years in prison for aiding the taliban. the constitutional law professor claims to believe in the justice system and laws, you didn t need to do this to close gitmo, so why did they do it? i honestly don t understand. i think it s very odd. finding out that bergdahl is telling his doctors that he was tortured and kept in a cage or confinement, and that he is not talking to his parents. what about this story? where is it headed? it s a really complex story and every day a new piece comes out that raises a whole new set of questions. i think that one thing that we can all agree on is that bergdahl clearly went through an incredibly dramatic experience and we re going to learn more details about that. we don t know exactly what happened to him. we don t know what he went through. we don t know why he doesn t want to talk to his family at this point. i think that the angle with congress is going to continue to be a real driving factor in this town because when you have people like dian
he would return to the battlefield. so it s a mixed bag at best. the chair of the senate intelligence committee responding to the secretary of state on this issue. this about the five taliban now in qatar. there is also reporting tonight from steve hayes from the weekly standard that those detainees at gitmo knew that this transfer was going to happen as opposed to to congress which did not. ledge of the transfer tell the weekly standard that prisoners at guantanamo bay understood that the days before the transfer something significant was imminent. they knew who was being transferred. the security profile at guantanamo had been raised these sources say and the daily ruse teens of several prisoners had been broken up. the university of new york who has represented the detainees told the associated press that the coming transfer was hardly a secret among the prison population. in testimony last week, james clap per the director of national intelligence was asked whether bergdahl s fai
is concerned about, in terms of what specific efforts are under way, i refer you to the department of defense. at this hour, the entire house is being briefed about the bergdahl swap in a classified setting. this meeting should have happened before the swap. he s vowing to raise tough questions behind closed doors. there are concerns tonight that the release of the taliban five could soon be followed by a mass exodus from a guantanamo bay facility that obama has promised to close from his first day in office. it is also possible the president s recent move has made his long term goal tougher to achieve. in one of his first actions as president, mr. obama signed an executive order promising to close the guantanamo detention camps within a year. today, the state department tried to gloss over the taliban transfer and its impact on the president s stalled objective.
we ve been very clear about the fact that we don t want the political controversy that s come out of this swap to in any way impact our efforts to close guantanamo bay because it s the right thing to do. seasoned analysts believe the lack of congressional notification coupled with military aassessments that the five men were high risk detainees have thrown up new obstacles. the political reality this is the poster child of unintended consequences. now it has had the exact opposite effect. that it s making it harder for them, i think, at least in the short term, to do transfers. on the sunday morning talk shows, the head of the house intelligence committee whose support the white house will need chastised them. there are many options on the table many still classified that never even rose to the level of discussion. that s the problem. critics say the president s recent explanation for the swap is revealing. we saw an opportunity and we seized it. the opportunity was not
does have all these other things on his plate. as you know, he is trying to get away from the scandals we have seen over the past couple of weeks. a couple of things come to mind, immigration reform. this is something the president talked about during his 2008 campaign. he was not able to get comprehensive reform. he is pushing for. that we know it s headed to the senate floor after winning some approval in the committee and so it s unclear exactly where this will end up. it s something the president promised he wants to deliver in his second term. in addition to that, there is the guantanamo bay facility. another promise he made the 2008 and early in his 2009 presidency he wanted to close it, but there have been a lot of challenges in closing it down. the president believes the longer you keep it opened, it will create more enemies oversea, it will be more expense for a country trying to cut where it can.