Questions loom over Bergdahl-Taliban swap

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon concluded in 2010 that
Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his unit, and after an initial
flurry of searching the military curbed any high-risk rescue plans. But
the U.S. kept pursuing avenues to negotiate his release, recently
seeking to fracture the Taliban network by making its leaders fear a
faster deal with underlings could prevent the freedom they sought for
five of their top officials, American officials told The Associated
Press.
The U.S. government kept tabs on Bergdahl’s whereabouts
with spies, drones and satellites, even as it pursued off-and-on
negotiations to get him back over the five years of captivity that ended
on Saturday.
Bergdahl was in stable condition Monday at a U.S.
military hospital in Germany, but questions mounted at home over the way
his freedom was secured: Five high-level members of the Taliban were
released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and sent to
Qatar. The five, who will have to stay in Qatar for a year before going
back to Afghanistan, include former ministers in the Taliban government,
commanders and one man who had direct ties to the late al-Qaida chief
Osama bin Laden.
A U.S. defense official familiar with efforts to
free Bergdahl said the U.S. government had been working in recent months
to split the Taliban network. Different U.S. agencies had floated
several offers to the militants, and the Taliban leadership feared that
underlings might cut a quick deal while they were working to free the
five detainees at Guantanamo, said the official and a congressional
aide, both of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity because they
were not authorized to speak publicly about efforts to release Bergdahl.
There was plenty of criticism about how the deal came about.
"Knowing
that various lines of effort were presented and still under
consideration, none of which involved a disproportionate prisoner
exchange, I am concerned by the sudden urgency behind the prisoner swap,
given other lines of effort," said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who
has criticized the government effort to seek Bergdahl’s release as
disorganized.
One current and one former U.S. official said Obama
had signed off on a possible prisoner swap. The president spoke to the
Qatari emir last Tuesday, and they gave each other assurances about the
proposed transfers, said a senior administration official, speaking on
condition of anonymity because the official wasn’t authorized to discuss
the deliberations in public.
One official briefed on the
intelligence said the Taliban also may have been worried about
Bergdahl’s health, having been warned that the U.S. would react fiercely
if he died in captivity. The Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in
Germany, which is caring for Bergdahl, said he was suffering from
nutritional issues.
Bergdahl’s handoff to U.S. special forces in
eastern Afghanistan was never going to lead to an uncomplicated
yellow-ribbon celebration. The exchange stirred debate over a possibly
heightened risk other Americans being snatched as bargaining chips and
whether the released detainees would find their way back to the
battlefield.
Republicans in Congress criticized the agreement and
complained about not having been consulted, citing a law that requires
Congress to be given 30 days notice before a prisoner is released from
Guantanamo.
Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee said
the Pentagon notified the panel by phone on Saturday that the exchange
was occurring in the next five hours.
"A phone call does not meet
the legal standard of congressional notification," the Republican
members said in a statement and added that official notice of the move
came Monday, "more than 72 hours after the detainees were released."
Republicans also argued that the swap could set a dangerous precedent.
"The
five terrorists released were the hardest of the hard-core," said Sen.
Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican. "I fear President Obama’s
decision will inevitably lead to more Americans being kidnapped and held
hostage throughout the world."
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of
Florida, who was campaigning Monday for U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst
in suburban Des Moines, said the hostage exchange was evidence of what
he called a weak and dangerous Obama foreign policy.
"We have
released five very dangerous individuals who eventually will find their
way back into the battlefield," Rubio told reporters, referring to the
swap as setting a price on for American soldiers. "I think it sets a
very dangerous precedent."
White House chief of staff Denis McDonough pushed back.
"All
Americans should know that we did what was necessary to get Bowe back,"
he said in a speech to a think tank. "We did not have 30 days to wait
to get this done. And when you’re commander in chief, you have to act
when there is an opportunity for action."
U.S. officials said they
had to act quickly because Bergdahl’s health and safety appeared in
jeopardy, but declined to explain how.
Bergdahl disappeared on
June 30, 2009. A Pentagon investigation concluded in 2010 that the
evidence was "incontrovertible" that he walked away from his unit, said a
former Pentagon official who has read it.
The military
investigation was broader than a criminal inquiry, this official said,
and it didn’t formally accuse Bergdahl of desertion. In interviews as
part of the probe, members of his unit portrayed him as a naive,
"delusional" person who thought he could help the Afghan people by
leaving his Army post, said the official, who was present for the
interviews.
That official, like others cited in this report, spoke
only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment
publicly by name.
Nabi Jan Mhullhakhil, the provincial police
chief of Paktika province in Afghanistan, where Bergdahl was stationed
with his unit, said elders in the area told him that Bergdahl "came out
from the U.S. base …
without a gun and was outside the base when he
was arrested by the Taliban."
After weeks of intensive searching,
the military decided against making an extraordinary effort to rescue
him, especially after it became clear he was being held in Pakistan
under the supervision of the Haqqani network, a Taliban ally with links
to Pakistani’s intelligence service.
Nonetheless, individual units
pursued leads as they came in. The Pentagon official familiar with the
talks said, "I know for a fact that we lost soldiers looking for him."
But the Pentagon maintained the circumstances of his capture were irrelevant.
"He
is an American soldier," Rear Adm. John Kirby said. "It doesn’t matter
how he was taken captive. It doesn’t matter under what circumstances he
left. … We have an obligation to recover all of those who are missing
in action."
The prisoner swap idea had evolved since early 2011,
according to a former senior administration official familiar with the
details. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he
was not authorized to discuss details of the negotiations, said an
exchange was one of three confidence-building measures designed to
facilitate direct peace talks between the Afghan government and the
Taliban.
In the end, though, the Afghan government was kept in the
dark about the deal engineered by the emir of Qatar. In Kabul Monday,
the Afghan Foreign Ministry criticized the swap, saying, "No state can
transfer another country’s citizen to a third country and put
restriction on their freedom."
Congress was consulted in December
2011 and early 2012, one official said. Several members of Congress
opposed any release, and lawmakers erected several legal hurdles.
Recently,
though, Congress eased the restrictions on releasing Guantanamo
detainees, including the toughest one: requiring the secretary of
defense to personally certify that there would be no return to terrorism
for any detainee he certified.
The Taliban demanded the release
of these specific commanders, the former official said. Initially, the
U.S. wanted to release them in batches, to ensure that Qatar could hold
up its end of the bargain. But that didn’t happen: The U.S. freed the
five all at once.
The release coincided with a visit to Washington by Bergdahl’s parents, Bob and Jani Bergdahl.
Col.
Tim Marsano, a family spokesman, said the parents traveled to
Washington for long-scheduled briefings with the State and Defense
department about their son’s case. He said it was "completely
coincidental" that they were in Washington when their son was freed.
A
Pentagon spokesman, Army Col. Steve Warren, said Monday that Bergdahl
had not yet spoken to any member of his family and it was not clear when
that would happen.
"He will speak with his family when both he
and" the military psychologists "who are overseeing his reintegration
are certain that the time is right," Warren said, adding that a military
psychologist also is working with Bergdahl’s family members in the U.S.
___
Associated
Press writers Richard Lardner, Donna Cassata and Robert Burns in
Washington, Amir Shah in Kabul, Lolita C. Baldor in Brussels, Patrick
Quinn in Cairo and Thomas Beaumont in Urbandale, Iowa, contributed to
this report.

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