White House Could Use Executive Action to Shutter Guantanamo

Pres­id­ent Obama prom­ised on the cam­paign trail in 2008 to close the pris­on at Guantanamo Bay. He vowed to do it again on his second day in of­fice. And he’s re­af­firmed the pledge many times since. Now, with the pris­on still open, and the pres­id­ent’s time in of­fice wan­ing, he may take uni­lat­er­al ac­tion to make it hap­pen him­self.

“We would like to work with Con­gress where we can,” White House press sec­ret­ary Josh Earn­est told re­port­ers Wed­nes­day. But if the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s plans “con­tin­ue to be re­buffed,” he said, “I wouldn’t rule out the pres­id­ent us­ing every ele­ment of his au­thor­ity” to close the pris­on—in­clud­ing ex­ec­ut­ive ac­tion.

The pres­id­ent ve­toed the Na­tion­al De­fense Au­thor­iz­a­tion Act last month partly be­cause it would have re­stric­ted the trans­fer of de­tain­ees held at Guantanamo. The latest ver­sion of the le­gis­la­tion, a cru­cial de­fense bill, main­tains that lan­guage. While Earn­est stopped short of prom­ising an­oth­er veto, he said the White House has con­cerns about the bill’s obstacles to clos­ing the pris­on.

Though the ad­min­is­tra­tion wants Con­gress’ sup­port on the ef­fort, Earn­est said, the pres­id­ent “would not take any­thing off the table” to close Guantanamo. And Earn­est railed against Con­gress “play­ing polit­ics” with what he called a “sig­ni­fic­ant threat to na­tion­al se­cur­ity.

“What’s the polit­ic­al be­ne­fit that the pres­id­ent ex­pects out of this? The pres­id­ent isn’t play­ing polit­ics with this,” Earn­est said, ur­ging law­makers to do the same. “Let’s set aside par­tis­an polit­ics when we con­sider it.”

Earn­est also de­clined to provide a timeline for when the plan to close the pris­on would be re­leased, des­pite his claim back in Ju­ly that it was in the “fi­nal stages.”