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http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/us/politics/house-republicans-denounce-obamas-handling-of-prisoner-exchange.html
WASHINGTON —After months of secret talks in early 2014 on a potential deal to swap five Taliban detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,for a captive American soldier,Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl,an agreement seemed near that May. But the chief American negotiator sent an email to the Pentagon warning that any leak could scuttle it.
“There is great concern all around about possible leaks,” the negotiator,Stephen W. Preston,then the general counsel of the Pentagon,wrote,according to an email cited by a new report. “This concern is exacerbated by the prospect of notification to our overseers” in Congress.
Twenty-nine days later,Islamist militants in Afghanistan turned over Sergeant Bergdahl,and only then,less than three hours before the American military put the five Taliban detainees on a plane to Qatar, did the Pentagon tell congressional leaders what was happening. But a statute restricting detainee transfers says that lawmakers must be told 30 days beforehand.
The news of the prisoner exchange,and the Obama administration’s failure to comply with the 30-day notice statute,set off a legal and political uproar and an investigation by the House Armed Services Committee. On Thursday,the committee’s Republican members will make public a report,obtained by The New York Times,that sheds new light on the administration’s secret maneuvers before the swap and portrays the deal as both reckless and illegal.
WASHINGTON —After months of secret talks in early 2014 on a potential deal to swap five Taliban detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,for a captive American soldier,Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl,an agreement seemed near that May. But the chief American negotiator sent an email to the Pentagon warning that any leak could scuttle it.
“There is great concern all around about possible leaks,” the negotiator,Stephen W. Preston,then the general counsel of the Pentagon,wrote,according to an email cited by a new report. “This concern is exacerbated by the prospect of notification to our overseers” in Congress.
Twenty-nine days later,Islamist militants in Afghanistan turned over Sergeant Bergdahl,and only then,less than three hours before the American military put the five Taliban detainees on a plane to Qatar, did the Pentagon tell congressional leaders what was happening. But a statute restricting detainee transfers says that lawmakers must be told 30 days beforehand.
The news of the prisoner exchange,and the Obama administration’s failure to comply with the 30-day notice statute,set off a legal and political uproar and an investigation by the House Armed Services Committee. On Thursday,the committee’s Republican members will make public a report,obtained by The New York Times,that sheds new light on the administration’s secret maneuvers before the swap and portrays the deal as both reckless and illegal.
