Normalized Cuba Relations Forces 8000 Cubans on U.S.

Fusion: Sidestepping Nicaraguan intransigence, Costa Rica and five other countries have announced a secret deal to airlift some 8,000 Cuban immigrants out of Costa Rica and into El Salvador, where they’ll be put on buses and transported up to Mexico in the last leg of their harrowing 5,000-mile journey to the United States.

The decision to leapfrog Nicaragua comes nearly six weeks after the Sandinista government decided to militarize its southern border and prevent Cubans from continuing their journey north through Central America. Cuban immigrants have been piling up on the border ever since, as their numbers swelled from 1,500 to some 8,000, according to the number of temporary visas issued by Costa Rican authorities.

More details:

FoxLatino:

Central American nations have reached a deal to let the first of thousands of stranded Cuban migrants continue their journey north toward the United States next month, officials said Monday.

The humanitarian transfer will airlift an unspecified number of Cubans the first week of January from Costa Rica to El Salvador, from where they will continue by bus toward Mexico, Costa Rica’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The Guatemalan government, which hosted a diplomatic meeting earlier in the day to consider the issue, described it as a “pilot” program and said a work group has been tasked with coordinating logistics.

The two governments did not immediately release further details, citing some nations’ desire for discretion on what has become a diplomatic flashpoint between Costa Rica and neighboring Nicaragua.

The number of Cubans stranded in Costa Rica has reached at least 8,000 since Nicaragua closed its border to them weeks ago. The islanders say they are trying to reach the United States, where favorable migratory policies toward Cubans mean nearly all are allowed to stay and apply for residency.

On Sunday, Pope Francis called for their plight to be resolved.

Costa Rican Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez said the measure will be available only to Cubans who are already in Costa Rica. Ministry spokeswoman Melissa Duran told The Associated Press it will be up to the migrants to pay the costs of their travel, but did not give more specifics.

On Dec. 18, Costa Rica stopped issuing transit visas for Cuban migrants and announced that any who arrived after that without a visa would be deported.

Cuba has seen a spike in outward migration in the year since it and Washington announced they would re-establish diplomatic ties after more than five decades of open hostility. Many Cuban migrants say they chose now to emigrate out of fear that detente could bring about an end to the U.S. policies that benefit them — although U.S. officials say no change is in the works.

Cuba and its close ally Nicaragua argue that the U.S. policies toward Cubans encourage them to attempt dangerous migratory routes and cause a brain drain on the island.

More from NPR:

A U.S. Coast Guard crew (foreground) with six Cubans who were picked up in the Florida Straits in May. A larger Coast Guard vessel is in the background. The number of Cubans trying to reach the U.S. has soared in the past year. Many Cubans believe it will be more difficult to enter the U.S. as relations improve, though U.S. officials say there will be no rule changes in the near term.

Covert Monitoring of Mosque Members Pays Off

UK Muslim ‘Disneyland Family’ Linked to Mosque of San Bernardino Terrorists

by Raheem Kassam and Liam Deacon  •  Dec 25, 2015
Cross-posted from Breitbart

The British Muslim family banned from entering the U.S. this week was on its way to meet relatives in California who prayed at the same mosque as terrorists Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who murdered 14 people in San Bernardino this month.

On Tuesday, Mohammad Tariq Mahmood, his brother, and nine of their children were pulled from a queue at Gatwick airport by British Border Agency guards and barred from traveling to the U.S. on the instruction of the country’s Homeland Security agency.

Mahmood has claimed that they were stopped from traveling to California to visit family and Disneyland merely “because they were Muslim.”

It has now been revealed that his relative in California, Muhammad Mahmood, prayed at the same mosque as U.S.-born terrorist Syed Farook and his Pakistani born wife Tashfeen – believed to be the Tablighi Jamaat-run Dar Al Uloom Islamiyah mosque.

The mosque – linked to the “Army of Darkness” group Tablighi Jamaat [TJ], which itself has historical, indirect links to multiple terrorism cases – became the centre of the investigation surrounding the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, as Breitbart News reported from the scene early in December, revealing an extraordinary refusal of the mosque’s elders to co-operate with journalists.

