The New York Times - USA (2020-06-28)

THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALSUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2020 0 N 29

President Barack Obama
vowed to close it, and failed. Presi-
dent Trump vowed to load it up
with more “bad dudes,” and has
not. Now Joseph R. Biden Jr. is
saying that if elected president, he
would support shutting down the
military prison at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba — but has declined to
specify how he would do it or what
he would do with the 40 men held
there as wartime prisoners, in-
cluding the men accused of plot-
ting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In response to a question, his
campaign said in a statement that
Mr. Biden “continues to support
closing the detention center.”
Echoing Mr. Obama, the state-
ment said the prison “undermines
American national security by fu-
eling terrorist recruitment and is
at odds with our values as a coun-
try.”
But Mr. Biden rarely, if ever,
brings up the topic, evidence of
how politically toxic it remains af-
ter intense Republican efforts to
cast Mr. Obama’s initiative as en-
dangering Americans by transfer-
ring terrorists to U.S. soil or send-

ing them without adequate safe-

guards to other countries.

When asked about Guantá-

namo Bay in a primary debate in

December, Mr. Biden, who was

Mr. Obama’s vice president,

blamed Congress for thwarting

closure, but rather than suggest a

path forward, he pivoted to an-

other issue.

The Biden campaign’s foreign

policy and national security advis-

ers include veterans of the failed

effort by the Obama administra-

tion to close it — notably Tony

Blinken, a former deputy secre-

tary of state, and Brian P. McKeon,

a former Pentagon policy official

— who are almost certainly

acutely aware of how painful it

was to try to make good on Mr.

Obama’s promise. If there is any

lesson from the previous adminis-

tration’s inability to overcome op-

position to closing Guantánamo, it

may be to avoid drawing attention

to the effort.

Once the Obama administration

made clear that closing the deten-

tion center meant moving some of

the prisoners — notably former

C.I.A. prisoners, including five

men accused of plotting the Sept.

11 attacks — to detention facilities

in the United States, critics cast

the plan as a symbol of weakness

and the proposed relocation of the

prisoners a potential national se-

curity threat.

Like tampering with Social Se-

curity or suggesting locations for

storing nuclear waste, closing

Guantánamo became a third rail

of political discourse.

Roy Neel, who worked for the

Clinton administration and sev-

eral Democratic campaigns, said

one legacy of Mr. Obama’s failure

was the danger of making prom-

ises.

“You’re not going to gain any

votes because not many people

are focusing on this issue, at least

rank-and-file voters,” he said, not-

ing that “Obama was burned.”

“It doesn’t do anything political-

ly to get into it,” he added. “The

worst thing that could happen is

Biden is drawn out somehow to

look indecisive or weak by going

down that rabbit hole.”

This election season the most

prominent call for closure has

come from antiwar and faith-

based organizations and activist

groups on the left, including Code

Pink, September 11th Families for

Peaceful Tomorrows and

MoveOn. In a letter coordinated

by Demand Progress in May, doz-

ens of groups included it in a diplo-

macy-first foreign policy initiative

they asked Mr. Biden to endorse.

Their agenda urged renewed ef-

forts at diplomatic engagement

with Iran and Korea as well as re-

pealing the 2001 authorization of

the use of military force, a legal

basis for holding detainees at

Guantánamo, before mentioning

closure itself.

The question of keeping, closing

or expanding Guantánamo is in-

deed tied up in the intractability of

the invasion of Afghanistan,

America’s longest war, and the

endless nature of the war on ter-

rorism.

President George W. Bush, who

opened the prison, said while still

in office that he aspired to close it,

while his vice president, Dick Che-

ney, was one of its greatest cham-

pions and advanced the “not in my

backyard” argument.

Mr. Cheney called it “a model fa-

cility — safe, secure and humane”

in his 2011 memoir. “I don’t have

much sympathy for the view that

we should find an alternative to

Guantánamo — a solution that

could potentially make Ameri-

cans less safe — simply because

we are worried about how we are

perceived abroad,” he wrote.

The Obama administration

tried a series of arguments to

sway political opinion toward clo-

sure, including citing the costs, es-

timated recently to exceed $13

million a year a prisoner, and its

role in stoking anti-Americanism.

