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House demands details of Taliban detainees swap for Bergdahl
By The Washington Post
Saturday, April 25, 2015, 12:01 a.m.
Updated 11 hours ago
WASHINGTON — House lawmakers are threatening to slash Defense Department funding by about $500 million next year if Pentagon officials don't hand over documents related to a probe into the controversial prisoner swap that freed five Taliban detainees in exchange for captive American soldier Bowe Bergdahl.
The Republican leadership of the House Armed Services Committee has tucked a provision into an early version of an annual Defense bill that would cut funding for the Office of the Secretary of Defense by 25 percent in fiscal 2016, committee staff members said, unless the Pentagon provides unredacted emails related to the 2014 swap and additional information into the legal reasoning behind the exchange.
The unusual move illustrates the depth of Republican anger over the decision to transfer five detainees from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the Persian Gulf state of Qatar.
Critics allege the Obama administration endangered national security and flouted the law in failing to provide Congress with a mandated notification 30 days prior to the transfer.
While the release of Bergdahl, who was held in Pakistan under difficult conditions for almost five years, received initial praise, the deal quickly came under attack from lawmakers angry about being left out of the loop and from those skeptical about the circumstances of Bergdahl's initial disappearance. Bergdahl has since been charged with desertion for walking off his base in a remote area of Afghanistan in 2009.
Only days after the swap, the committee initiated an investigation into whether the administration had broken the law.
In a June 9, 2014, letter to then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, then-committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., ordered the Pentagon to turn over emails and documents tied to the transfer.
Lawmakers were particularly interested in internal deliberations surrounding the decision to forgo congressional notification. While a probe by the independent Government Accountability Office found that the administration violated federal rules, the administration has maintained that the transfer was legal and necessary to protect Bergdahl's safety.
Hagel, speaking at a tense hearing in June, told lawmakers that officials had accelerated their efforts to liberate the country's only prisoner of war after they received a video in January 2014 showing that Bergdahl's mental and physical health had worsened.
Hagel assured lawmakers that the Pentagon obtained legal guidance from the Justice Department indicating that the administration could go ahead with the transfer without notifying Congress, based in part on President Obama's authority to act to protect the lives of Americans overseas.
The Obama administration was concerned that plans for the swap could become public, something it feared would cause the Taliban to scuttle the deal. On May 31, terrorists handed over Bergdahl to special forces soldiers on a field in eastern Afghanistan.
Committee staff members have sifted through emails and documents that led up to that moment and called in officials for briefings and visited Qatar to investigate.
But staff members said their investigation had been impeded by heavy redactions to over 3,000 classified and unclassified emails provided to the committee. They said the redactions obscured information about legal discussions, negotiations with the Qatari government and preparations for briefing Congress — the very information they believe they require for their probe.
Lt. Col. Joe Sowers, a Pentagon spokesman, said the department provided more than 3,600 pages of documents, sent officials to take part in multiple hearings and briefings about the swap and supplied the committee with its legal analysis in person and in writing. He said document redactions had been “minimal.”
As lawmakers debated the swap for Bergdahl, details emerged of a separate plan to negotiate for his freedom and that of other hostages.
Minutes after it was learned Thursday that Warren Weinstein and another hostage held by al-Qaida had been killed in a CIA drone strike in Pakistan, a Republican congressman detailed an effort that he said could have avoided the American's death.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said the Pentagon was working on a plan that would have exchanged seven Western hostages for a single key detainee held by the United States. The effort, the congressman said, was led by Army Lt. Col. Jason Amerine, a special forces officer who had extensive contacts in Afghanistan, where he worked alongside former Afghan President Hamid Karzai and was wounded in an errant American bombing on Dec. 5, 2001, that killed three other special forces soldiers in Afghanistan.
“Warren Weinstein did not have to die,” Hunter said. “His death is further evidence of the failures in communication and coordination between government agencies tasked with recovering Americans in captivity — and the fact that he's dead, as a result, is absolutely tragic.”
Amerine's team wanted to recover hostages held in Afghanistan or Pakistan, including Weinstein and Bergdahl. The plan was sidelined as the FBI, the CIA and the military fought over what the best plan was to get them back, Hunter said.
Amerine's plan was to have involved Bergdahl, Weinstein and a family of three: Canadian Joshua Boyle, his American wife, Caitlan Coleman, and their child, who was born in captivity. Boyle and Coleman were abducted in Afghanistan in 2012, while Coleman was seven months pregnant, said a spokesman for Hunter, Joe Kasper. He declined to identify the other two Westerners involved in Amerine's plan or the detainee who would have been exchanged for the Westerners.