Muhammad Mahmood (the relative) is a U.S. citizen who runs an auto repair shop in San Bernardino. He told the BBC that he “did not know him [Syed Farook] personally” and would not have recognised the terrorist and could not recall ever speaking to him.

A comment from a Muhammad Mahmood from the same mosque just days after the attack in the Sacramento Beereads: “It’s a sad thing… There will be a backlash, of course… Guess why: I’m a brown-skinned guy with a beard who is named Muhammad.”

Tablighi Jamaat is a Deobandi revivalist movement whose mandate is, according to its leading advocate Ebrahim Rangooni, to save the Muslim world “from the culture and civilisation of the Jews and the Christians…” To this end, he has suggested cultivating “such hatred for their ways as human beings have to urine and excrement.”

On Wednesday, a British, Labour Party Member of Parliament wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron accusing Homeland Security of widespread discrimination. A spokesman for the prime minister then confirmed he was considering the issues and would respond in due course.

However, it was reported yesterday how a Facebook account, set up at the London address of the family in the name of Hamza Hussain, has listed job titles such as “supervisor at Taliban and leader at al-Qaeda.”

Furthermore, on Wednesday it was revealed that Mr. Mahmood’s brother, also traveling, had been denied entry into Israel and detained eight years ago on a “lads” trip to Middle East with a “group of older gentlemen.”

American security agencies have also confirmed the brothers “hit positive for terror checks.” A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman said that currently the “religion, faith or spiritual beliefs of an international traveler are not determining factors” when deciding if a person can travel to the U.S. However, the spokesman explained, people can be denied entry for a variety of reasons including health-related issues, prior criminal convictions, security concerns, or miscellaneous grounds.

Breitbart London has previously reported on Tablighi Jamaat members performing orchestrated public relations stunts that claim institutional “Islamophobia.” In June of this year, a TJ member claimed he had been discriminated against for his Muslim name. In turned out he had hidden his affiliation with the terror-linked Markazi Masjid mosque from his curriculum vitae (resume).

***   Cleric denies ties to San Bernardino killers as phone records surface

The cleric acting as spokesman for the San Bernardino mosque where terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook worshipped claims he barely knew Farook and didn’t know his terrorist wife at all. But phone records and other evidence uncovered by federal investigators cast doubt on his story.

The FBI has questioned the cleric, Roshan Zamir Abbassi, about his phone communications with Farook — including a flurry of at least 38 messages over a two-week span in June, coinciding with the deadly Muslim terrorist attack on two military sites in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Abbassi, a Pakistani, insists he had nothing to do with the shooting at a San Bernardino County government building five miles from the mosque. While he confirms the text messages with Farook, he claims they were merely discussing food donations for his Dar-al-Uloom al-Islamiya of America mosque.

Abbassi maintained at a press conference that he didn’t know Farook any better than he knew the reporters in the room. But members of the mosque say Farook was a fixture there. He had been coming to pray and study at least three times a week for two years. In fact, he memorized the Koran there, something you cannot do without learning Arabic, a subject Abbassi teaches.

His other assertion that he never even saw Farook’s wife, Tashfeen Malik, also strains credulity. Malik joined her husband in shooting 35 of his government co-workers at a Christmas party.

“No one knows anything about his wife,” assistant imam Mahmood Nadvi agreed. “She never came to prayer.”

But longtime mosque member Gasser Shehata, who claimed to have prayed “shoulder to shoulder” with Farook, said Dar-al-Uloom prepared a chicken-and-rice dinner to celebrate the couple’s wedding last year. Reportedly, hundreds of congregants attended the walima reception, including the mosque leadership.

Asked if Farook was radicalized at the mosque, Abbassi snapped, “Never.” He said the mosque teaches only peace, insisting no one has even an “extremist idea.”

“In Islam,” he said, “we are against innocent killing.”

