WASHINGTON (AP) — Fears the Taliban might kill Sgt. Bowe
Bergdahl if word leaked that he was being exchanged for five Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, detainees drove the Obama administration not to notify
Congress in advance about the deal, according to congressional and
administration officials.
There was no overt threat but rather an
assessment based on intelligence reports that Bergdahl’s life would be
in jeopardy if news of the exchange got out and the deal failed, two
senior U.S. officials familiar with efforts to free the soldier said
Thursday. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were
not authorized to comment by name.
A federal law requires Congress
to be told 30 days before a prisoner is released from the U.S. military
prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo. Obama administration
officials said the rule was designed for normal detainee transfers, not
an emergency situation involving a U.S. soldier held by the Taliban
since mid-2009.
Since Bergdahl’s release on Saturday, President
Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and national security
adviser Susan Rice have said publicly the key reason they didn’t tell
lawmakers was because there were indications — from the latest video of
Bergdahl — his health was deteriorating after nearly five years in
captivity. On Wednesday night, administration officials told senators in
a closed session that the primary concern was the risk the Taliban
would kill Bergdahl if the deal collapsed.
"Because of the nature
of the folks that we were dealing with and the fragile nature of these
negotiations, we felt it was important to go ahead and do what we did,"
Obama said Thursday at a news conference in Brussels.
State
Department spokesman Marie Harf told reporters Thursday, "There were
real concerns that if this were made public first, his physical security
could be in danger." The risks, she said, included "someone guarding
him that possibly wouldn’t agree and could take harmful action against
him. So, as we needed to move quickly, all of these factors played into
that."
Not everyone in Congress was convinced.
"I don’t
believe any of this," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. "First, we had to
do the prisoner deal because he was in imminent danger of dying. Well,
they saw the video in January and they didn’t act until June. So that
holds no water. Now the argument is the reason they couldn’t tell us is
because it jeopardized his life. I don’t buy that for a moment because
he was a very valuable asset to the Taliban."
Hagel, in France
wrapping up a nearly two-week trip to Asia and Europe, was being kept up
to date on the Bergdhal matter and was scheduled to testify to Congress
after he returns to Washington.
"The secretary knows there are
questions from members of Congress about this decision to bring Sergeant
Bergdahl home," Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary,
said Friday. "He looks forward to testifying next week and to answering
those questions."
Bergdahl was undergoing comprehensive medical
evaluations at a military hospital in Germany. His hometown of Hailey,
Idaho, called off a celebration planned for his homecoming, citing
security concerns amid heated criticism of the young soldier and his
actions before and during his capture.
Several administration and
congressional officials said the latest Bergdahl video, which was shown
to senators in the closed briefing, portrayed his health as in decline
but not so desperately that he required an emergency rescue. An
assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies about the video came to the
same conclusion, said two congressional officials familiar with it.
Still, the administration continued to cite the health issue.
"We
had a prisoner of war whose health had deteriorated and we were deeply
concerned about," Obama said. "And we saw an opportunity and we seized
it."
Hagel was referring in part to the threat from Bergdahl’s
captors when he said Sunday that "there was a question about his
safety," administration officials told the senators.
In the
briefing, both Republican and Democratic senators complained that not
even the chairman and ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, who
are trusted with some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets, were
notified of the agreement, said three congressional officials who were
in the briefing. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because they
were not authorized to discuss the matter by name.
Sen. Angus
King, an independent from Maine, told The Associated Press in an email:
"We were briefed that if these discussions had leaked out, there was a
reasonable chance Bowe Bergdahl may have been killed. And that was one
of the pieces of information that gave some credence as to why it had to
be kept quiet."
Taliban fighters freed Bergdahl on Saturday and
turned him over to a U.S. special operations team in eastern
Afghanistan. Under the deal, five Taliban militants were released from
Guantanamo and flown to Qatar, where they are to remain for a year under
a travel ban and other restrictions that have not been spelled out in
public.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told The Associated Press on Friday that Bergdahl was treated
well.
Bergdahl
was held under "good conditions," and was given fresh fruit and any
other foods he requested. "You can ask him in America about his life (in
captivity). He will not complain," Mujahid said in a telephone
interview. He said the soldier enjoyed playing soccer as well as
reading, including English-language books about Islam.
A senior
administration official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter by
name and spoke on condition of anonymity, said that "senators were told,
separate and apart from Sergeant Bergdahl’s apparent deterioration in
health, that we had both specific and general indications that Sergeant
Bergdahl ‘s recovery — and potentially his life — could be jeopardized
if the detainee exchange proceedings were disclosed or derailed."
___
Associated
Press writers Robert Burns, Lara Jakes, Bradley Klapper, Nedra Pickler
and Donna Cassata in Washington and Lolita C. Baldor in Paris and Amir
Shah in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.