Resolving Guantanamo: A Progressive Plan for Detainees in the War on Terror
Featuring:
David M. Crane, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, Syracuse University, and former Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone
Tom Malinowski, Washington Advocacy Director, Human Rights Watch
Ken Gude, Associate Director of International Rights and Responsibilities, Center for American Progress
Moderated by:
Peter Rundlet, Vice President for National Security and International Affairs, Center for American Progress
More than four years after September 11th, the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, holds few al Qaeda leaders, and not a single detainee has been convicted in the specially created Military Commissions designed to try terrorist suspects. Furthermore, it impairs our relations with even our most supportive allies and provides our enemies with more tools in the battle for hearts and minds. In the interest of U.S. national security, President Bush should close the prison at Guantanamo.
But the debate about the future of the prison has lacked legitimate and substantive alternatives. Supporters of Guantanamo refuse to accept that it is a liability and insist that the status quo must be maintained. Opponents are quick to call for the prison’s closure but often fail to take into account the difficult and unique challenges of detaining and putting terrorist suspects on trial. The Center for American Progress has developed a proposal that addresses each of those challenges with practical policy solutions and presents a concrete alternative to the fatally flawed policy President Bush has pursued on detainees. Please join the Center and its panel of experts to discuss this proposal and other strategies to solve the problem of Guantanamo.
from left: Peter Runlet, Ken Gude, Tom Malinowski, Professor David M. Crane
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Biographies
David M. Crane was appointed a Distinguished Visiting Professor of law at Syracuse University College of Law in the summer of 2005. Prior to joining the College of Law, he was the Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, an international war crimes tribunal, appointed to that position by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, on 19 April 2002. Professor Crane was the first American since Justice Robert Jackson and Telford Taylor at Nuremberg, in 1945, to be the Chief Prosecutor of an international war crimes tribunal. Mr. Crane has held numerous key managerial positions during his three decades of public service, including Senior Inspector General, Department of Defense, Assistant General Counsel of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Waldemar A. Solf Professor of International Law at the United States Army Judge Advocate General’s School.
Tom Malinowski has been Washington Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch since April 2001. He has served as Special Assistant to President Clinton and Senior Director for Foreign Policy Speechwriting at the National Security Council. He also served as speechwriter for Secretaries of State Albright and Christopher as an aide to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Ken Gude is the Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress. Prior to joining American Progress, Gude was a Policy Analyst at the Center for National Security Studies, where he focused on post-September 11 detainee issues. He also had stints at the Council on Foreign Relations and the British Labour Party, where he served as a Policy Officer working on the campaign against the privatization of British Rail. He has been published in the Los Angeles Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tompaine.com and contributed to the book, Protecting Democracy: International Responses (Lexington Books, 2004).
Peter Rundlet is the Vice President for National Security and International Affairs at the Center for American Progress. Prior to joining American Progress, Rundlet was Counsel for the 9/11 Commission, where he focused on domestic intelligence and law enforcement policy, including related civil liberties issues. He was appointed Associate Counsel to the President and was responsible for a range of policy and constitutional law issues until the end of the Clinton administration. Rundlet also worked as an attorney in the political law department of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Earlier in his career, he received the Skadden Public Interest Law Fellowship and was an Assistant Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he litigated voting rights, housing, school desegregation, and employment discrimination cases. He earned a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.