Ken Gude on Closing Guantanamo

How soon will it be before Guantanamo officially closes its doors?

President Obama has established a firm, one-year timeline for closing Guantanamo, so next January it'll be closed.

What will have to happen between now and then?

Well, we're proceeding on three tracks. There are really three kinds of detainees at Guantanamo, and we have to have different solutions for each one. One track are detainees that we brought to the United States for trial in U.S. courts and incarceration in U.S. prisons if they're convicted. The second track are detainees that need to be sent back to their native countries either for incarceration there or for release, if that's appropriate. And the third track are detainees that cannot be sent back to their native countries for a variety of reasons and we'll have to find third countries willing to accept them.

What hurdles should the Obama administration expect in closing the prison?

There are a lot of challenges in closing Guantanamo. But I think it's important to stress that while it will be a difficult process, there are solutions to each of these challenges. A lot of the focus has been on exactly how hard it will be, and it will be difficult. The challenges are real. The solutions are not necessarily perfect because nothing is perfect at Guantanamo. But in the track on detainees that are going to be tried in U.S. courts, certainly there's a problem with the evidence. We hear a lot about how the files are in disarray, the case files are in disarray, a lot of the evidence is classified, some of the evidence may have been obtained through torture, and obviously that will not be used in U.S. courts. But there is a body of law that establishes procedures to use classified evidence at trial, and we can accomplish that goal. In the second track, sending detainees back to their native countries, some countries, particularly Yemen, have very little control over their prison system, and they will have to get better at that if we're going to send the 95 Yemenis that are still at Guantanamo back to Yemen. If we can't resolve that issue with the Yemenis, we would have to then find a third country willing to incarcerate some of those Yemenis. And finally in the last track, the detainees that can't be sent back to their native countries, we'll obviously have to find some nations that are willing to accept these resettled detainees. Perhaps some of them could come to the United States, particularly the group of Chinese Muslims called the Uighurs who have been at Guantanamo for seven years even though they were never enemies of the United States. They perhaps could come to and live in the United States. But most of these detainees will have to be resettled in other countries. I'm greatly encouraged that even after just a few days, the European Union has established a formal process for how they will treat these detainees, how they will process them, and how they will accept them into their countries. So we've seen a lot of momentum really just after a few days since the president issued this executive order, and I think we'll get to a solution.