Due to stonewalling by the Defense Department, conservative foundation Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in its ongoing attempt to obtain documents that were considered by former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in determining that the five Guantanamo terrorists traded for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl were no longer a threat to U.S. national security, Judicial Watch Director of Research and Investigation Chris Farrell said Friday on
Newsmax TV's "America's Forum."
"They are notoriously slow to respond and frequently the only way that we can get the attention of the government and compel them to produce the records that we seek is by filing a lawsuit," he said. "It's a sad state of affairs, but their instinct is to blow things off and be non-responsive, but the surefire way of getting their attention is having them appear in front of a federal district court judge and explain why they're not cooperating."
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Farrell called the swap a "crazy, bad decision" by the Obama administration that clearly violated the law by not providing Congress with sufficient notice about their plans to
release the Taliban leaders.
"These guys are going to be held in this loose custody and they're not going to rejoin the fight," said Farrell. "These guys are not foot soldiers, they're middle-aged guys whose weapons are laptops and cellphones. They're organizers, logistic guys and operation planners. They're not out pulling a trigger anywhere. They are most dangerous doing what they're doing right now."
Judicial Watch also wants to know what sort of payments were made in the deal. Though the organization has yet to see the documents requested, Farrell said they believe money
— millions of dollars
— was exchanged as part of the swap.
"The Pentagon is very acute in its terminology about money that was being expended to facilitate the swap for Bowe Bergdahl," he said. "They don't want to call it a ransom or a bribe, but it looks like money went out the door to people to facilitate this entire deal. There's a lot of open questions and the American public deserves a straight up answer."
There needs to be accountability, Farrell said.
"We can't make this a matter of course that the U.S. does these sorts of swaps of terrorists for a guy who appears to be a deserter and pays money on top of it."