sheikh'' and ``go 
to the spilling of blood.''
  These are extremely dangerous individuals who would require 
extraordinary precautions were they to be held in a prison where they 
were on trial. The court documents that I have referenced tonight 
detailed the lengths these individuals are willing to go to set 
compatriots free. This list includes kidnapping and mass murder. It is 
imperative that the American people understand that these individuals 
will not be sent straight to a supermax facility, but will be held 
first in a local jail. Not only would this put significant strains on 
the local prison guard and staff; it would require huge expenditures to 
``harden'' the facilities to the point where they were secure enough to 
house high-level threats.
  People living in northern Virginia during the trial of Zacharias 
Moussaoui will recall that his trial took 4 years and was only ended 
when he pled guilty to most of the charges against him. For terrorists 
like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, a trial and appeals process could take much 
longer than 4 years. Every day these dangerous individuals are in our 
prison system, the more danger they pose to everyone with whom they 
come into contact. Prison guards and officials, judges, jurors, and 
inmates and families could possibly need extra protection from the 
threat posed by these individuals.
  Some have stated that detainees would be sent directly from 
Guantanamo Bay to a U.S. supermax prison facility and the public should 
not be concerned. Yet, if detainees from Guantanamo Bay are transferred 
for trial in civilian courts, they would have to be held in a facility 
near that court near that venue. Often, these are local jails similar 
to the Alexandria jail that held Zacharias Moussaoui during the 4 years 
he was in trial in the Eastern District of Virginia.

  Such a move could mean that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 
the 9/11 attacks and the man who brutally beheaded Wall Street Journal 
reporter Daniel Pearl, could be housed in Alexandria for the duration 
of his trial. Similar trials in the past have taken more than 4 years.
  Regardless of where these detainees are held, I believe it should be 
in a location that ensures the safety of both those guarding the 
detainees and American citizens. My primary concern is that their 
presence in a large civilian population could invite additional attacks 
and endanger the citizens.
  I take the oversight responsibility of Congress very seriously, and 
the fact that the Justice Department would take these actions without 
notifying Members of Congress is incredible. These detainees could pose 
serious threats to local communities and place an extraordinary burden 
on the cities where these individuals would be tried.
  I believe Congress and the American people have a right to know the 
history of individuals the administration is intent on bringing onto 
U.S. soil. The Guantanamo Bay prison facility is closing. Since the 
President has made that decision, we must know the facts to make 
informed decisions on the next step. My own view is that any trials or 
military commissions should be held on a military base far away from 
civilian population centers.
  Madam Speaker, much of the recent debate surrounding the closing of 
Guantanamo Bay has centered on a group of Uyghur detainees from China 
who are members of the al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group, the Eastern 
Turkistan Islamic Movement, also known as ETIM. Last month, I became 
aware that Attorney General Eric Holder was planning on allowing these 
trained terrorists into the United States without informing this 
Congress or the American people. Newsweek magazine reported that on 
June 1: ``Administration officials were poised in late April to make a 
bold, stealthy move: they instructed the U.S. Marshals Service to 
prepare an aircraft and a Special Ops group to fly two Chinese Uyghurs 
and up to five more on subsequent flights from Gitmo to northern 
Virginia for resettlement. In a conference call overseen by the 
National Security Council, Justice and Pentagon officials had been 
warned that any public statement about Gitmo transfers would inflame 
congressional Republicans, according to a law-enforcement official who 
asked not to be named discussing internal deliberations.''
  The Newsweek report--also confirmed by Bloomberg News--makes clear 
that Attorney General Holder had every intention of releasing these 
trained terrorists into our communities. I repeat: released into our 
communities. Not held in our jails, but let free in our neighborhoods 
and communities.
  This administration expects you to take it at its word that these 
detainees are not a threat. It is unacceptable. Eric Holder should have 
been prepared to come up and tell the Congress and give the information 
on these individual cases. But to move these individuals, who were in 
Guantanamo Bay, on a Friday afternoon when the Congress was gone and 
the press was not watching, is certainly wrong.
  As some of my colleagues may be aware, I have long been an advocate 
for the Uyghurs, a largely Muslim people in western China. The 8 
million Uyghurs have long been the objects of brutal Chinese 
oppression. And I have advocated for the Uyghurs in China who were 
being persecuted by the Chinese Government. However, in the 1990s, a 
small number of Uyghurs began turning to terrorism to target the 
Chinese Government and innocent civilians. They formed the terrorist 
organization now known as ETIM. They moved to Afghanistan in 1998 at 
the invitation of the Taliban.
  ETIM is linked to a number of terrorist attacks in China during the 
mid-1990s, including several bus bombings that killed dozens and 
injured hundreds of innocent civilians, as well as threats of attacks 
against the 2008 Olympics in Beijing where people from around the 
world, including Americans, gathered. Over the past decade, the group 
has predominantly operated out of Afghanistan and Pakistan and has 
developed close links with al Qaeda and the Taliban.
  On August 19, 2002, then-Deputy Secretary State Richard Armitage 
designated ETIM as ``a terrorist group that committed acts of violence 
against unarmed citizens.'' The group was designated by the State 
Department under Executive Order 13224, ``Blocking Property and 
Prohibiting Transactions With Persons Who Commit, Threaten to Commit, 
or Support Terrorism,'' which defines terrorist activities as 
``activity that involves a

[[Page H6297]]

violent act or act dangerous to human life, property or 
infrastructure.''