Abbassi recently posted a message on Facebook condemning the United States and other Western nations for their Mideast policies, arguing they are equally guilty of violence to achieve political and religious goals. His mosque’s Web page features a video claiming that the San Bernardino shooting was carried out by the US government in a “false flag conspiracy,” and that Farook and Malik were “patsies” assassinated “by government-sponsored perpetrators.”

Another person of interest is Abbassi’s brother, Mohammad Sabir Abbassi, a Muslim activist who serves as a trustee and English teacher at the San Diego mosque once headed by the late al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

FBI Agent Joel Anderson said in court filings that Farook indicated he was a big fan of Awlaki and listened to a series of sermons about jihad and martyrdom called “The Hereafter.”

In his filing, Anderson says Farook studied the ultra-orthodox Islamic sect Tablighi Jamaat. US officials say the cult, with 50,000 members, is rife with jihadists, and jihadi groomers are recruiting at mosques in at least 10 states.

“We have significant presence of Tablighi Jamaat in the United States,” said Assistant FBI Director Michael Heimbach, “and we have found that al Qaeda used them for recruiting.”

Homeland Security Department veteran Philip Haney said Dar-al-Uloom was among the mosques his agency was investigating as part of a probe of the Tablighi movement.

“Individuals who were already in the case in 2012 went to that mosque,” Haney claimed in a Fox News interview.

He said he ID’d some 300 jihadists and terrorists tied to the movement in the United States before the Obama regime pulled the plug on the investigation in 2012. Known Tablighi alumni include the Lackwanna Six, the American Taliban John Walker Lindh, shoe bomber Richard Reid, dirty bomber José Padilla and would-be Brooklyn Bridge bomber Iyman Faris.

“We have nothing to hide,” Roshan Abbassi asserted.

Investigators shouldn’t take his word for it.

Retired Adm. Kirby Needs Another Day Job

Admiral John Kirby is the official spokesperson for the State Department under Secretary John Kerry. Things are real twisted in this agency and Adm. Kirby knows enough to question the media talking points and yet has joined the ranks of unsupervised liberals at the State Department with weird descriptions of achievements especially when it comes to Syria.

There are 60 million people displaced in the Middle East from their home countries especially when it comes to Syria. Russia is using old cluster bombs and hitting civilians, Bashir al Assad is using chemical weapons and Islamic State in addition to other al Qaida factions are in control of countless regions.

Where is the peace John Kerry?

State Dept.: We Brought ‘Peace’ to Syria

State Dept. counts ‘bringing peace’ to Syria as a 2015 win

The State Department is counting “bringing peace” to Syria as one of its wins in 2015.

A boastful recap of the State Department’s accomplishments, written by spokesman John Kirby, includes the bold subheadline of “Bringing Peace, Security to Syria” above a more modest entry talking about U.S. aid for those affected by the country’s turmoil and the U.S. push for a political transition from President Bashar Assad.

While Secretary of State John Kerry has played an integral role in the Syrian peace talks, the country remains embroiled in a nasty civil war and terrorized by the Islamic State.

“The United States and many members of the international community have stepped up to aid the Syrian people during their time of need — the United States has led the world in humanitarian aid contributions since the crisis began in 2011,” Kirby said.

Kirby wrote that the Syrians have “borne a heavy load” but that under Kerry’s stewardship the United Nations passed a U.S.-sponsored resolution to create a road map for Syria going forward.

The apparent declaration of a win echoes comments from President Barack Obama, who has been heavily criticized for calling the Islamic State a “JV team” in a January 2014 article and for calling the group’s territorial expansion efforts “contained,” just days before the Paris attacks.

Kirby also explicitly touched on the Islamic State, also called ISIL, saying that the U.S. is “winning [the] fight against violent extremists.”

“Although challenges remain, we have made positive strides over the last year, including in our fight against ISIL,” Kirby said. “This forward progress will only continue as more countries pledge resources to the anti-ISIL effort and as citizens around the world increasingly reject ISIL’s misguided ideology.”

