The plan came seven years after Obama made an Oval Office vow to permanently shutter the prison

The proposal identifies 13 potential sites inside the
United States to which detainees could be
transferred
Washington (CNN)— President Barack Obama on Tuesday called for the closure of
the Guantanamo Bay detention facility after delivering his plan to Congress to
achieve a goal that has long eluded his presidency.
The blueprint comes seven years after Obama made an Oval Office vow to
permanently shutter the prison for enemy combatants, but it already faces
objections from Republicans and legal obstacles they have placed to transferring
Guantanamo detainees to U.S. prisons.
Obama nonetheless said emptying the prison would move the country past what
he described as a troubled era of wartime behavior.
"The plan we're putting forward today isn't just about closing the facility at
Guantanamo. It's not just about dealing with the current group of detainees,
which is a complex piece of business because of the manner in which they were
originally apprehended and what happened. This is about closing a chapter in our
history," he said during short remarks at the White House.
"Keeping this facility open is contrary to our values," Obama said. "It undermines
our standing in the world. It is viewed as a stain on our broader record of
upholding the highest standards of rule of law."
Obama outlined a blueprint that involves transferring the bulk of remaining
detainees to other countries and moving the rest -- who can't be transferred
abroad because they're deemed too dangerous -- to an as-yet-undetermined
detention facility in the United States.
But Republicans in Congress wasted no time in voicing their opposition to the
administration's proposal.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said the President's plan "fails to provide critical
details required by law," adding "It is against the law -- and it will stay against the
law -- to transfer terrorist detainees to American soil."
John McCain, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, also criticized the
strategy, saying it was "not a credible plan for closing Guantanamo, let alone a
coherent policy to deal with future terrorist detainees."
A major concern of lawmakers has been the risk that released detainees will
return to terror. Underscoring the threat, on Tuesday Spain, working with
Moroccan intelligence officials, announced the arrest of four individuals in anti-
terror operations in Spain and Morocco, including one who had spent time at
Guantanamo.
U.S. officials said Tuesday morning the plan would identify 13 potential U.S. sites
for transfers.
The officials added, however, that funding restrictions prevented Pentagon
planners from determining precise details for converting U.S. facilities into
detention centers for accused terrorists. Since current law prevents using funds
to close the prison, they weren't able to conduct as thorough a cost calculation
as they otherwise might have.
Options for housing prisoners in the U.S. include the federal Supermax prison in
Florence, Colorado; the military prison in Leavenworth, Kansas; and the Naval
Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina. Pentagon officials visited those
sites last year to develop "prototype" plans for converting them into detention
facilities.
The additional sites included in Tuesday's plan include other federal and military
prisons. The closure plan does not identify a specific facility, though
congressional language mandating the plan called for a location to be specified.
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The U.S. officials Tuesday said the plan would save the U.S. government
between $65 million and $85 million per year compared to housing detainees at
Guantanamo.
Obama on Tuesday cited the high costs of keeping prisoners at the Cuba facility
as a reason for closing the prison, in a new argument the administration is making
to press the case that Guantanamo should be shut.
Most Republican lawmakers, however, remain staunchly opposed to moving
detainees into the United States and insisted upon language in two bills recently
signed by Obama -- the defense authorization and defense appropriations bills --
that bars the transfer of Guantanamo detainees into the U.S.
McCain, a rare Republican proponent of closing Guantanamo, still hammered
Obama's plan Tuesday as a "vague menu of options" for reaching that goal.
"The Senate Armed Services Committee will closely scrutinize and hold hearings
on the details of what the President submitted today, but we can say now with
confidence that the President has missed a major chance to convince the
Congress and the American people that he has a responsible plan to close the
Guantanamo Bay detention facility," McCain said.
Obama bemoaned the opposition to closing the facility, saying when he entered
office there was bipartisan agreement on the issue.
"Because we had bipartisan support, I wanted to make sure that we did it right,"
Obama said in explaining why it took so long to put a plan before Congress.
"I indicated that we would need to take our time to do it in a systematic way, and
that we had examined all the options," he continued. "And unfortunately during
that period where we were putting the pieces in place to close it, what had
previously been bipartisan support suddenly became a partisan issue. Suddenly
many backed off because they were worried about the politics."
However, many Republicans -- and some Democrats -- have long been wary of
closing the facility and having to transfer remaining inmates.
Administration officials said Tuesday they were planning conversations with
lawmakers in a bid to change minds, but the outcome remained hazy.
"We hope this will be the beginning of a sustained conversation," one official said,
conceding "it's not entirely clear on how that conversation will play out."
Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, responded Tuesday to assessments
declaring the administration's closure plan already dead on Capitol Hill.
"That just reinforces a pretty significant problem that Congress has right now. I
think by anybody who's paying attention, it's hard to figure out exactly what
Congress is doing," he said. "They're certainly not doing their job."
While White House officials have refused to rule out unilateral action to close the
Guantanamo prison -- and Obama said Tuesday he would use "all legal tools to
deal with the remaining detainees" -- others in the administration have said firmly
that current law disallows any detainee transfers onto U.S. soil.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter, whose department worked for months to compile
Tuesday's plan, said on CNN last month, "It's against the law now to establish
another detention facility."
"So, therefore, we have to get the support of Congress," he told "GPS" host
Fareed Zakaria.
RELATED: Obama still plans to shut Guantanamo. Can he?
Attorney General Loretta Lynch echoed that sentiment in November, arguing the
law "currently doesn't allow" detainees to be transferred to the United States, and
said the option "is not, as I am aware of, going to be contemplated, given the
legal prescriptions."
Lee Wolosky, the U.S. Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure, said last month
that the State Department hoped to transfer a large portion of the remaining
detainees by this summer. U.S. officials said Tuesday the government has either
concluded or is in the final stages of agreements with several countries to
resettle 35 detainees.
With 10 of the remaining 91 detainees expected to undergo military tribunals, that
leaves another 47 detainees who could be approved by an interagency review
board to be sent home or to a third country.
Last month, 10 Yemenis held at Guantanamo were released and sent to Oman. All
10 were held in U.S. custody for at least a decade without being charged. It was
the largest release of prisoners at the U.S. military detention center since 2009.
Oman has taken 20 detainees who are banned from going back to their home
countries, more than any other of the 25 countries that have taken in detainees.
Another four inmates were sent away earlier last month, including an inmate
released to his home country of Saudi Arabia, where the U.S. has hailed the
government's rehabilitation program.
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More than half of the remaining detainees are Yemeni nationals. The
administration is prohibited by law from transferring Guantanamo detainees back
home, given the security situation in the country. Yemen is racked by civil war
and home to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Three previously released
Guantanamo detainees have gone on to join AQAP since leaving the facility.
U.S. officials compare the painstaking negotiations to resettle detainees to a
game of chess, with Secretary of State John Kerry, and his predecessor Hillary
Clinton before him, intimately involved in the discussions.
"This is hard," Wolosky said in an interview with CNN. "It's a difficult ask of the
U.S. to make, to say please take these individuals whom the world has branded
as terrorists. And frequently we have little to offer them in return, except the
continued goodwill of the United States."
U.S. officials expect that Obama, who is scheduled to visit Cuba next month, will
be pressured by the regime there to return control of Guantanamo back to the
island. A group of Republican senators, including Republican presidential
candidate Marco Rubio of Florida, said Tuesday they were introducing a measure
that would prevent Obama from ceding control of the facility back to Cuba
without congressional approval.
But Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, said last week that
returning Guantanamo to Cuba "is not on the table as a part of our discussions."