                              {time}  2000

  Later in 2002, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing reported that two members 
of ETIM were deported from Kyrgyzstan after allegedly plotting to 
attack the U.S. embassy there.
  Following the attempted attacks, the United Nations designated ETIM 
as a terrorist group under Security Council resolutions 1267 and 1390, 
which provide for the freezing of the group's assets. In 2004, the 
State Department further added ETIM to the Terrorist Exclusion List 
under section 411 of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, which prohibits 
members of designated terrorist groups from entering into the United 
States. Just 2 months ago, on April 20, the Obama administration, to 
their credit, added the current leader of ETIM, Abdul Haq, to the 
terrorist lists under Executive Order 13224 following U.N. recognition 
of Haq as an individual affiliated with Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, or 
the Taliban.
  According to Stuart Levey, Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and 
Financial Intelligence, Abdul Haq commands a terror group that sought 
to sow violence and fracture international unity at the 2000 Olympic 
games in China.
  ETIM's relationship with al Qaeda has grown increasingly since it was 
invited by the Taliban to conduct training in Afghanistan in the late 
1990s. In 2005, Abdul Haq was admitted to al Qaeda's Shura Council. 
Additionally, on November 16, 2008, an al Qaeda spokesman ``stated that 
a Chinese citizen named `Abdul Haq Turkistani' was appointed by Osama 
bin Laden as the leader of two organizations, al Qaeda in China and 
Hizbul Islam Li-Turkistan,''--and also confirmed by Abu Sulieman, a 
member of al Qaeda.
  It is abundantly clear that the Uyghur detainees held at Guantanamo 
Bay are affiliated with the ETIM and trained under Abdul Haq in 2001. 
According to the detainees' own sworn statements to U.S. authorities, 
many acknowledged they had trained at an ETIM training camp in Tora 
Bora from June to November, 2001, and several confirmed that the camp 
was run by Abdul Haq.
  Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, it is 
clear that cooperation between ETIM and the Taliban increased. It is 
reported that the ETIM's leader prior to Abdul Haq, Hasan Mahsum, ``led 
his men to support Taliban and fight alongside them against U.S. and 
the coalition forces. On October 2, 2003, Hasan Mahsum was killed, 
along with eight other Islamic militants, by a Pakistani Army raid on 
an al Qaeda hideout in South Waziristan area in Pakistan.''
  Additionally, in January, 2008, al Qaeda, in an Afghanistan 
publication entitled, ``Martyrs in Time of Alienation,'' identified 120 
martyrs, including five Uyghur ETIM members who trained in Tora Bora, 
who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan against U.S. troops. One is 
reported to have been killed fighting U.S. forces during the invasion 
in 2001. And Hasan Mahsum confirmed, prior to his death in 2003, that 
ETIM's members trained and fought with al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.
  In addition to their affiliation with a designated terrorist 
organization and association with al Qaeda leader Abdul Haq, these 
detainees fervently believe in the creation of a Taliban-style Islamic 
state in northwestern China and do not share American values of 
respect, tolerance, and religious pluralism. In fact, the L.A. Times 
recently reported that, ``not long after being granted access to TV, 
some of the Uyghurs were watching a soccer game. When a woman with bare 
arms was shown on the screen, one of the group grabbed the television 
and threw it to the ground, according to the officials.''
  I am certainly no friend of the Chinese Government. I have long been 
critical of the oppressive treatment of Uyghur Muslims, as documented 
in the State Department's most recent human rights reports. But we 
ought to have no tolerance for terrorism in any form.
  Further, violent aims of this nature do not know national boundaries. 
Thousands of Americans, including the President and high-ranking U.S. 
Government officials and many American citizens, traveled to the 2008 
Beijing Olympics, a stated terrorist target for the ETIM. If their 
affiliation, associations, and recent behavior were not troubling 
enough, I am also concerned about their potential further 
radicalization over the past 8 years while held with al Qaeda members 
at Guantanamo Bay. Without a declassified threat assessment, how can 
the American people know for sure if the Uyghurs have not been further 
radicalized since their capture? How can we assess their potential 
threat once released into the U.S.? Will they attack Chinese targets 
within the U.S., provide intelligence to al Qaeda abroad, or even stage 
an attack on Americans at the direction of these terrorist groups?
  Reports indicate that the ETIM's philosophy has dramatically evolved 
as a result of their training and cooperation with al Qaeda and the 
Taliban over the last several years. According to terrorism expert 
Rohan Gunaratna, who is an expert on the ETIM, he said, ``In the post-
9/11 era, ETIM began to believe in the global jihad agenda. Today, the 
group follows the philosophy of al Qaeda and respects Osama bin Laden. 
Such groups that believe in the global jihad do not confine their 
targets to the territories that they seek to control. The ETIM is 
presenting a threat to the Chinese as well as Western targets 
worldwide.''
  Without detailed information about each Uyghur detainee, including a 
threat assessment, the American people cannot be expected to tolerate 
trained terrorists being released into their communities. That is not 
the transparency nor sound judgment that Eric Holder promised he would 
bring to the Justice Department when he appeared before the House 
Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Subcommittee last month.
  If this administration and Eric Holder will not share this 
information with the Congress or the American people, how can we be 
expected to accept assurances that the Uyghur detainees they intend to 
release into the U.S. are not a threat? Anyone who trains to kill 
civilians in Tora Bora, whose leader is a member of al Qaeda's Shura 
Council, does not share our most basic values of tolerance and 
diversity, and who may have been further radicalized over the last 8 
years, is most unequivocally a terrorist and should not be released in 
the United States. And yet, this Congress and the American people are 
left in the dark about the administration's plans to release these 
detainees.
  The American people deserve to know and they have a right to know who 
the Attorney General is asking to place into their communities. Eric 
Holder's failed attempt to secretly release these Uyghur detainees came 
in spite of ardent objections from the FBI and the Department of 
Homeland Security, who were overruled, apparently, by Eric Holder and 
the White House.
  Last month, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the House Judiciary 
Committee that he was concerned that detainees from Guantanamo could 
support terrorism or radicalize others, provide intelligence or 
financial support to terrorist networks, or even take part in terrorist 
attacks inside the United States. For Eric Holder to do this against 
the better judgment of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security 
and the bipartisan objection from this Congress is unacceptable. This 
flies in the face of bipartisan congressional opposition to the release 
of trained terrorists into the U.S., including Republican and 
Democratic leaderships in the House and the Senate.
  Last month, the Senate followed the House lead in removing funding 
for transferring detainees and demanding that this administration come 
clean with the American people about their intentions. The Attorney 
General expects this Congress to sit idly by after it announces it has 
released 17 Uyghurs held at Guantanamo Bay in the United States. Eric 
Holder won't allow career FBI agents to even brief Members on this 
issue. I have asked for briefings from career employees at the FBI, the 
CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, and have been told by each 
agency that the Attorney General will not allow them to meet with me.
  What is the Attorney General hiding? Let me be clear, these Uyghurs 
are trained terrorists who were caught in camps affiliated with al 
Qaeda. Those who would use terror are terrorists, no matter their 
unintended target.

