Prepared Statement for the Record of
Jay Alan Liotta
Principal Director, Office of Detainee Policy
United States Department of Defense
(Embargoed for public release until July 16, 2009)
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the Department of Defense's detention operations at Guantanamo Bay. To address the Subcommittee's concerns, I would like to speak briefly about the Department's policy of access to detainees at Guantanamo, as well as the issues and challenges of such visits.
At the outset, I would like to note that we currently hold fewer than 230 detainees at Guantanamo—less than a third of the total number ever detained there.
With regard to our detention operations at Guantanamo, it is undoubtedly the most transparent military detention center anywhere in the world. Within the Department, we have worked diligently to establish a state-of-the art facility that provides safe, humane, transparent, and legal custody for each detainee. We have allowed numerous media outlets and human rights groups access to the facilities to observe proceedings and to participate in camp tours. We have also brought senior foreign officials to Guantanamo to better understand detention operations. These visits continue, and we facilitate as much access as logistically possible to the media and these other groups, to ensure transparency and accountability in our operations.
Over the past seven years we have brought 52 US Senators, 168 Representatives, and 300 staff members to Guantanamo on official Congressional Delegations. I have personally escorted more than a dozen of these trips. Through these visits as well as congressional testimony and briefings, we have provided our respective oversight committees, as well as other dedicated and interested Congressman and Senators, an unfettered look into our operations. In every case, the visitors have expressed their appreciation for the tremendous and outstanding work our young men and women in uniform are doing in the most arduous of circumstances. It is extremely stressful duty, yet these young Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen do it with pride and excellence every single day.
To ensure the safe and humane operations of all Department of Defense detention facilities, and to comply with our obligations under international law, it is the policy of the Department of Defense to limit access to detainees under our legal control. This is not simply for detainees in Guantanamo, but for all those we continue to hold in Iraq and Afghanistan as well.
We do this for three principal reasons:
- First and foremost, to ensure the safety of the detainees and US personnel;
- Second, to shield detainees from "public curiosity" to remain consistent with the Geneva Conventions; and,