None worked.

Mr. Trump, who wants U.S.

troops withdrawn from Afghani-

stan, promised during the 2016

campaign to expand the Guantá-

namo prison, “to load it up with

some bad dudes.”

He has not done so. Islamic

State prisoners held by proxy mi-

litias in northeast Syria and Iraq

were, for a time, the most likely

candidates for transfer there. But

legal experts have warned that

such a move would invite court

challenges to test whether the

2001 authorization to wage war on

Al Qaeda and the Taliban is expan-

sive enough to include the Islamic

State, the global movement that

emerged out of the U.S. invasion of

Iraq in 2003.

Mr. Trump has faced internal

opposition to sending more pris-

oners to the U.S. military base on a

sliver of American-controlled land

in Cuba. John R. Bolton, Mr.

Trump’s former national security

adviser, wrote in his recently pub-

lished memoir that at one point

the president proposed to bring

some Islamic State prisoners to

Guantánamo from northeast Syr-

ia, an idea that was dropped when

the defense secretary at the time,

Jim Mattis, objected.

The Bush administration was

the last to bring a new detainee to

the prison, in 2008. It sent away

about 540 over the years. The

Obama administration halted all

transfers into the prison and re-

duced the population by about

200.

Mr. Trump lifted Mr. Obama’s

closure order but his administra-

tion also reduced the detainee

population, by one. In 2018, the

Pentagon repatriated a Saudi

prisoner who pleaded guilty to

terrorism-related offenses and be-

came a government witness and

recorded testimony against two

other Guantánamo prisoners who

have yet to face trial.

Closing Guantánamo May Be Politically Toxic, but Biden Remains on Board

By CAROL ROSENBERG

As president, Obama

had promised to shut

the prison, and failed.

This article was produced in part-
nership with the Pulitzer Center on
Crisis Reporting.

Seventeen New York City cor-
rection officers, including a cap-
tain, will be disciplined for their
roles in the death just over a year
ago of a 27-year-old transgender
woman at the Rikers Island jail
complex, officials said on Friday.
In announcing the action, Mayor
Bill de Blasio said the captain and
three other officers had been sus-
pended without pay immediately
for their conduct in the death of the
woman, Layleen Polanco, who was
found unresponsive in her cell after
having an epileptic seizure.
“What happened to Layleen was
absolutely unacceptable and it is
critical that there is accountability,”
Mr. de Blasio said in a statement.
The mayor’s announcement

came three weeks after Darcel D.
Clark, the Bronx district attorney,
said she would not pursue criminal
charges in Ms. Polanco’s death af-
ter a six-month inquiry. The city’s
Department of Investigation also
declined to bring charges.
But on Tuesday, the city’s Board
of Correction, an oversight panel,
issued a scathing report detailing a
series of failures that it said had
probably contributed to Ms. Polan-
co’s death, which came while she
was in solitary confinement.
Among other things, the board
said that rather than checking on
Ms. Polanco every 15 minutes as re-
quired, Rikers staff members had
ignored her for periods of 35, 41 and
57 minutes during her last hours.
Ms. Polanco’s family and their
lawyer said the disciplinary
charges were an important first
step to ensuring accountability in
her death, but they criticized the
delay in punishing the officers.
“Most employers would not wait

a year before trying to remedy a

problem of this magnitude,” said

David Shanies, a lawyer for the

family.

Beyond the four suspensions,

the mayor and Cynthia Brann, the

city’s correction commissioner, did

not specify what other punish-

ments might be handed down or

what administrative charges the

other officers would face.

But an official familiar with the

matter said the charges would in-

clude failure to tour, inefficient per-

formance and making fraudulent

logbook entries.

Those who are charged will be

entitled to departmental hearings,

and Elias Husamudeen, the presi-

dent of the Correction Officers’ Be-

nevolent Association, vowed on

Friday to fight the suspensions,

which he called “an egregious

abuse of power.”

Noting that Ms. Clark had de-

clined to press charges, Mr.

Husamudeen said in a statement

that his union’s members had been

“thrown under the bus” and he

blamed Ms. Brann and “her inept

managers” for Ms. Polanco’s death.