Kirby cited the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, hosted in February, which he called “monumental.”

Other things the State Department is counting as wins: re-establishing ties with Cuba, protecting the Arctic, clinching the Iran nuclear agreement, stopping the Ebola outbreak, committing to U.N. development goals, securing a free trade deal, preserving ocean health, and reaching the climate agreement.

How about the ‘Rape Handbook’ just published by Islamic State fighters?

New Rules:

It is not permissible for the owner of a female captive to have intercourse with her until after she has had menstrual cycle and becomes clean.
If she does not menstruate and is pregnant, he is not allowed to have intercourse with her until after she has given birth.
It is not permissible to cause her to abort if she is pregnant.
If the owner of a female captive releases her, only he can have intercourse with her and he cannot allow someone else to have intercourse with her.
If the owner of a female captive, who has a daughter suitable for intercourse, has sexual relations with the latter, he is not permitted to have intercourse with her mother and she is permanently off limits to him. Should he have intercourse with her mother then he is not permitted to have intercourse with her daughter and she is to be off-limits to him.
The owner of two sisters is not allowed to have intercourse with both of them; rather he may only have intercourse with just one. The other sister is to be had by him, if he were to relinquish ownership of the first sister by selling her, giving her away or releasing her.
If the female captive is owned by a father, his son cannot have intercourse with her and vice-versa. Moreover, intercourse with his wife’s female captive is also not permissible.
If a father had intercourse with his female captive then gave her away or sold her to his son, he is no longer permitted to have intercourse with her.
If the female captive becomes pregnant by her owner, he cannot sell her and she is released after his death.
If the owner releases his female captive then he is not permitted to have intercourse with her afterwards because she has become free and is no longer his property.
If two or more individuals are involved in purchasing a female captive, none of them are permitted to have sex with her because she is part of a joint ownership.
It is not permissible to have intercourse with a female captive during her menstrual cycle.
It is not permissible top have anal sex with a female captive.
The owner of a female captive should show compassion towards her, be kind to her, not humiliate her and not assign her work she is unable to perform.
The owner of a female captive should not sell her to an individual whom he knows will treat her badly or do unto her what Allah has forbidden.
Professor Abdel Fattah Alawari, dean of Islamic Theology at Al-Azhar University, said Islamic State has “nothing to do with Islam”.

 

CIA Stopped From Having Clandestine Assets in Iraq?

The CIA is well known for having spies, double agents and in some cases triple agents. They are known for having ‘assets’ in all countries deemed to be adversarial to the West. Some assets were of great success while others betrayed the CIA and the West.

When came to Iraq, there were no assets and no chance of creating any with proven worth. After the Clinton administration, the CIA was operating at a profound handicap and today under Barack Obama, the CIA continues to be handicapped. Reliance on technology is no replacement for human intelligence.

Relying on walk-ins or other allied assistance in the world of espionage is not a viable objective, often it falls to scant military personnel or contractors to fill the gaps.

A senior Central Intelligence Agency official, who led the agency as its acting director before retiring in 2013, has said that not having sources in the Iraqi government’s upper echelons led to the intelligence failure of 2003. Michael Morell retired as deputy director of the CIA, after having served twice as its acting director, in 2011 and from 2012 to 2013. A Georgetown University graduate, Morell joined the agency in 1980 and rose through the ranks to lead the Asia, Pacific and Latin America divisions. In May 2015, Morell published his book, The Great War of Our Time: The CIA’s Fight against Terrorism from al Qa’ida to ISIS, which he has been promoting while working as a consultant in the private sector.

Morell spoke at the Aspen Institute earlier this month, and once again offered a public apology to former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell for the CIA’s erroneous estimates on Iraq. He was referring to the Agency’s claims prior to the 2003 US invasion that Iraq maintained an active weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) program. The claims formed the basis of Powell’s February 2003 speech during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, in which he claimed that the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had “biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce […] many more.” There was no question, said Morell, that Powell’s reputation “was tarnished” as a result of the speech, and that a public apology was in order. The same apology, said Morell, applied “to every single American.”

