Lawfare Archive: Paul Lewis on Not Closing Guantanamo
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2022
⏱️ 41 minutes
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Summary
From February 25, 2017: Under the oversight of Paul Lewis, the Department of Defense’s Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure under the Obama administration, the detainee population at Guantanamo Bay went from 164 to 41. But Guantanamo remains open, and the Trump administration has promised not only to halt any further transfers or releases of detainees, but also to possibly bring in more detainees in the future. And that's aside from the fact that recent news reports indicate that a former Guantanamo detainee was responsible for an ISIS suicide bombing in Mosul.
With this in mind, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Paul to discuss his time as special envoy, President Obama's failure to close the detention center, and what’s next for Gitmo under President Trump.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:39.3 | I'm Katherine Pompiliot with an episode from the LawFair archives, first January 17th, |
| 0:44.5 | 2022. |
| 0:46.0 | Earlier this week, the first high-value detainee held at Guantanamo Bay was approved for |
| 0:49.9 | transfer with security assurance. |
| 0:52.2 | Uletta Sondaran is the first detainee sent to Guantanamo from a CIA black site to be |
| 0:56.4 | recommended for release. |
| 0:58.2 | Duran has been held at Guantanamo Bay since December 2006 and has not been charged for |
| 1:02.6 | any crimes. |
| 1:04.0 | He joins about 14 other detainees approved for transfer out of the 39 detainees that |
| 1:08.0 | remain at the detention center. |
| 1:10.2 | For today's archive episode, I picked an episode from February 2017 in which Benjamin |
| 1:15.6 | Wood has sat down with Paul Lewis, the Department of Defense's special envoy for Guantanamo |
| 1:19.7 | closure under the Obama administration. |
| 1:22.4 | Under Paul, the detainee population at Guantanamo Bay went from 164 to 41. |
| 1:28.1 | Benjamin and Paul discuss Paul's time as special envoy, President Obama's failure to close |
| 1:32.6 | the detention center, and what was the future of Guantanamo under former President Trump. |
| 1:42.7 | I'm Clara Hendrickson and I am a friend of LawFair who knows nothing about national security. |
... |
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