The White House and Pentagon have publicly put up a front of cooperation over the transfer of detainees out of Guantanamo Bay, but behind the scenes, the Pentagon has sharply applied the brakes and fought the administration almost every step of the way.
A new investigation from Reuters of interaction between the White House and Pentagon has supported the narrative alleged by a litany of former defense secretaries in the Obama administration, namely that the White House keeps trying to aggressively interfere with Pentagon affairs. (RELATED: Is This Why Michele Flournoy Turned Obama Down For Secretary Of Defense?)
The Pentagon has fought off White House and State Department interference regarding Guantanamo Bay since 2009, when President Barack Obama first took office.
According to James Dobbins, who served as special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan for the State Department from 2013 to 2014, meetings with the Pentagon would end in frustration. Pentagon officials would simply offer a counter-argument to further releasing prisoners, and the matter would grind to a halt.
“And then nothing would happen,” Dobbins told Reuters.
Pentagon officials, Dobbins said, were responsible for delaying the transfer of four Afghan detainees as much as four years. They also blocked the transfer of six detainees to Uruguay and five detainees to Kazakhstan for years.
In the case of the Afghan detainees, a Defense official reportedly said in a meeting that moving the four detainees out of Gitmo “might be the president’s priority, but it’s not the Pentagon’s priority.”
The Pentagon even had a hand in thwarting efforts the speed along the transfer of British detainee Shaker Aamer.
“We will prioritize him — right at the back of the line where he belongs,” a senior Pentagon official said at a meeting, according to Reuters. In response, an official from the National Security Council, said: “That’s not what the president meant.” Over a 20-year period, the White House’s NSC has jumped in size to a staff of 400. This increase sped up during the Obama administration and also coincided with additional interference in Pentagon matters, resulting in bitter backlash from defense officials.
After years of waiting, Aamer finally was sent over to Britain in October.
Pentagon officials also threw up blocks to foreign delegations trying to assess detainees for acceptance.
Reuters noted that Pentagon officials have denied purposefully trying to slow down detainee transfers yet former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has repeatedly said that the White House pressured him to increase the pace of detainee transfers and totally disagreed with his slow speed. The Daily Beast reported in August that Defense Secretary Ash Carter, too, was continuing the tradition of intentionally blocking detainee transfers.
Guantanamo Bay still holds 107 detainees. Obama’s original campaign promise to close the facility remains unfulfilled, and continued opposition from both Congress and the Pentagon threatens to bury White House attempts at closure during Obama’s tenure.
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