Safe To Release?

The Pentagon is preparing to declassify portions of a secret report on Guantanamo detainees that could further complicate President Obama's plans to shut down the detention facility.

The report, which could be released within the next few days, will provide fresh details about 62 detainees who have been released from Guantanamo and are believed by U.S. intelligence officials to have returned to terrorist activities, according to two Pentagon officials who asked not to be identified talking about a document that is not yet public. One such example, involving a Saudi detainee named Said Ali Al-Shihri, who was released in 2007, received widespread attention Friday when Pentagon officials publicly confirmed that he has recently reemerged as a deputy commander of Al Qaeda in Yemen. Al-Shihri, once known publicly only as Guantanamo detainee No. 372, is suspected of involvement in a thwarted attack on the U.S. embassy in Yemen last September.

The decision to release additional case studies from the report is in effect a warning shot to the new president from officials at the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies who are skeptical about some of his plans. Some Pentagon officials, including ones sympathetic to Obama's goals, note the political outcry would be deafening should another example like Al-Shihri become public six months from now—and it turns out to be a Guantanamo detainee released under Obama's watch rather than by the Bush administration. "The last thing Obama wants is for one of these guys [at Guantanamo] to get released and return to killing Americans," said one senior Defense Department official who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivities.

Some counter-terrorism experts have raised questions about the significance of the Pentagon's figures, noting that the number of so-called "recidivist" detainees represents only a small portion, about 12 percent, of the approximately 520 detainees who have been released from Guantanamo since the detention facility was opened in January 2002. This compares with recidivism rates of as high as 67 percent in state prisons in the United States, according to Justice Department figures. There have also been concerns that Bush administration holdovers were deliberately playing up the cases in recent weeks in an effort to undercut Obama. One former senior U.S. counter-terrorism official noted to NEWSWEEK that the Pentagon waited until the day after Obama signed his executive order mandating the closure of Guantanamo to confirm Al-Shihri's renewed Al Qaeda ties.

Still, a few top Obama administration officials have privately acknowledged that the problem of still dangerous detainees at Guantanamo is more worrisome than some of president's campaign statements might suggest. In May 2008, when the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) last prepared a report on released Gitmo detainees who had returned to terrorist activities, it counted the number of recidivists at 37. Among the examples: Mohammed Ismail, one of the "juveniles" at Guantanamo who, upon his release in 2004, had praised his treatment by Americans, saying at a press conference, "They gave me a good time at Cuba." He was recaptured four months later, participating in an attack on U.S. forces near Kandahar, Afghanistan.

As Pentagon press secretary Geoffrey Morrell disclosed two weeks ago, by mid-January of this year, 24 new detainees had been added to the DIA recidivist tally. The recent confirmation of Al Shihri bumped the overall number to 62, 18 of whom are alleged to have directly participated in terror attacks.