By The Washington Post
Saturday, April 25, 2015, 12:01 a.m.
Updated 11 hours ago
WASHINGTON — House lawmakers are threatening to slash Defense Department funding by about $500 million next year if Pentagon officials don't hand over documents related to a probe into the controversial prisoner swap that freed five Taliban detainees in exchange for captive American soldier Bowe Bergdahl.
The Republican leadership of the House Armed Services Committee has tucked a provision into an early version of an annual Defense bill that would cut funding for the Office of the Secretary of Defense by 25 percent in fiscal 2016, committee staff members said, unless the Pentagon provides unredacted emails related to the 2014 swap and additional information into the legal reasoning behind the exchange.
The unusual move illustrates the depth of Republican anger over the decision to transfer five detainees from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the Persian Gulf state of Qatar.
Critics allege the Obama administration endangered national security and flouted the law in failing to provide Congress with a mandated notification 30 days prior to the transfer.
While the release of Bergdahl, who was held in Pakistan under difficult conditions for almost five years, received initial praise, the deal quickly came under attack from lawmakers angry about being left out of the loop and from those skeptical about the circumstances of Bergdahl's initial disappearance. Bergdahl has since been charged with desertion for walking off his base in a remote area of Afghanistan in 2009.
Only days after the swap, the committee initiated an investigation into whether the administration had broken the law.
In a June 9, 2014, letter to then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, then-committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., ordered the Pentagon to turn over emails and documents tied to the transfer.
Lawmakers were particularly interested in internal deliberations surrounding the decision to forgo congressional notification. While a probe by the independent Government Accountability Office found that the administration violated federal rules, the administration has maintained that the transfer was legal and necessary to protect Bergdahl's safety.
Hagel, speaking at a tense hearing in June, told lawmakers that officials had accelerated their efforts to liberate the country's only prisoner of war after they received a video in January 2014 showing that Bergdahl's mental and physical health had worsened.
Hagel assured lawmakers that the Pentagon obtained legal guidance from the Justice Department indicating that the administration could go ahead with the transfer without notifying Congress, based in part on President Obama's authority to act to protect the lives of Americans overseas.
The Obama administration was concerned that plans for the swap could become public, something it feared would cause the Taliban to scuttle the deal. On May 31, terrorists handed over Bergdahl to special forces soldiers on a field in eastern Afghanistan.
Committee staff members have sifted through emails and documents that led up to that moment and called in officials for briefings and visited Qatar to investigate.
But staff members said their investigation had been impeded by heavy redactions to over 3,000 classified and unclassified emails provided to the committee. They said the redactions obscured information about legal discussions, negotiations with the Qatari government and preparations for briefing Congress — the very information they believe they require for their probe.
Lt. Col. Joe Sowers, a Pentagon spokesman, said the department provided more than 3,600 pages of documents, sent officials to take part in multiple hearings and briefings about the swap and supplied the committee with its legal analysis in person and in writing. He said document redactions had been “minimal.”
As lawmakers debated the swap for Bergdahl, details emerged of a separate plan to negotiate for his freedom and that of other hostages.
Minutes after it was learned Thursday that Warren Weinstein and another hostage held by al-Qaida had been killed in a CIA drone strike in Pakistan, a Republican congressman detailed an effort that he said could have avoided the American's death.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said the Pentagon was working on a plan that would have exchanged seven Western hostages for a single key detainee held by the United States. The effort, the congressman said, was led by Army Lt. Col. Jason Amerine, a special forces officer who had extensive contacts in Afghanistan, where he worked alongside former Afghan President Hamid Karzai and was wounded in an errant American bombing on Dec. 5, 2001, that killed three other special forces soldiers in Afghanistan.
“Warren Weinstein did not have to die,” Hunter said. “His death is further evidence of the failures in communication and coordination between government agencies tasked with recovering Americans in captivity — and the fact that he's dead, as a result, is absolutely tragic.”
Amerine's team wanted to recover hostages held in Afghanistan or Pakistan, including Weinstein and Bergdahl. The plan was sidelined as the FBI, the CIA and the military fought over what the best plan was to get them back, Hunter said.
Amerine's plan was to have involved Bergdahl, Weinstein and a family of three: Canadian Joshua Boyle, his American wife, Caitlan Coleman, and their child, who was born in captivity. Boyle and Coleman were abducted in Afghanistan in 2012, while Coleman was seven months pregnant, said a spokesman for Hunter, Joe Kasper. He declined to identify the other two Westerners involved in Amerine's plan or the detainee who would have been exchanged for the Westerners.
