Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2017
Floor Speech
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I have spoken on this floor many, many times against amendments--so far, futilely--against amendments to bar the transfer of prisoners from Guantanamo or to prohibit the expenditure of funds to move them here or anywhere else.
This amendment is particularly pernicious. It says you may not spend any funds to move anyone from Guantanamo, period. That has to be unconstitutional, because what it says is, even if you find that an individual is innocent, even if you factually find out he is guilty of no terrorism, he didn't fight against us, he is not a prisoner of war, he is guilty of nothing, he must stay in jail forever.
How can an American legislative body pass a provision that says we will hold someone in jail forever, not only without trial, but even if we know he is innocent of everything?
I will make no further argument--I only have 1 minute--but the fact of the matter is it is clearly unconstitutional, clearly immoral, and against everything we should stand for. No one should vote for this amendment.
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would prohibit the Department of Defense from even reviewing locations in the U.S. to hold Guantanamo detainees. It would obviously make it much more difficult to close the prison, which is obviously its purpose, which experts agree that it is the prison that harms U.S. national security.
Major General Michael Lehnert, the first commander charged with constructing and operating the Guantanamo detention facility after 9/ 11, recently submitted a statement for the record to the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security, calling Guantanamo ``inconsistent with our values as Americans,'' and recommending the prison be closed.
As General Lehnert stated: ``Guantanamo's continued existence hurts us in our prosecution of the fight against terrorists. It feeds into the narrative that the United States is not a Nation of laws nor one that respect human rights.''
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell recently said that closing Guantanamo is in the United States ``best interest.'' Powell also stressed the effectiveness of U.S. Federal courts to prosecute terrorism offenses, which have convicted over 67 individuals of such charges since 9/11, including Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith.
Federal courts have been vastly more successful than the Guantanamo military commissions, where four of the eight detainees convicted have had their convictions completely overturned.
Prohibiting the Department of Defense from assessing U.S. locations to hold Guantanamo detainees is fiscally irresponsible. It costs us $34,000 a year to hold a detainee in a Federal supermax prison. It costs us $5 million a year to hold a detainee in Guantanamo. That is $5 million versus $34,000.
Even if it costs money to build a new supermax--although, I don't know why we would need a new supermax. There is plenty of room in our supermax prisons for the maximum number, which is 91 people now in Guantanamo, even assuming none of them were released.
Ninety-one times $5 million, minus 91 times $34,000 is a gross waste of money. Even if you had to spend money to build a new supermax prison, you are still saving a lot of money in the long run.
The last thing I want to say is, why would we subject our States as dumping grounds for terrorists?
Well, we have 67 terrorists convicted since 9/11 in American prisons and supermaxes in the United States. No one has ever escaped from a supermax prison. It is pure fear-mongering to say that a State or any place in the United States would be endangered by having a terrorist or anyone else in a supermax prison.
If the terrorist from Orlando had not been shot dead, he would presumably be either sentenced to death or sentenced to life in prison. He would be in a prison in the United States, and no one would say that is unsafe. No one would say: You have got to export him from the country. That is just pure, aberrant nonsense.
So we ought to shut the prison because it is fiscally sound. It would remove a terrorist propaganda point from al Qaeda and ISIS and everybody else. And not all those 91--some of them may be the worst of the worst. Some of them may not be. Some of them we know were simply handed over to bounty hunters because some other tribe in Afghanistan thought this is a good way--the Americans are handing out $5,000, $10,000--this is a good way to get rid of our rivals.
They ought to be tried. If guilty, they ought to be kept in prison for life, perhaps, depending on what they are guilty of. But if innocent, they ought to be released. And to say they ought to stay in Guantanamo without trial--and we know the military tribunals don't work; they haven't managed to convict anybody and make it stick-- forever is un-American.
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