Ms. Polanco, a member of one of

the most storied groups in New

York City’s drag ball scene, the

House of Xtravaganza, was jailed

in April 2019 because she could not

pay $501 in bail after being arrested

on several misdemeanor charges

and an outstanding bench warrant.

Before being taken to Rikers Is-

land, she spent three days at the

Bellevue Hospital, where she was

prescribed an anti-seizure medica-

tion, something that the correction

board said the court and the correc-

tion department had been told.

After leaving the hospital, Ms.

Polanco was housed in a transgen-

der unit at the jail complex, where

she told members of the medical

staff about her history of seizures,

officials said.

The correction board gave the

following account of Ms. Polanco’s

time on Rikers Island:

She had two seizures within

weeks of arriving at the jail. She

was subsequently sentenced to 20

days in solitary confinement after

having altercations with two in-

mates, although she was not imme-

diately placed in isolation.

By mid-May, jail staff members

began to notice “radical changes”

in her behavior. She did not leave

her cell for breakfast one day and

refused to take her medication on

another occasion.

She was transferred to Elmhurst

Hospital Center on May 15 after she

struck an officer and was deemed

“highly assaultive” and in need of

“a higher level of care.”

When she returned to the jail,

staff members traded emails over

whether to house her in a male fa-

cility, protective custody or solitary

confinement, known as punitive

segregation. The correction board

prohibits people “with serious

mental or serious physical disabili-

ties or conditions” from being

placed in punitive segregation.

A jail psychiatrist, noting her

seizure disorder, initially refused to

clear Ms. Polanco for punitive seg-

regation. But a different mental

health clinician later approved

putting her there, saying her condi-

tion “has been stable.” She was

placed in a 21-cell unit where offi-

cers are supposed to check on in-

mates every 15 minutes.

On June 7, the day she died and

her ninth day in the unit, she had

breakfast, took a shower, spent an

hour in recreation, met with medi-

cal staff members and had two

servings of lunch in her cell.

Just after noon, an inmate work-

ing as an observation aide refilled

Ms. Polanco’s water cup and placed

it onto the cell’s meal slot. It was the

last time video footage showed Ms.

Polanco moving.

At 12:51 p.m., an officer and a

captain walked past her cell, glanc-

ing in. The next check came 35 min-

utes later, when a mental health cli-

nician knocked on the door and left

when there was no response.

Over the next 20 minutes, vari-

ous staff members tapped on Ms.

Polanco’s cell window and looked

inside about a half-dozen times

without getting a response. The

next check after that did not come

until 2:27, 41 minutes later.

At 2:45, an officer knocked on

Ms. Polanco’s cell door repeatedly

and looked in through the window.

Officers opened the door, but they

did not enter. Instead, they stood

outside the cell, talking and laugh-

ing and calling out to Ms. Polanco

for two minutes before leaving.

A captain soon arrived and or-

dered officers to open the door.

When they did, Ms. Polanco’s face

was purple and blue, and staff

members tried to revive her. The

chief medical examiner found that

she died as a result of her epilepsy.

Ms. Clark, the district attorney,

said in announcing her decision not

to bring charges that it was “an ab-

solute tragedy that Ms. Polanco

died so young.”

But Ms. Clark said her office had

“concluded that we would be un-

able to prove beyond a reasonable

doubt that any specific individual

committed any specific crime.”

A spokeswoman for Ms. Clark

declined on Friday to comment on

the disciplinary actions announced

by the mayor.

In its report, the correction

board found that the process used

to identify and exclude inmates

with mental and medical issues

from isolation was “insufficient, in-

consistent, and potentially suscep-

tible to undue pressure” from cor-

rection department staff members.

Ms. Polanco’s sister, Melania

Brown, was among those that ad-

dressed a crowd this month at a

“Brooklyn Liberation” rally.

On Friday, Ms. Brown said the of-

ficers involved in the case should

be fired.

“The system needs to be

changed from the bottom up,” Ms.

Brown said. “What about the cops

behind those walls? No one talks

about them enough.”

17 Guards Face Discipline

In Death of Rikers Inmate

By JAN RANSOM

and ED SHANAHAN

Protesters called for an investigation after Layleen Polanco, a 27-year-old transgender woman, was found dead in her cell last June.

