Ethics

Obama officials try to find Gitmo files

By Ed Brayton

The Washington Post reports on the difficulties the Obama administration is having just finding all the information the government has about detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay:

President Obama's plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials -- barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees -- discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.

Instead, they found that information on individual prisoners is "scattered throughout the executive branch," a senior administration official said. The executive order Obama signed Thursday orders the prison closed within one year, and a Cabinet-level panel named to review each case separately will have to spend its initial weeks and perhaps months scouring the corners of the federal government in search of relevant material.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on January 28, 2009 (boomark / email).