The retired intelligence official went on to say that the main cause of the CIA’s erroneous assessment of Iraq’s WMD program was that the Agency had failed to penetrate the highest echelons of the Hussein regime. “We were not able to come up with the right answer [because] we didn’t do our fundamental job of penetrating [Hussein’s] inner circles with a human asset,” said Morell. As a result, there was “no information to give to the [CIA] analyst to say ‘here’s what this guy is up to’,” he added. The author of The Great War of Our Time, went on to suggest that the CIA’s failure to penetrate the inner circle of the Iraqi government prior to 2003 was “quite frankly a national security failure.”

There is a feeble clandestine operation in Syria, with few results. We then must question the espionage efforts in Afghanistan with the Taliban, Daesh and al Qaida. The Taliban and the West once again have a common enemy in country in Islamic State. So are we forced to support the Taliban where they beheaded a handful of Islamic State fighters?

Who is the United States relying on when it comes to Iran? It is reported that Iran has shipped uranium out of country to Russia, but what uranium exactly? The next fight between the White House and Congress on Iran comes in January when Obama returns from his holiday vacation in Hawaii.

Obama removed spies from China in 2010, but why? The United States maintained a clandestine operation in Russia until under Barack Obama we didn’t and a few years ago swapped assets.

The question now, is what is the condition of the CIA’s espionage efforts across the globe today? How many countries need U.S. supported human intelligence and covert operations? The list is long.

Pentagon Stonewalling the Closing of Gitmo

Go General Kelly, keep it open, stay the course sir. There is no country that will take Khalid Sheik Mohammed and if there are 17 slated to be transferred in January it will leave an estimated 90 detainees that no country will accept. While Congress has law forbidding detainee transfers to the United States, Barack Obama can still use an executive order. The last complete study estimated $500 million to retrofit an existing facility in the event they do get transferred to the United States to a Federal facility. Given where the world is on fighting terror, capturing jihadis rather that killing them would be a benefit at this juncture. Gitmo is perfect for the Islamic killers.

