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POLITICS | NYT NOW
Administration Defends Swap With Taliban to
Free U.S. Soldier
By BRIAN KNOWLTON JUNE 1, 2014
WASHINGTON Top Obama administration officials pushed back on
Sunday against Republican criticism that a deal freeing the last American
held prisoner in Afghanistan could allow dangerous Taliban leaders to
return to the fight, might encourage terrorist groups to seize American
hostages and possibly violated a law requiring notification of Congress.
Susan E. Rice, the presidents national security adviser, spoke a day
after years of fitful negotiations had finally yielded the release in
Afghanistan of the prisoner, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The deal, brokered with
Qatari help, also freed five high-level Taliban members from the prison
camp at Guantnamo Bay, Cuba.
The release of the Taliban officials was sharply assailed by
Republicans, including Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan,
chairman of the intelligence committee, as a dangerous transgression of
longstanding policy against negotiating with terror groups.
If you negotiate here, youve sent a message to every Al Qaeda group
in the world by the way, some who are holding U.S. hostages today
that there is some value now in that hostage in a way that they didnt have
before, Mr. Rogers said on the CNN program State of the Union. He
added, That is dangerous.
But Ms. Rice said: Sergeant Bergdahl wasnt simply a hostage; he was
an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield. We have a sacred
6/2/2014 Administration Defends Swap With Taliban to Free U.S. Soldier - NYTimes.com
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obligation that we have upheld since the founding of our republic to do
our utmost to bring back our men and women who are taken in battle, and
we did that in this instance. She was speaking on the ABC program This
Week.
Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who himself was a
prisoner of war in North Vietnam for six years, welcomed the return to
American custody of Sergeant Bergdahl, who had spent five years in
Taliban hands in conditions that remain unclear.
But Mr. McCain said he had serious concerns about the release of the
five Taliban detainees, calling them the hardest of the hard core. He
added, It is disturbing that these individuals would have the ability to re-
enter the fight, and they are big, high-level people, possibly responsible for
the deaths of thousands of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan.
Ms. Rice, appearing separately on CNN, noted that President Obama
had received very specific assurances regarding the handling of the freed
detainees when he spoke by phone on Tuesday with the emir of Qatar.
That country is taking in the five.
They enable us to have confidence that these prisoners will be
carefully watched and their ability to move will be constrained, and we
believe that this is in the national security interest of the United States,
she said.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said while visiting troops in
Afghanistan on Sunday said that he would not have agreed to the
detainees release unless suitable security arrangements were in place.
Asked whether the sergeant, who by some reports was captured after
leaving his base without authorization, might be subject to military
discipline, Mr. Hagel replied, This is a guy who probably went through
hell for the last five years, and lets focus on getting him well, according to
NBC News.
Republican lawmakers also questioned the failure of the
administration to give Congress the required notice of releases from
Guantnamo.
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Ms. Rice said the administration had felt compelled to move swiftly
because Sergeant Bergdahls health seemed at risk and the opportunity to
retrieve him possibly fleeting.
We had reason to be concerned that this was an urgent and acute
situation, she said on ABC, adding that had we waited and lost him, I
dont think anybody would have forgiven the United States government.
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