Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the gentleman's amendment.

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chair, this amendment is another amendment in a series we have seen today to prevent any movement toward closing the Guantanamo Bay facility, obviously, and it would prevent the expenditure for any officials who are trying to do that. A number of myths have been propounded as to why we should do this.

One, we cannot bring terrorists to the United States. First of all, not everybody in Guantanamo is a terrorist. Some are. Some are not. There should be trials. There should be some form of due process. It is un-American to hold people there for life. Apparently, the people who are in favor of these amendments--this one included--want everyone in Guantanamo to be held forever because you can't spend any money to release them. You can't spend any money to close the prison. You can't spend any money to put them in a facility in the United States. You can't spend any money to do anything except to hold them in jail in Guantanamo forever and for $5 million a piece per year.

Several reasons have been introduced for doing this.

One, if they are brought to the United States and to a supermax prison, that is dangerous. No, it is not. No one has ever escaped from a supermax prison, and the executive director, Jim Gondles, of the American Correctional Association recently submitted a statement for the record to a House Homeland Security subcommittee stating that U.S. corrections systems, both military and civilian, already hold extremely dangerous people, including terrorists, and have done so for years. No matter how dangerous the detainees are, U.S. correctional systems professionals, military and civilian, have the ability, training, and capacity to take them on.

Second, we are told that there is a risk if these people are released--and some of them should be because they are not guilty--that, at some point, they could return to terrorism, assuming they are all terrorists. The fact of the matter is the recidivism rate--now it is true--under the Bush administration was 20.9 percent. Twenty-one percent of the detainees who were released under the Bush administration have returned to some sort of combat or insurgent activity. They didn't do a great job in screening under the Bush administration. Under the Obama administration--in other words, for the last 7\1/2\ years--the figure is not 21 percent; it is a little under 5 percent, 4.9 percent. The White House recently confirmed that no detainees who have been released in this administration--that is to say in the last 8 years--have been responsible for the death of any American. Let's get rid of that bogus point.

It has also been misstated on this floor tonight that we don't want to bring Guantanamo prisoners to a supermax facility in the United States: A, because it is dangerous, which is nonsense; B, because they can radicalize other prisoners, which they can be kept apart from; and, C, because they would have more constitutional rights in the United States than in Guantanamo. The Supreme Court has ruled that prisoners at Guantanamo have exactly the same constitutional rights as prisoners who are held in the United States--no more, no less. The attempts to give them fewer constitutional rights are why every single conviction in the military tribunal in Guantanamo has been overturned on appeal so far.

They should be brought to the United States or released, depending on the case. They should be tried in a Federal court and put in a supermax prison forever if they are guilty, and if they are not guilty, they ought to be released. That is the American tradition. That is our way of life. It is what we are fighting to defend, at least presumably.

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chair, how much time do I have remaining?

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Number one, they can be segregated in Federal prisons in the United States, and maybe they should be. Number two, some of them are indeed great terrorists and some aren't. Number three, they may have been captured in war zones, but they weren't in uniform, which means some of them may not have been combatants. That is what has to be determined. If they were combatants, they can be held under the law of war; but if they weren't combatants and they haven't committed any crimes, they should be released.

There has to be some due process. We can't hold people in prison forever with no trial, no due process because we think maybe--and remember, some of these people were. We offered bounties to tribes in Afghanistan. And like the Hatfields and the McCoys, the Hatfields turned in the McCoys, and we don't really know that all the McCoys were guilty of anything or engaged in combat.

Before we can hold them under the laws of war, we ought to at least have some sort of review to find that out. It is not true that all of them are the most dangerous. Some are; some are not. We owe it to our own traditions to figure out the difference.

Not to mention the fact that, to hold them in the United States, it costs $34,000 a year, and to hold them in Guantanamo costs $5 million a year, each. Who is the fiscally responsible party today?

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

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