Lawmakers Blast Obama "No-Visit" Gitmo Policy

July 17, 2009— -- A Pentagon official Thursday largely refused to answer lawmakers' questions about why members of Congress are prohibited from meeting with Guantanamo detainees, even as intelligence officials from China and elsewhere were allegedly allowed to visit Guantanamo and interrogate prisoners held there.

Allan Liotta, director of the Pentagon's Office of Detainee Policy, testified before a concerned and sometimes fiery House Foreign Affairs subcommittee Thursday, with the difficult task of explaining why the Pentagon allegedly allowed Chinese officials to interrogate several ethnic Chinese Uighur detainees at Guantanamo over a week-long visit in 2002, while it has barred any of the 220 U.S. senators and congressmen who have visited the island facility from meeting any of the detainees held there.

All of the Uighur detainees have since been determined not to be enemy combatants and some have been released from U.S. custody. Five of the men now live in Albania and four are in Bermuda. The island nation of Palau offered earlier this year to accept the remaining 13. The United States declined a request from China to repatriate the Uighurs, out of concern they would be tortured or executed.

The Pentagon insists on keeping lawmakers away from Guantanamo detainees for fear the detainees may be harmed, Liotta explained. "Without question, the single greatest reason to limit access to detainees is to provide for their personal safety, as well as that of the guards and other military personnel," he said.

The Pentagon policy is also built on a respect for the Geneva Conventions, Liotta testified, which requires the United States to shield detainees from "public curiosity." As well, he said, the prohibition was in place to ensure a U.S. lawmaker does not get drawn in to ongoing litigation involving the detainees.

Those answers did not sit well with the lawmakers present. "You allowed intelligence agents of a foreign country to interrogate [Uighur detainees], but you are concerned about their safety and that's why you don't allow United States members of Congress [to visit]?" pressed Rep. Jim Moran, D-VA, in a series of rhetorical questions. "You are concerned about 'public curiosity' -- apparently you're implying we'd be seeing them out of some public curiosity?"