Pentagon thwarts Obama’s effort to close Gitmo

Reuters: Charles Levinson and David Rohde – In September, US State Department officials invited a foreign delegation to the Guantanamo Bay detention center to persuade the group to take detainee Tariq Ba Odah to their country. If they succeeded, the transfer would mark a small step toward realizing President Barack Obama’s goal of closing the prison before he leaves office.
The foreign officials told the administration they would first need to review Ba Odah’s medical records, according to US officials with knowledge of the episode. The Yemeni has been on a hunger strike for seven years, dropping to 74 pounds from 148, and the foreign officials wanted to make sure they could care for him.
For the next six weeks, Pentagon officials declined to release the records, citing patient privacy concerns, according to the US officials. The delegation, from a country administration officials declined to identify, canceled its visit. After the administration promised to deliver the records, the delegation traveled to Guantanamo and appeared set to take the prisoner off US hands, the officials said. The Pentagon again withheld Ba Odah’s full medical file.
Today, nearly 14 years since he was placed in the prison and five years since he was cleared for release by US military, intelligence and diplomatic officials, Ba Odah remains in Guantanamo.
In interviews with multiple current and former administration officials involved in the effort to close Guantanamo, Reuters found that the struggle over Ba Odah’s medical records was part of a pattern. Since Obama took office in 2009, these people said, Pentagon officials have been throwing up bureaucratic obstacles to thwart the president’s plan to close Guantanamo.
Negotiating prisoner releases with the Pentagon was like “punching a pillow,” said James Dobbins, the State Department special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2013 to 2014. Defense Department officials “would come to a meeting, they would not make a counter-argument,” he said. “And then nothing would happen.”
Pentagon delays, he said, resulted in four Afghan detainees spending an additional four years in Guantanamo after being approved for transfer.
In other cases, the transfers of six prisoners to Uruguay, five to Kazakhstan, one to Mauritania and one to Britain were delayed for months or years by Pentagon resistance or inaction, officials said.
To slow prisoner transfers, Pentagon officials have refused to provide photographs, complete medical records and other basic documentation to foreign governments willing to take detainees, administration officials said. They have made it increasingly difficult for foreign delegations to visit Guantanamo, limited the time foreign officials can interview detainees and barred delegations from spending the night at Guantanamo.
Partly as a result of the Pentagon’s maneuvers, it is increasingly doubtful that Obama will fulfill a pledge he made in the 2008 presidential election: to close the detention center at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama criticized President George W. Bush for having set up the prison for foreigners seized in the “War on Terror” after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US, and then keeping them there for years without trial.
When Obama took office, the prison held 242 detainees, down from a peak of about 680 in 2003. Today, with little more than a year remaining in his presidency, it still holds 107 detainees.
Pentagon officials denied any intentional effort to slow transfers.
“No foreign government or US department has ever notified the Department of Defense that transfer negotiations collapsed due to a lack of information or access provided by the Department of Defense,” said Pentagon spokesman Gary Ross, a US Navy commander.
Myles Caggins, a White House spokesman, denied discord with the Pentagon. “We’re all committed to the same goal: safely and responsibly closing the detention facility,” Caggins said.
Former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said in an interview that it was natural for the Pentagon to be cautious on transfers that could result in detainees rejoining the fight against U.S forces. “Look at where most of the casualties have come from – it’s the military,” Hagel said.
The Pentagon’s slow pace in approving transfers was a factor in President Obama’s decision to remove Hagel in February, former administration officials said. And in September, amid continuing Pentagon delays, President Obama upbraided Defense Secretary Ashton Carter in a one-on-one meeting, according to administration officials briefed on the encounter.
Since then, the Pentagon has been more cooperative. Administration officials said they expect to begin transferring at least 17 detainees to foreign countries in January.
Military officials, however, continue to make transfers more difficult and protracted than necessary, administration officials said. In particular, they cite General John F. Kelly, in charge of the US Southern Command, which includes Guantanamo. They said that Kelly, whose son was killed fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, opposes the president’s policy of closing Guantanamo, and that he and his command have created obstacles for visiting delegations.
Kelly denied that he or his command has limited delegation visits. “Our staff works closely with the members of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay and Joint Task Force Guantanamo to support the visits of all foreign delegations,” he said in a written statement, “and have never refused or curtailed one of these visits.”–Reuters
Even if Obama manages to transfer all low-risk detainees to other countries, closing Guantanamo won’t be easy. Several dozen prisoners considered too dangerous to release would have to be imprisoned in the US, a step Republicans in Congress adamantly oppose because, they say, it would endanger American lives.
In a press conference earlier this month, Obama said he still hoped to strike a deal with Congress. He added, however, that he reserved the right to move the prisoners to the US under his executive authority.
The Bush administration faced no political opposition on transfers and was able to move 532 detainees out of Guantanamo over six years, 35 percent of whom returned to the fight, according to US intelligence estimates. The Obama administration has been able to transfer 131 detainees over seven years, 10 percent of whom have returned to the fight.

