WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Monday is expected to name Cliff Sloan, a Washington lawyer and confidant of Secretary of State John Kerry, as the new diplomatic envoy for the shutdown of the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an official said on Sunday.
President Obama pledged in a speech last month to revitalize his faltered effort to close the prison, including naming a successor to Daniel Fried, a career diplomat who held the envoy post in Mr. Obama’s first term. The administration reassigned Mr. Fried in January.
The new appointment was first reported by The Associated Press on Sunday. An administration official confirmed the move, and the State Department circulated a statement by Mr. Kerry praising Mr. Sloan, whom he was said to have recommended.
“I appreciate his willingness to take on this challenge,” Mr. Kerry said. “Cliff and I share the president’s conviction that Guantánamo’s continued operation isn’t in our security interests. In Iraq we’ve turned over prisoners, and we’ve transferred facilities to the Afghan government. Our fidelity to the rule of law likewise compels us also to end the long, uncertain detention of the detainees at Guantánamo.”
Mr. Sloan, a partner at the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom law firm and a former publisher of Slate magazine, has had a varied career in government. His jobs have included stints as a White House lawyer in the Clinton administration; an assistant to Solicitor General Kenneth W. Starr under the first President George Bush; a clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court, who is now retired; and an aide to a Democratic member of Congress.
He does not have any diplomatic experience. Still, the challenge he will face may be more bureaucratic than diplomatic. Mr. Fried managed to find new homes for most of the detainees who were cleared for transfer but who could not be sent back because they came from countries whose governments might abuse them, like China.
The larger questions now are what to do with low-level prisoners who are from countries with troubled security conditions, like Yemen. Of the 166 remaining detainees, 86 have long since been cleared for transfer if security conditions can be met; 56 of them are Yemenis. As part of his speech last month, Mr. Obama lifted an executive branch moratorium on transfers to Yemen.
Mr. Obama also pledged to name a new “envoy” in the Pentagon to handle Guantánamo transfer issues, apparently removing that authority from William K. Lietzau, the Defense Department’s top official for detainee policy. No one has yet been designated for that role.
Upon taking office in 2009, Mr. Obama pledged to close the prison at Guantánamo within a year, but the effort faltered amid Congressional opposition. Since January 2011, when Congress imposed tight transfer restrictions, the departure of low-level prisoners has stopped. Lawmakers later gave the Pentagon the ability to waive those restrictions case by case, but the administration has not used that authority.
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