Critics of President Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility are saying that the Yemen connections of would-be plane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab ought to prevent the administration from repatriating dozens of Yemeni detainees currently held at Guantanamo. “It would be irresponsible to take any of the Yemeni More…
Dick Cheney says something, Politico uncritically reports it, Obama administration officials wearily refute it. So goes the ritual. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that John Brennan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the former vice president is either “willfully mischaracterizing this president’s position” or is “ignorant of the facts” when More…
John Brennan, the White House senior adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security, has been summoned to the Sunday shows to discuss what went wrong in the Northwest Flight 253 case and the threat emanating from al-Qaeda’s presence in Yemen. Here are a few things we’ve learned from his “ThisWeek” appearance: More…
In an appearance on “Democracy Now!” yesterday morning to discuss Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, I made the point that Abdulmutallab’s ability to board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 demonstrates a policy failure more than an intelligence failure. By that I meant that the threat information acquired on Abdulmutallab was insufficient to More…
It’s not exactly surprising that some Republicans would be using the failed Christmas terror plot to grandstand and try to thwart President Obama’s plans to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, but there’s something particularly disconcerting when leading senators such as John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham More…
Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) sent a letter to President Obama today asking him to halt the transfer of six Guantanamo detainees to Yemen. The request, they say, is in light of the danger they’ve apparently just now realized Yemen poses, because More…
In his first public remarks after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253, President Obama reiterated a number of expected themes. His two reviews of the vast U.S. watchlist system that failed to prevent Abdulmutallab from boarding the plane and the airport screening procedures that More…
Prosecutors today unexpectedly canceled the first court hearing scheduled for the “underpants bomber” — the Nigerian man suspected of trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet en route to Detroit on Friday.
The Justice Department was expected to seek a warrant to take a DNA sample from More…
Following up on Spencer’s post, while President Obama’s critics are silent on the detention of alleged would-be Northwest Airlines Flight 253 bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab at a federal prison in Michigan, the failed attempt to blow up the flight to Detroit on Christmas has fast become another More…
The Department of Justice this morning announced that twelve detainees have been transferred from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan, Yemen and the Somaliland region.
Here’s the announcement, with the names of the detainees, which had previously been withheld:
As directed by the President’s
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