State Department Names Lee Wolosky New Envoy for Closing Guantanamo
The State Department has named former National Security Council official Lee Wolosky as the new special envoy for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, reports Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald.
DefenseOne gives us the scoop on the Wolosky:
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The State Department has named former National Security Council official Lee Wolosky as the new special envoy for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, reports Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald.
DefenseOne gives us the scoop on the Wolosky:
Wolosky, 46, now fills the void left by Clifford Sloan, who stepped down in January after nearly 18 months on the job. He will work closely with Paul Lewis, who holds the counterpart job at the Defense Department. Wolosky, a 1995 graduate of Harvard Law School, was the National Security Council’s director of transnational threats for Presidents Bill Clinton and, briefly, the George W. Bush administration. He left in 2001. Later, Bloomberg in 2013 called his New York law firm “a network of influential Democrats built during his career in counterterrorism, foreign policy and law,” including former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Secretary of State John Kerry, who brought Wolosky on as his counterterrorism policy advisor during the 2004 presidential campaign.
In a statement announcing his appointment on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry described the tough task ahead of Wolosky:
“Lee Wolosky is a highly-skilled and experienced attorney who served as the National Security Council’s Director for Transnational Threats under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. He is ideally qualified to continue the hard diplomatic engagement that is required to close Guantánamo in accordance with President Obama’s directives. Lee will assume lead responsibility for arranging for the transfer of Guantánamo detainees abroad and for implementing transfer determinations, and overseeing the State Department’s participation in the periodic reviews of those detainees who are not approved for transfer."
"I'm certainly under no illusions that this is going to be easy," Wolosky told the Miami Herald following the announcement.
