Liotta, Alan - short clip - MovingtheProblemNorth

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	(board scratching)	0:00
-	The decision to say I wanna close Guantanamo	0:02
	is very different than the policy	0:05
	of why you have a Guantanamo,	0:08
	because at the end of the day,	0:10
	you're still gonna have a group	0:11
	of individuals who no other country can mitigate	0:12
	the threat that they represent.	0:15
	And that the US government is gonna have	0:17
	to continue to hold as long	0:18
	as they continue to represent that level of threat.	0:19
	And so where do you hold them?	0:22
	And the idea which was looked at and I was involved	0:24
	in the process of finding a facility	0:27
	in the United States	0:28
	where we could transfer those detainees who ultimately	0:29
	would not be transferable.	0:31
	And we would have to continue to mitigate the threat	0:33
	hold them in the United States.	0:34
	While that decision would allow you	0:36
	to close the physical structure of Guantanamo.	0:38
	It did not allow you to close the question of Guantanamo	0:41
	which is not a question of Guantanamo,	0:44
	it's a question of wartime detention.	0:45
	And is this a legal exercise of wartime detention?	0:47
	Because all that was doing was moving the problem	0:50
	northward moving into the United States.	0:52
	And so I always long believed and still believe	0:54
	to this day that even if we'd gotten to that point	0:57
	it would not have ended the habeas proceedings.	1:00
	It would not have ended	1:02
	the critics that say	1:03
	that we don't have Guantanamo,	1:05
	it only would have transplanted	1:06
	the problem someplace different	1:08
	and we'd have a whole new set of issues associated	1:09
	with it when it's transplanted to someplace different	1:11
	be that the United States	1:14
	or any other facility that was chosen to put them	1:14
	in to doing it.	1:16
	And so just closing the facility might have	1:17
	a political value to it	1:19
	but it doesn't help you solve the problem	1:21
	which is what I was trying to do is help solve the problem.	1:23

Item Info

Title:

Liotta, Alan - short clip - MovingtheProblemNorth

Date:

July 20, 2017

Interviewer:

Honigsberg, Peter Jan

Interviewee:

Liotta, Alan

Role:

Government

Description:

This interview may include descriptions of violence.
Director, Office of Detainee Policy, Department of Defense
Alan Liotta, male, age 58, was appointed Principal Director of the Office of Detainee Policy in the Department of Defense in 2006 and was responsible for negotiating the transfers of more than 380 Guantanamo detainees.
Description was provided by Witness to Guantanamo.

Subject:

United States

Format:

oral histories

Language:

English

Extent:

1:47:38

Digital Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo

Source Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo Video Collection, 2009-2017

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Rights Note:

Unless otherwise noted, copyright is held by Peter Hongisberg. Under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license, you are free to use and share these materials subject to the following conditions: You must attribute Peter Hongisberg as the rights holder. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. You may not distribute any modifications to the materials. For other uses, including commercial uses, please contact Rubenstein Library at http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/ask.

Identifier:

ca0cd61523a472a74ece5a423808065d
witnesstoguantanamo
ark:/87924/r4q23zk2k
af7b9e0a-fad3-45e4-bfd3-60923c8af854

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Liotta, Alan - short clip - MovingtheProblemNorth

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