PRIORITY FROM THE START
Two days after Obama was sworn in as president in 2009, he signed an executive order mandating an immediate review of all 242 detainees then held in Guantanamo and requiring the closure of the detention center. A year later, a task force that included the Defense Department and US intelligence agencies unanimously concluded that 156 detainees were low enough security threats to be transferred to foreign countries.
Members of Congress, meanwhile, seized on reports that transferred detainees had returned to the fight to demand that Guantanamo remain open.
Among those former detainees was Abdul Qayum Zakir, also known as “Mullah Zakir,” who hid his identity from Guantanamo interrogators and became the Taliban’s top military commander after his release. He was responsible for hundreds of American deaths after returning to Afghanistan, according to David Sedney, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia from 2009 to 2013.
In late 2010, Congress passed a law requiring the secretary of defense to personally certify to Congress that a released detainee “cannot engage or re-engage in any terrorist activity.”
Detainee transfers out of Guantanamo slowed to a trickle. In 2011 and 2012, only a handful were released under an exception to the new law that allowed court-ordered releases to bypass the newly legislated requirements. By January 2013, the outlook was so bleak that the State Department shuttered the office tasked with handling the closure of Guantanamo.
Michael Williams, the former State Department deputy envoy for closing Guantanamo, said that during that period, William Lietzau, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee policy, “was not supportive of a Guantanamo closure policy” and an obstacle to transfers inside the Pentagon.
Lietzau, who left his job in 2013, denied obstructing transfers. He said in many cases, delays resulted from his concerns about the ability of foreign countries to monitor transferred detainees. “You have guys who are cleared for transfer, but there is no way to get the assurances, so what do you do then?” Lietzau said.
In May 2013, President Obama unveiled a new push to close the prison. He appointed two new envoys, one at the Pentagon and one at the State Department, to oversee the prison’s closure. One of their top priorities was to transfer as many prisoners as possible to countries willing to take them.
The State Department then proposed that four low-risk Afghan detainees be transferred back to Afghanistan. The four men – Khi Ali Gul, Shawali Khan, Abdul Ghani and Mohammed Zahir – then ranged in age from their early 40s to their early 60s. All had been at Guantanamo for seven years but never formally charged with a crime, and all had been cleared for release by the interagency review board years earlier.
In the case of Gul, State Department officials argued that he was almost certainly innocent. “The consensus was that he had never had any contact with the insurgency or al Qaeda,” said Dobbins. “I can say with confidence we have captured, detained and released thousands of people who have done worse things than these four.”
US officials had offered in secret peace talks with the Taliban in 2012 to swap the four Afghans for captured American soldier Bowe Bergdahl. Taliban negotiators said they didn’t want the four men because the four weren’t senior Taliban members.
Afterwards, State Department officials began referring to them as the “JV four” or “Junior Varsity four,” for their seeming lack of importance to Taliban fighters.
When the State Department added the four Afghans to a list of detainees prioritized for transfer in the summer of 2013, Defense Department officials resisted. At a meeting at the Pentagon, a mid-level Defense Department official said transferring the four “might be the president’s priority, but it’s not the Pentagon’s priority or the priority of the people in this building,” according to current and former administration officials present at the meeting.
With the White House’s backing, the State Department moved forward. By spring 2014, the four Afghans were about to be sent home. Then, General Joseph Dunford, commander of US forces in Afghanistan at the time, sent a memo to the State Department warning that the release of the four detainees would endanger his troops in Afghanistan.
When State Department officials read Dunford’s memo, they realized he was citing intelligence about a different group of Afghans who were more senior Taliban. State Department officials pointed out the error, but it was too late. The transfer was halted.
Sedney, the former deputy defense secretary, said that there was broad resistance within the Pentagon to releasing the four Afghans because between 30 and 50 percent of the roughly 200 Afghan detainees repatriated by the Bush administration had rejoined the fight. The government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai often freed detainees as soon as they returned home, Sedney said.
The four men were finally flown back to Afghanistan on Dec. 20, 2014 – nearly five years after they were cleared for release. Since then, none have returned to the fight, according to US intelligence officials.
Gul declined a request for an interview. Zahir, now in his early 60s and one of the three Afghans considered low-level Taliban, works as a guard at a school in Kabul. He said that the primary evidence against him – Taliban documents found in his home – were from his work as an administrator in the Intelligence Ministry when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. He said that when American soldiers flew him to Afghanistan for release, one spoke with him briefly before handing him over to Afghan officials. “The American soldier tapped on my shoulder and said, ‘I am sorry,’ “ Zahir said, adding: “I don’t know why they kept me there for 13 long years without proving my guilt or crime.”

