Press Briefing by White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, October 21, 2008

Q Dana, has the President reached a decision on whether or not he'll close Guantanamo Bay? There's a report today that he's decided he will not.

Ms. Perino: I read that report, and I honestly think, if you went back and you read my briefing from July 3rd, you could have written the same story. I don't see anything that's new in that story.

What the President has said is that he wants to be able to get into a position where we could close Guantanamo eventually. But it's very complex, it's complicated, it is difficult. There are four basic issues that we're dealing with right now. One of them is moving forward on military commissions. That process is slow, but it is moving forward. Another one is returning home or to a third country many of the detainees. We had as many as 600 detainees at one point; we are now down to about 270. So we're continuing to work on that problem. Third, we're in habeas litigation when it comes to the Boumediene decision and then the recent decision from Judge Urbina on the Uigher case. Just last night, the appeals court agreed with us and stayed that decision. So we have that litigation going on. And General Mukasey, backed by the President, supports legislation that Congress needs to pass. And one of the bills that we could support has been introduced by Senators Graham, Lieberman, and McCain.

So there are four issues. And I'm sure that this President and the next President will come in and realize how complicated this issue is, and that we are working very diligently to try to do everything right. And it's not as easy as just snapping your fingers and closing Guantanamo Bay -- unless you don't care. Because 7 percent of the people who have been returned from Gitmo have returned to the battlefield. Many of them have been picked up again. One of them couldn't be picked up again because he was a suicide bomber who killed nearly 40 people in Mosul.

So we are working on it. But it's very difficult. It's slow work. But it's slow work because we are being very diligent in making sure that we do everything that we can to make sure that potential terrorists aren't in a position to be able to hurt innocent people again.

Q So this isn't a decision you expect the President will take or something that will happen before he leaves office?

Ms. Perino: There's nothing -- the President has made a decision to work to try to close Guantanamo Bay. That has not changed.

[. . .]

Q What has the President done to try and close Gitmo?

Ms. Perino: I just talked about how 600 members -- we used to have 600 detainees; we now have 272. We're moving forward to try to ask Congress to put forward the legislation. We are dealing with the habeas litigation, and we're moving forward on military commissions.

Q All those seem to be efforts -- the habeas litigation and the commissions are efforts to justify Gitmo, to defend Gitmo. But what's he doing to try and close it? There's no evidence of an attempt to find an alternative to Gitmo --

Ms. Perino: I disagree, Wendell, when you have --

Q -- considering holding these people, for example, in Afghanistan, where many were picked up.

Ms. Perino: I think you need to go back to the fact that there were, at one point, upwards of 600 detainees at Gitmo. We now are down to about 272. And that's because we've been able to return a lot of them back to their home countries, or to a third country, where we get the assurances that we seek.

That's the main thing that we were trying to do. And we've cut it down by two-thirds, and we've got a ways to go. We have also some very dangerous people there. Remember, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in Guantanamo Bay. So it's not as easy as just snapping your fingers and figuring out where else to put them.

There are also immigration laws. One of the big concerns that we have with the Judge Urbina decision from two weeks ago is that it created a whole third -- a whole other category of immigration without consulting Congress. So for example, in our country we have legal aliens who are here with documentation. They might have a work visa or a green card or they might be applying for citizenship.

Then you have aliens who are not here legally, also called undocumented. What Judge Urbina did was create a whole third category that would say you can legally be here in the United States without any background checks, and without any documentation, and just be released into the United States. And that's why I believe that the courts have agreed with us that that decision should be stayed.

These are issues that are complex. We are working towards them. But you can't -- if you care about innocent people, and the President does, you can't just snap your fingers and let these detainees back out into the world without some sort of assurance that they're not going to be able to hurt innocent people again.

Q The problem you're having with the detainees are those that you don't have evidence enough to convict. Those are the ones that have been released, and some of those have come back, which argues against them being picked up in the first place.

Ms. Perino: I don't think you can say that about all 272 detainees. When it comes to the Uighers, we have been working very hard to find a place for them to be. We want them to be safe, and we want them to be free. But in order to do that, we have to find a place where they can be safe. And that has been a challenge.

Q Why were they picked up then?

Ms. Perino: They were picked up at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. So that doesn't mean that they're an enemy against the United States.

Q And yet there's not enough evidence to bring them to trial.

Ms. Perino: But that's 17 Uighers; we're talking about 17 out of 272 people that we're currently talking about. If this was easy, Wendell, we would have solved it a long time ago. But we have picked up very dangerous people who have been -- who have received weapons training or other -- or they've been picked up in other places around the world. The military commission's process provides a huge amount of justice -- justice that these people never would have received in their own country. But it's a slow process; we admit that. But we're doing it diligently and we're trying to do it right.