Pentagon to Declassify Report on Former Gitmo Detainees

Looks like Obama’s going to get some serious internal pushback. 

The Pentagon is preparing to declassify portions of a secret report on Guantanamo detainees that could further complicate President Obama’s plans to shut down the detention facility.

The report, which could be released within the next few days, will provide fresh details about 62 detainees who have been released from Guantanamo and are believed by U.S. intelligence officials to have returned to terrorist activities, according to two Pentagon officials who asked not to be identified talking about a document that is not yet public. One such example, involving a Saudi detainee named Said Ali Al-Shihri, who was released in 2007, received widespread attention Friday when Pentagon officials publicly confirmed that he has recently reemerged as a deputy commander of Al Qaeda in Yemen. Al-Shihri, once known publicly only as Guantanamo detainee No. 372, is suspected of involvement in a thwarted attack on the U.S. embassy in Yemen last September.

The decision to release additional case studies from the report is in effect a warning shot to the new president from officials at the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies who are skeptical about some of his plans. Some Pentagon officials, including ones sympathetic to Obama’s goals, note the political outcry would be deafening should another example like Al-Shihri become public six months from now—and it turns out be a Guantanamo detainee released under Obama’s watch rather than by the Bush administration. “The last thing Obama wants is for one of these guys [at Guantanamo] to get released and return to killing Americans,” said one senior Defense Department official who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivities.

Newsflash: these guys are terrorists.