VIDEO GAMES
Pentagon obstacles delayed and nearly derailed other transfers. In early 2014, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev offered to take as many as eight Guantanamo detainees. The Central Asian leader, eager for a counterweight to an increasingly assertive Russia, hoped to strengthen his relationship with Washington.
Kazakhstani officials asked to send a delegation to Guantanamo for three days to videotape interviews with prisoners before deciding which ones to accept. Kazakhstani psychologists and intelligence experts wanted to study the interviews for signs of deception.
According to multiple current and former administration officials, Pentagon officials forbade the delegation to videotape the interviews, nixed plans for a multiday visit, ordered detainee interviews shortened, and put new restrictive classifications on documents requested by the Kazakhstanis.
Senior commanders at Joint Task Force Guantanamo – the military unit responsible for administering the detention center – said the visiting Kazakhstanis would be allowed one hour with each prisoner and one day at the detention center.
Allowing taped interviews had been common practice with foreign delegations. This time, the Pentagon banned them on the grounds that the practice would violate the Geneva Conventions’ prohibition on using prisoners of war for “public curiosity.”
After two weeks of failed talks, the Kazakhstanis said they were canceling the visit and wouldn’t take any detainees. An alarmed White House intervened, ordering the Pentagon to compromise, according to current and former administration officials.
The Kazakhstanis would be allowed two hours with each detainee, the Pentagon said, and would be allowed to stay one night at Guantanamo. They said the Kazakhstanis would not be allowed to bring recording equipment with them. Instead, the US military agreed to videotape the interviews and provide the Kazakhstanis with copies of the tapes. The Kazakhstanis visited the prison.
Six weeks later, the Kazakhstanis still hadn’t received the videos. “They were calling us every couple of days, saying, ‘Where are the videos?’ “ said an administration official.
The White House ordered the Pentagon to hand over the videos. The Pentagon complied, and sent the videos to the State Department, but with a new classified designation on it, “Secret/NOFORN,” which means it is illegal to share the material with a foreign country. Administration officials complained again. Days later, the video came back with a more lenient classification. The video was sent to the Kazakhstanis.
Two days later, the Kazakhstanis called Washington. The videos had been processed to look as if it had been shot through dimpled glass. For the Kazakhstanis, who wanted to scrutinize detainees’ body language and facial expressions, the videos were useless.
For a third time, White House officials intervened to force the Pentagon to compromise. Finally, in December, nearly a year after the process began, the five prisoners were transferred to Kazakhstan.
In private meetings, some Pentagon officials have been dismissive of Obama’s policy. After the president publicly pledged early this year to respond to a five-year-old British request for the repatriation of British detainee Shaker Aamer, a senior Pentagon official mocked that vow at an interagency meeting on transfers.
“We will prioritize him – right at the back of the line where he belongs,” the Pentagon official said, according to an administration official present at the meeting. A senior NSC official snapped back: “That’s not what the president meant.” Aamer was transferred to Britain in October.
In autumn this year, a foreign government was invited to Guantanamo to interview eight detainees for possible transfer – a process that can take several days. General Kelly’s command, which oversees Guantanamo, instituted a new policy, suddenly banning the delegation from spending the night at the detention center, according to administration officials. (Officials declined to identify countries involved in transfer negotiations out of concern that doing so would jeopardize the process.)
As a result, the delegation was forced to commute 90 minutes by plane each morning and afternoon from Miami, adding tens of thousands of dollars in government plane bills to US taxpayers. In December, the country decided to take no detainees.
During another foreign delegation’s visit to Guantanamo in autumn, Kelly’s command further cut interview times with detainees, to as little as 45 minutes each, making it harder for foreign officials to assess potential transfers.
Ba Odah, the hunger-striking detainee, is now in his late 30s. Multiple members of the National Security Council have intervened to demand that the Pentagon turn over his complete medical file. The Pentagon has held firm, citing patient privacy concerns.
Ba Odah’s lawyer, Omar Farah, said the Pentagon’s justification is baseless.
“Invoking privacy concerns is a shameless, transparent excuse to mask intransigence,” Farah said. “Mr. Ba Odah has provided his full, informed consent to the release of his medical records.”