Chuck Hagel Admits He Felt Pressure from Obama White House to Release Gitmo Terrorists (Video)
Former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel admitted today on CNN that the White House pressured him to increase the pace of release of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay.
CNN reported:
White House officials pressured Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to increase the pace of detainee transfers from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, the outgoing secretary acknowledged to CNN’s Barbara Starr in an interview Friday.
Those comments come just one day after reports surfaced that a Guantanamo detainee released as part of the deal that freed American POW Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl may have sought to return to militant activity.
“Not everyone at the White House has agreed with me,” said Hagel of his methodology for deciding on detainee releases.
Disagreements between Hagel and officials in the President’s inner circle have been widely reported during his short tenure as secretary of defense. But in his interview with CNN, Hagel spoke with uncharacteristic candor about that friction.
“We’ve had a lot of conversations,” Hagel said.
“With the White House?” Starr pushed back.
“Yes,” said Hagel.
Earlier this week, one of the “Taliban 5 Dream Team” that Hillary Clinton once said was “not a threat to the United States” returned to the battlefield, according to CNN.
WIth each passing day, the Obama-Clinton foreign policy continues to unravel.
Hillary Clinton said The Taliban Five Are “Not A Threat To The United States.”
CLINTON: “These five guys are not a threat to the United States. They are a threat to the safety and security of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s up to those two countries to make the decision once and for all that these are threats to them. So I think we may be kind of missing the bigger picture here. We want to get an American home, whether they fell off the ship because they were drunk or they were pushed or they jumped, we try to rescue everybody.”
The Gitmo terrorists celebrated their release with a few “Allahu Akbars” when they arrived in Qatar last year in a sway for deserter Bowe Bergdahl.
