Berenson, Bradford - short clip - Obama Agrees with a Bush Policy

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	(marker scratching)	0:00
	(keyboard keys clicking)	0:04
-	I wasn't surprised when he said it.	0:18
	It had been a cause celebre on the left for a long time.	0:22
	Obama is a man of the left.	0:25
	And so it was certainly no surprise	0:27
	that he would be playing to that constituency	0:31
	by stating that objective.	0:34
	I was very impressed,	0:37
	and at least mildly surprised,	0:40
	when his review of the situation	0:44
	early in his first year concluded that,	0:47
	in fact, he really couldn't successfully close Guantanamo	0:50
	without bringing some of these terrorists onto U.S. soil.	0:57
	To me, that was a sign that he was taking	1:02
	the weighty national security concerns here seriously,	1:04
	because I knew from my work that there were people	1:09
	among those detainees, maybe not everyone,	1:13
	but plenty of people who were hardcore terrorists,	1:16
	very dangerous, that you could not release,	1:19
	and that you could not try,	1:23
	certainly in a U.S. civilian court for a variety	1:26
	of technical legal reasons having to do	1:31
	with the type of evidence that's available	1:34
	in a normal court versus in a military commission.	1:36
	And so when his review agreed with that sentiment	1:41
	and said, well, what we're gonna have to do	1:48
	if we close Guantanamo is bring a bunch of these guys	1:50
	into the U.S. and hold them here indefinitely without trial,	1:53
	I was encouraged because I took it as a sign	1:58
	that he and his team were not just playing politics	2:01
	with these really life and death issues,	2:04
	but were in fact serious	2:06
	about trying to protect the country,	2:08
	even where it risked some political damage to him	2:11
	and forced him to, in effect,	2:15
	agree with something President Bush had been doing.	2:18

Item Info

Title:

Berenson, Bradford - short clip - Obama Agrees with a Bush Policy

Date:

September 11, 2015

Interviewer:

Honigsberg, Peter Jan

Interviewee:

Berenson, Bradford

Role:

Government

Description:

This interview may include descriptions of violence.
Associate Counsel to the President
Bradford Berenson, male, age 50, was Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush (2001-2003), and worked on the authorization for military commissions, detainee and anti-terrorism litigation, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
Description was provided by Witness to Guantanamo.

Subject:

United States

Format:

oral histories

Language:

English

Extent:

2:01:17

Digital Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo

Source Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo Video Collection, 2009-2017

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Rights Note:

Unless otherwise noted, copyright is held by Peter Hongisberg. Under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license, you are free to use and share these materials subject to the following conditions: You must attribute Peter Hongisberg as the rights holder. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. You may not distribute any modifications to the materials. For other uses, including commercial uses, please contact Rubenstein Library at http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/ask.

Identifier:

5ace5acf49bf2f30bf7c61e19cdd4e89
witnesstoguantanamo
ark:/87924/r4154n802
ff9a5206-6066-42c6-85f8-f54a61ada6eb

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4154n802

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Berenson, Bradford - short clip - Obama Agrees with a Bush Policy

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