Francheska Velez of Chicago (AP Photo/David Banks)
The battle over whether to turn a near-empty maximum security prison in rural Illinois into "Little Gitmo on the Prairie" is just heating up, but already it is in danger of sinking into a morass of intense partisan bickering and political posturing that render it hard to analyze rationally.
Democrats from the White House to the Governor's Mansion to the tiny village of Thomson are walking in lockstep, oohing and aahing over what a perfect "win-win" this deal would represent. Here the president is with hundreds of unwanted, soon-to-be homeless detainees on his hands. And on the other side, there is Illinois with an empty state-of-the-art prison, blown budgets and crushing levels of unemployment.
Let us leave aside for the moment that these three things are actually interrelated and not the sheer coincidence our politicians and media wish to pretend they are. Is this move in the best interests of the people of Illinois?
Prominent Republicans in the state say absolutely not. Leading the pack on this oppositional firing squad are the leading GOP senate candidate Mark Kirk and former state party leader, now governor candidate Andy McKenna.
Why the GOP doesn't want Thomson to be the new Gitmo
Kirk has seized on this issue as a potential game changer in the upcoming senate race, a way to burnish his national security credentials and capitalize on what could become widespread anger at Illinois becoming a dumping ground for toxic terrorist prisoners nobody else wanted.
His critique ranges from the far-fetched (the prison is very close to a nuclear power station, which might increase security threats there) to the pragmatic (very few of the thousands of jobs being touted will go to locals, so apart from some boosting of the tax base, this is not the cash-cow its advocates proclaim).
Above all, Kirk and other opponents of the prison takeover warn that it will raise the profile of Illinois and Chicago in the eyes of terrorist networks, painting a big bull's-eye on the region and making us more vulnerable to future attacks.
Both sides likely missing the point
While Hollywood loves nothing better than a dramatic prison-break scene, the odds are against any sort of direct attack aimed at either Thompson prison or the nearby nuclear power reactor. Moreover, this argument opens Republicans up to charges of political fear-mongering and actually weakens their case against using the prison for Gitmo detainees.
On the other hand, Democrats in the state are far too eager to dismiss all arguments against the proposal as poppycock. They also appear to be overstating the economic benefits of the deal, which as Kirk points out, is not even as good as the one this administration offered the island of Palau.
The fact is, Gitmo will be hard to replace
We can start by fairly and accurately assessing the adventages of the current detainee location in Guantanamo, Cuba. Because, while the case can be made that this location is no longer politically viable (domestically or internationally), the fact remains that it was extremely successful from a military, strategic and legal perspective.
Gitmo is isolated and completely subject to US military control. This has limited (but not prevented) access by the media, political advocacy groups, and potential threats to security. It is not on American soil, therefore not automatically subject to civilian law, interference by state or local courts, politicians, or law enforcement agencies. All contact between prisoners and their guards, advocates, visitors, etc. can be directly monitored. The level of surveillance there has been practically unprecedented in US history.
By contrast, moving the remaining prisoners to US soil immediately opens the door to a wide array of new complications. Thomson is touted as a state-of-the-art facility; but in the end it is still a prison, subject to all the flaws and weaknesses of such institutions. Thousands of employees and visitors will flow across its threshold on a daily basis. And while those workers will be closely monitored, there will no longer be the cordon sanitaire that a tightly sealed naval base, a walled-off foreign power and open sea on three sides gives Guantanamo. We will try to maintain the same level of security-will vow to do so-but almost certainly we will fail. And we will fail because moving these detainees to the US mainland will, in the words of conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt, "increase their connectivity" to the terrorist networks from which they emerged.
How secure are US maximum security prisons?
In May Wired magazine ran a story about how technology-the simple, ubiquitous cell phone-was allowing dangerous prisoners, including some on death row, to run gangs, order hits and conduct business as usual from their maximum security cells.
The presence of cell phones is changing the very meaning of imprisonment. Incarceration is supposed to isolate criminals, keeping them away from one another and the rest of us so they can't cause any more harm. But with a wireless handset, an inmate can slip through walls and locked doors at will and maintain a digital presence in the outside world.
And if you think that terrorists would have a hard time accessing cell phones or smuggling messages out of prison, think again. Earlier this week a New York appeals court upheld the conviction of Lynn Stewart, the former lawyer convicted in 2005 of trying to help her client pass communications to outside contacts. That client was "the blind sheikh" Omar Abdel-Rahman, who helped plan the first, failed attack on the World Trade Center. Prosecutors argued that Ms Stewart had received a "strikingly low" sentence for her attempt to abet Abdel-Rahman in ongoing conspiracies, and the judge agreed with them.
Now consider how many people will either work at the prison or have some sort of contact with the Gitmo detainees who may be moved there: military guards, maintenance people, cooks, delivery people, translators, lawyers, media, visitors, spiritual counselors, psychiatric specialists, doctors. The list is long, but hardly exhaustive.
Have we learned anything from the Ft. Hood tragedy?
Who will perform the necessary background checks on all these people, monitor their actions and conversations, keep tabs on their circle of contacts, etc.? It is a daunting task. But what should really give us pause is the knowledge that even if authorities know exactly who is coming into contact with these prisoners, even if they monitor their every email and cell phone conversation, someone will then have to made the call as to whether any of that information is actionable. Let's call it the Major Hasan dilemma, after the alleged perpetrator of the horrific November 5th massacre in Fort Hood, Texas.
While we await the results of an in-depth investigation into the attack that killed 13 soldiers and wounded many others, we already know quite a bit. First, we know that the alleged shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, was a loyal native-born American for most of his life. We know that he became increasingly radicalized (though we don't know if he was "self-radicalized" as some have alleged). We know that he made bizarre presentations to his peers, openly criticized the Iraq War as anti-Islamic, and had email contact with fundamentalist foreign preachers.
Yet despite all this, Hasan was promoted and due to be sent to an active war zone.
So the question all Illinoisans-all Americans-need to ask themselves about the proposed alternatives to Guantanamo is this: how confident should we be that federal and military authorities can protect us, when they cannot even be sure of the men and women in their own ranks?
Many Americans, especially Obama's most ardent supporters in the matter, would prefer not to acknowledge the fact that Gitmo served a useful purpose. But this uncomfortable truth has never been more clear than today, as it enters its final chapter, and with its deeply flawed alternatives all neatly arrayed before us. Gitmo kept us safe. Will Gitmo on the Prairie?
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