Obama ignored chances to rescue Bergdahl on the ground because he WANTED a terror trade to help close down Guantanamo Bay, claim Pentagon sources
- 'The president wanted a diplomatic scenario that would establish a precedent for repatriating detainees from Gitmo,' a Pentagon official says
- He described a conversation with a State Department liaison who said 'the president isn't going to leave office with Gitmo intact, and this was the best opportunity to see that through'
- Obama has promised to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention camp since 2008 and tried to order it shuttered on his first day in office
- The White House hurried its decision-making about retrieving Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, leaving intelligence officials too little time to assess how damaging it would be to release five Taliban leaders in exchange for him
- Military commanders, meanwhile, were unwilling to mount a dangerous rescue operation to save a presumed U.S. Army deserter
- The result, sources say, was the perfect storm as Obama aims to be rid of 'Gitmo' before he leaves office in 2017
The Obama administration passed up multiple opportunities to rescue Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl because the president was dead-set on finding a reason to begin emptying Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a Pentagon official.
'JSOC went to the White House with several specific rescue-op scenarios,' the official with knowledge of interagency negotiations underway since at least November 2013 told MailOnline, referring to the Joint Special Operations Command. 'But no one ever got traction.'
'What we learned along the way was that the president wanted a diplomatic scenario that would establish a precedent for repatriating detainees from Gitmo,' he said.
The official said a State Department liaison described the lay of the land to him in February, shortly after the Taliban sent the U.S. government a month-old video of Bergdahl in January, looking sickly and haggard, in an effort to create a sense of urgency about his health and effect a quick prisoner trade.
'He basically told me that no matter what JSOC put on the table, it was never going to fly because the president isn't going to leave office with Gitmo intact, and this was the best opportunity to see that through.'
While military commanders wavered on the value of rescue plans, a second Pentagon source said Wednesday, they were advised by their chain of command that the White House was pushing hard for a prisoner swap, over the objections of the intelligence community.
That official told MailOnline that at least two separate intelligence agencies cautioned against taking the January video at face value.
The Daily Beast reported Monday, however, that the White House moved the process along too fast to permit a formal intelligence assessment of the impact of allowing what some on Capitol Hill are now calling the Taliban's 'dream team' to return to the Middle East.
Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio told Fox News on Wednesday that the Obama administration 'bypassed the intelligence community' to make the deal, adding that 'I believe he bypassed Congress because this was done for political reasons. There was no policy justification for this.'
The result, according to multiple published reports, was an environment in which the White House could insist on moving forward quickly on the basis that a soldier's health was at immediate risk â using that justification also to explain its failure to keep Congress informed.
The White House has yet to explain why the deterioration of Bergdahl's health, seen in a video in January, was sufficient reason to steamroll a decision that ended up taking four months to execute.
In a video distributed Wednesday morning by the Taliban, Bergdahl appeared to be strong and in good health as he was handed over to U.S. Special Forces on Saturday
The Washington Times reported that a congressional aide said JSOC never forwarded specific military rescue plans to the White House, judging independently that President Obama was more interested in a diplomatic solution.
But both the Times' sources and MailOnline's also agreed that commanders on the ground were not in favor of sending Special Forces into the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region and risking their lives to rescue a presumed deserter from the terrorist Haqqani network.
'Military commanders were loath to risk their people to save this guy,' a former intelligence official told the Times. 'They were loath to pick him up and because of that hesitancy, we wind up trading five Taliban guys for him.'
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-help-close-Guantanamo-Bay.html#ixzz33mVGN3a1
