Rep. Frank Wolf vs. the Obama Administration on Uighurs

One of the running problems for the White House’s campaign to close Guantanamo Bay has been the objection of Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who represents Langley in the House, to resettling 17 Uighur detainees in his district. According to Wolf’s spokesman, Daniel Scandling, the congressman has gotten no satisfactory answers to his multiple requests for information about the Uighurs. Yesterday, the Department of Justice sent down a representative to smooth things over. It didn’t go so well.

“We told them that we didn’t need a history lesson about the Uighurs,” said Scandling. “They sent down the head of legislative affairs, who has been on the job for two weeks, and who knew nothing about this. We had specific questions and he couldn’t answer them, and we shut down the meeting within 10 minutes.”

I contacted the Justice Department to confirm these details with Ronald Weich, the assistant attorney general of legislative affairs, and am waiting to hear more. Scandling expressed surprise that the administration hasn’t answered their questions, but said that Wolf was waiting to hear “what the president has to say tomorrow” before moving further on this.