[[Page H6298]]

  I have consistently called on the administration to declassify and 
provide the American people with information regarding the capture, the 
detention, and a threat assessment of each detainee they intend to 
release into the U.S. Regardless of their intended targets of terror, 
the American people deserve to know whether they have been either 
further radicalized due to their exposure to al Qaeda leaders, such as 
Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and see the assessments of the threat they pose 
today.
  I also worry about the impact the Uyghurs' release will have on our 
national security in the long run. What message does their release into 
the U.S. send to al Qaeda and other terrorist networks? How can the 
Attorney General guarantee that the released Uyghurs will not stay in 
contact with al Qaeda and provide them with intelligence from within 
the U.S.? If the Attorney General cannot or will not answer these 
questions, then he should not even consider releasing them into the 
United States. The administration has a moral obligation to share this 
information with the American people.
  Over the last month, both the House and Senate have stripped all 
funding for these transfers and inserted language into the fiscal year 
2009 emergency supplemental bill that would require the administration 
to provide the American people with a clear plan before any action was 
taken. Since March, I have written the President, the Attorney General, 
and the Secretary of Homeland Security asking for answers to these and 
other questions, and I still have not received a single response. I 
repeat, not a single response after 2 months to some of the most basic 
questions about the administration's plans.
  For weeks I have asked the FBI for briefings daily, only to be told 
that the Attorney General would not allow them to meet with Members on 
these issues. And although the President delivered a speech on May 21 
at the National Archives on the closing of the detention center at 
Guantanamo Bay and other national security matters, we have had no more 
information about his plans to close Guantanamo than we did before. We 
still do not have the answers on which detainees Eric Holder is 
planning to transfer to the United States, where they will be tried, 
and how the administration intends to protect the American people.
  The Germans, who had tentatively agreed to accept some of the Uyghur 
detainees, have complained that the administration won't share enough 
information with them for an independent assessment of the detainees' 
security risk. According to the Washington Post, ``More trouble emerged 
when Washington stipulated that the Uyghurs would be barred from 
traveling to the United States.'' Last week, the Canadian Government 
refused to accept these same Uyghur detainees, citing serious security 
concerns.
  So as I close where I began, congressional oversight is imperative, 
no more so than on matters with profound national security 
implications, and yet this Congress and the American people remain in 
the dark about the administration's plans on this pressing issue.
  This is no time for vague assurances. This is no time to play fast 
and loose with critical information. This is no time for political 
games. The American people deserve more.
  With that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________