White House regroups on closing Guantanamo

WASHINGTON - With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress.

Even before the inauguration, President Obama's top advisers settled on a course of action they were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal.

The White House has faltered in part because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities involved in determining what to do with more than 200 terrorism suspects at the prison. But senior advisers privately acknowledge not devising a concrete plan for where to move the detainees and mishandling Congress.

To address these setbacks, the administration has shifted its leadership team on the issue. White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig, who initially guided the effort to close the prison and who was an advocate of setting the deadline, is no longer in charge of the project, two senior administration officials said this week.

Craig said Thursday that some of his early assumptions were based on miscalculations, in part because Bush administration officials and senior Republicans in Congress had spoken publicly about closing the facility. "I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives," he said.

In May, one of the senior officials said, Obama tapped Pete Rouse -- a top adviser and former congressional aide who is not an expert on national security but is often called in to fix significant problems -- to oversee the process. Senior adviser David Axelrod and deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer were brought in to craft a more effective message around detainee policy, the official said.

"It was never going to be easy, but we have worked through some of the early challenges and are on a strong course," Pfeiffer said.

Multiple obstacles
To empty the prison, the administration will need to find facilities to house 50 to 60 prisoners who cannot be released and who cannot be tried because of legal impediments, according to an administration official. The administration must also win congressional funding for the closure process, find host countries for detainees cleared for release, and transfer dozens of inmates to federal and military courts for prosecution.

Three administration officials said they expect Craig to leave his current post in the near future, and one said he is on the short list for a seat on the bench or a diplomatic position. Craig has long made clear his desire to be involved in foreign policy, but he declined to comment on his plans.

Several White House officials remain involved in Guantanamo Bay, including Thomas E. Donilon, the deputy national security adviser; John O. Brennan, the counterterrorism adviser; and David Rapallo, an official on the National Security Council.

"Guantanamo was everyone's part-time job," said a senior official, one of several interviewed for this article who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Now, the official added, Rouse is coordinating them.

Setting a deadline
Before the election, Craig met privately with a group of top national security lawyers who had served in Democratic and Republican administrations to discuss Guantanamo Bay. During the transition, he met with members of the outgoing administration, some of whom warned him against issuing a deadline to close the facility without first finding alternative locations for the prisoners.

Although the move was approved by all of Obama's senior advisers and, ultimately, the president himself, the deadline came at the suggestion of Craig, according to two senior government officials involved in the process. Craig declined to comment on internal discussions.

Craig oversaw the drafting of the executive order that set Jan. 22, 2010, as the date by which the prison must be closed.

"It seemed like a bold move at the time, to lay out a time frame that to us seemed sufficient to meet the goal," one senior official said. "In retrospect, it invited a fight with the Hill and left us constantly looking at the clock."

"The entire civil service counseled him not to set a deadline" to close Guantanamo, according to one senior government lawyer.

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In those early months, Craig was unquestionably the central figure in the effort to shut Guantanamo Bay. In an interview with The Washington Post in February, he said he was managing the closure "on a day-to-day basis."

Craig began reviewing the cases of each detainee at the facility, and was one of the first senior officials to travel to the prison, visiting on Feb. 18, ahead of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

But as time wore on, congressional staff members said, they stopped hearing from Craig. Although there were periodic briefings with members of the Justice Department's task forces, there was no longer a point person from the White House who appeared to be shepherding the issue, according to one Republican aide. Craig became involved in other matters, such as vetting, ethics and the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.