STEPHANIE KEITH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A first step to ensuring

accountability in a

woman’s death at the

jail complex.

Former Vice President Joseph
R. Biden Jr. released statistics on
the diversity of his presidential
campaign staff on Saturday
evening, announcing that 35 per-
cent of his full-time staff members
and 36 percent of his full-time sen-
ior staff members are people of
color.
A majority of Mr. Biden’s staff
members and senior staff mem-
bers are women — 53 percent and
58 percent, respectively.
Mr. Biden’s campaign had, for
months, declined to provide such
an accounting. The new figures,
which are self-reported, come as
the Biden campaign was in the
midst of a major hiring spree and
only hours after Mr. Biden had
been pressed at a virtual town hall
event about having failed to pro-
vide such statistics earlier.
Mr. Biden has been rapidly ex-
panding his staff across the coun-
try since he became the presump-
tive Democratic presidential nom-
inee in early April, a process that
has remade the complexion of
both his senior staff and the cam-
paign as a whole.
Mr. Biden has faced questions
about the lack of racial diversity in
the uppermost ranks of his cam-
paign, as his inner circle of most

trusted advisers — some of whom

have had his ear for decades —

skews heavily white. His current

and former campaign managers

are both white, as are four of the

people who have served as deputy

campaign manager, his three

chiefs of staff as vice president (all

still influential), and many of his

top communications and policy

advisers. The Latino and Asian-

American political communities

have expressed particular con-

cern; Mr. Biden has had greater

black representation at the upper

levels of his campaign structure.

Last December, Mr. Biden told

NPR: “I have the most diverse

staff of anybody running. I’ve al-

ways done that.” But he refused at

the time to provide any evidence

that was true. Politicowrote at the

time that the rival campaigns of

Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren

and Bernie Sanders had reported

that about 40 percent of their full-

time staff members were people of

color.

In the general election, Mr. Bi-

den is running against President

Trump, who counts virtually no

people of color among his most

trusted advisers, though his cam-

paign said on Saturday that 25

percent of senior staff members

are people of color. The campaign

did not provide such a figure for its

overall full-time staff, saying that

information was not available.

Polls show Mr. Biden dominat-

ing Mr. Trump among black voters

and leading widely among Lati-

nos.

The Trump campaign also said

on Saturday that 52 percent of its

full-time staff members, and 56

percent of its senior staff mem-

bers, are women.

Since Mr. Biden became the

presumptive nominee, he has

hired several racially diverse peo-

ple at the top levels, including Kar-

ine Jean-Pierre and Julie Chavez

Rodriguez as senior advisers, as

well as a new chief financial offi-

cer and a new senior adviser for

financial operations, among oth-

ers.

Earlier on Saturday, Mr. Biden

was pressed by Amna Nawaz, a

correspondent for “PBS News-

Hour” and one of the moderators

of a virtual presidential town hall

event hosted by Asian and Pacific

Islander American Vote, about

why he had to that point declined

to release any staff diversity data.

Specifically, she asked Mr. Biden

about having “no Asian-American

senior advisers — please correct

me if I’m wrong.”

Mr. Biden did not cite any

Asian-American senior advisers

by name but defended his “di-

verse staff that goes across the

board, and high-level and senior

positions.” He pledged to release

staff data later Saturday, and his

campaign did.

“My administration is going to

look like America — not just my

staff; the administration, from the

vice president straight down

through cabinet members to ma-

jor players within the White

House and the court,” Mr. Biden

said. “It’s going to be a reflection

of who we are as a nation.”

Alida Garcia, the founder of In-

clusv, an organization that seeks

to ensure staff members of color

are hired in political campaigns

and organizations, said that the

group was working with the Biden

campaign “on increasing these

numbers in coming months.”

Ms. Garcia added that she

hoped the Biden campaign would

divulge data for different ethnic

groups “so individual communi-

ties would be able to advocate for

themselves.”

One Third of Biden Campaign Staff Are People of Color

By SHANE GOLDMACHER

and THOMAS KAPLAN

The self-reported data

came hours after the

question was posed at

a virtual town hall.