July 14, 2005

Wyden Testifies on Guantanamo Facility at Armed Services Hearing

Senator recently returned from trip to Camp Delta in Cuba

Washington, DC - U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who recently visited the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, today testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services' Subcommittee on Personnel. The hearing was intended to discuss military justice and detention policy in the global war on terrorism.Senator Wyden's prepared testimony follows:U.S. Senator Ron WydenPrepared Testimony before the Senate Committee on Armed ServicesSubcommittee on PersonnelThank you for inviting me to appear before you today. I commend you for holding this hearing. Current practices on detention and rendition deserve to be examined very closely by Congress, and I am very glad this matter is finally getting some of the attention it deserves. I would like to start off by saying that I agree with the Bush Administration that this is a war, and that the individuals at Guantanamo are not garden-variety criminal defendants. But the Administration is not right to say that just because we are at war, there should be no rules. None of us wants to put the American people at risk by releasing dangerous individuals. At the same time, none of us wants the way that we treat detainees to become the Achilles' heel of U.S. anti-terrorism policy. I saw the policy on detention in practice when I traveled to Cuba last month with Senator Nelson and visited Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay. I believe there needs to be vigorous, concerted oversight of practices at Guantanamo and other, similar facilities. Now having visited there, in my view the most glaring problem that Congress needs to address is the legal status of these detainees. Senator Nelson and I were in the room where the Combatant Status Review Tribunals take place, and we were briefed on the Administrative Review Board process. These procedures were established to determine whether individuals pose a threat to the United States. The U.S. soldiers who are involved in these proceedings are good people. They are trying hard to do the right thing. But frankly, I don't know how they sort it out without a compass. By asking them to conduct reviews without establishing clear rules they can follow, the federal government has put them in a very difficult situation. These soldiers need guidance and standards provided to them so that they can do their jobs. Even the reasons that detainees are being held need to be better defined. Many, for instance, have what is known as "intelligence value". If the U.S. is holding people because there is reason to believe that they have knowledge of active terrorist cells or operational planning, then that's in our national security interests. But if the evidence indicates that they are not dangerous, continuing to hold them requires a different set of standards. I'm interested in protecting the national security interests of this country, not in creating a human reference library made up of individuals who no longer pose a threat to the United States. Of course, some prisoners are not being held because of their intelligence value, but because they are dangerous. The absence of clear rules here raises some questions that Congress ought to explore. For example, Article 21 of the Geneva Convention would seem to provide the government with stronger grounds for holding detainees than the rules currently being employed by the Administration. That article says that if foreign nationals are members of a group that is in armed conflict with the United States, the United States has the right to capture them and hold them prisoner until they are no longer dangerous. I realize that al-Qaida is not a conventional army, but perhaps those Conventions, which are sometimes dismissed as soft and lofty liberalism, can point us to a proper approach in law, that would have the added advantage of having a strong legal precedent.Based on what Senator Nelson and I observed and learned at Guantanamo, I remain very concerned about past instances of unacceptable practices at Guantanamo and elsewhere. However, I believe that improvements have been made to procedures and conditions - at least at Guantanamo. I strongly prefer even this situation to the inevitable alternative: further outsourcing of prisoner interrogation to countries with a questionable commitment to human rights and the rule of law.Our servicemen and servicewomen at Guantanamo have been given a very tough assignment. They are working incredibly hard. While in Cuba, I had the chance to sit down with soldiers from Oregon and talk to them about their experiences serving at Guantanamo. These men and women are doing a great job.But Congress is making those soldiers' job much harder than it needs to be. Colleagues, we could make their job a lot easier by enabling them to operate in an environment where the rules are clear. Some of the soldiers and sailors at Guantanamo Bay have been unfairly maligned by being associated with the errors of their government. By allowing Camp Delta to become a modern-day Bastille where prisoners may be held under humane conditions, but are still kept indefinitely, with no formal charges and little legal recourse, is not likely to change Guantanamo's image around the world as a recruiting poster for al-Qaida. A better solution is for Congress to write rules for detainees that are solidly grounded in United States law, and to hold ourselves to a higher standard of conduct than those who seek to erode our freedoms.I look forward to working with all of you on this issue.