Williamson, Clint - short clip - PresidentPopularityandRepatriatingDetainees
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| (marker sound) | 0:01 | |
| - | There were a number of individuals | 0:03 |
| that were at Guantanamo that were cleared for release. | 0:07 | |
| But we recognized | 0:13 | |
| that they could not | 0:18 | |
| go back to their home country for whatever reason, | 0:18 | |
| but usually because of concerns | 0:21 | |
| about torture or mistreatment. | 0:23 | |
| I've already mentioned the Chinese Uyghurs | 0:27 | |
| that fell into this category. | 0:28 | |
| But there were a significantly larger group of people | 0:30 | |
| that fell into this category. | 0:34 | |
| So we were going out and trying to negotiate | 0:38 | |
| with countries that might be willing to accept them. | 0:41 | |
| Again because we were concerned | 0:46 | |
| about the human rights implications | 0:47 | |
| of sending these people back to their home countries. | 0:51 | |
| We were very concerned about the receiving country | 0:57 | |
| being a place that had stellar human rights records. | 1:01 | |
| So we were generally engaging European governments, | 1:04 | |
| some other governments in Africa, in Latin America, | 1:09 | |
| Australia, other places where we felt | 1:15 | |
| that they had a very strong record on human rights | 1:19 | |
| and there were no concerns | 1:21 | |
| about these people being abused. | 1:22 | |
| So as you pointed out, | 1:26 | |
| and the issue quickly became one, | 1:30 | |
| when I would start these discussions | 1:32 | |
| well why won't the United States take them? | 1:35 | |
| And | 1:38 | |
| there's no good answer to that question. | 1:43 | |
| And this is a point that I raised very early on in memos | 1:45 | |
| to Secretary Rice and to the Deputy Secretary of State | 1:51 | |
| saying this is the most significant hurdle | 1:54 | |
| to any type of diplomatic progress on these cases. | 1:57 | |
| In fairness to them, to Deputy Secretary Negroponte | 2:02 | |
| and Secretary Rice, they both recognized that. | 2:06 | |
| And Secretary Rice became very much a proponent | 2:09 | |
| for the US revising its policy, in this regard. | 2:12 | |
| It was quite delicate diplomacy | 2:17 | |
| because this was a very sensitive issue. | 2:19 | |
| And particularly because of the unpopularity | 2:23 | |
| of President Bush in Europe. | 2:26 | |
| It was a difficult sell. | 2:28 | |
| As we got closer to the Bush administration, | 2:32 | |
| to the end of the Bush administration, | 2:36 | |
| I think a lot of these governments | 2:38 | |
| were willing to talk to us about this | 2:42 | |
| but had already decided at that point, | 2:44 | |
| look we're not gonna make any decisions on this. | 2:45 | |
| We're gonna wait and if we're gonna do a favor, | 2:48 | |
| we're gonna do it for the new president. | 2:50 | |
| After President Obama's election, | 2:53 | |
| and the fact that he was quite popular in Europe, | 2:58 | |
| a lot of governments became much more receptive | 3:02 | |
| to this idea. | 3:04 | |
| When the administration did change, | 3:05 | |
| I came into my office on January 21st of 2009, | 3:09 | |
| I think I had five voicemail messages | 3:13 | |
| from different governments saying, | 3:16 | |
| "Okay, we're willing to talk now." | 3:17 |
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