By Don Irvine ——Bio and Archives--December 9, 2010
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TAPPER: I just wanted to ask about the report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that came out, I believe, yesterday -- it was sometime this week -- stating that it's the judgment of the intelligence community that five detainees released or transferred from Guantanamo under President Obama, under this new revised system -- two of them are confirmed returned to terrorism. Three of them are suspected. And I'm wondering if this is causing -- since this new system has -- requires the unanimous vote of all the members of this group, I'm wondering if this is causing anyone in the administration to think that maybe this revised system isn't good enough. I know that it's a smaller number than happened under Bush, and I know that you never said that it wouldn't happen, but I'm wondering if there are now going to be any changes in the procedure. GIBBS: Well, I would first and foremost refer you to the comment that we put out and the comments from DNI. TAPPER: They didn't address that, though, if there would be revisions. GIBBS: Right. Look, I think that we will certainly continue, based on all sorts of information coming from all over the world in order to make determinations about the likelihood that some are more susceptible to -- upon leaving Guantanamo Bay, whether they're more susceptible to returning to terrorism. I have no doubt that they will continue -- to continue to evaluate that. Obviously -- and I have not read the full report, but you know, in a number of these -- in some cases -- and I don't -- again, I'm not -- I don't want to take these five; I don't know the exact reasoningbehind -- I -- go back and look at the report. But you know, in many cases -- in some cases, some of the transfers have been -- some of the transfers are required by law because there is not either sufficient evidence with which to charge individuals and there's not sufficient reason to continue to hold them. Though the recidivism rate appears to have slowed down with the releases since Obama took office the overall rate is still at 25% and that's a rate that the U.S. and the rest of the world should find unacceptable. And yet despite the return or the suspected return to terrorism by these former detainees the Obama administration is still committed to closing Gitmo. That's a real deterrent to current and future terrorists.
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Don Irvine is the chairman of Accuracy in Media and its sister organization Accuracy in Academia. As the son of Reed Irvine, who launched AIM in 1969, he developed an understanding of media bias at an early age, and has been actively involved with AIM for over 30 years.