Was the Bergdahl Swap Lawful?

With Bowe Bergdahl back in the news, it is perhaps worth outlining the legally controversial circumstances of the Taliban swap. I argued here and here that the transfer was inconsistent with three federal statutes: The thirty-day notice requirement before transfer of GTMO detainees in Section 1035 of the 2014 NDAA; the appropriation restrictions in Section 8111 of the Fiscal Year 2014 Consolidated Appropriations Act; and the Anti-Deficiency Act, which prohibits DOD from incurring obligations that exceed an amount available in an appropriation. I further argued that the USG probably relied on Article II to disregard these statutes, an argument that I maintained raises “quite a hard legal issue, with few real precedents.” The GAO subsequently issued a memorandum that reached the same conclusions about these three statutes but did not address the Article II override argument. DOD responded here in an unsigned, letterhead-less memorandum. DOD relied on (what I view as) very strained statutory interpretation arguments. It then argued that if the relevant statutes did in fact prevent the transfer of the five Taliban, “the statute would be unconstitutional as applied because requiring 30 days’ notice of the transfer would have violated the constitutionally-mandated separation of powers.” Here is DOD’s constitutional analysis (first an avoidance argument and then an argument for disregarding the statute):

The transfer was necessary to secure the release of a captive U.S. soldier, and the Administration had determined that providing notice as specified in the statute could jeopardize negotiations to secure the soldier’s release and endanger the soldier’s life. In those circumstances, providing notice would have interfered with the Executive's performance of two related functions that the Constitution assigns to the President: protecting the lives of Americans abroad and protecting U.S. service members. Such interference would “significantly alter the balance between Congress and the President,” and could even raise constitutional concerns; and courts have required a “clear statement” from Congress before they will interpret a statute to have such an effect. Armstrong v. Bush, 924 F.2d 282, 289 D.C. Cir. (1991). Congress may not have spoken with sufficient clarity in section 1035(d) because the notice requirement does not in its terms apply to a time-sensitive prisoner exchange designed to save the life of a U.S. soldier. Cf. Bond v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 2077, 2090-93 (2014). … [I]f section 1035(d) were construed as applicable to the transfer, the statute would be unconstitutional as applied because requiring 30 days’ notice of the transfer would have violated the constitutionally-mandated separation of powers. Compliance with a 30 days’ notice requirement in these circumstances would have “prevent[ed] the Executive Branch from accomplishing its constitutionally assigned functions,” Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 695 (1988), without being “justified by an overriding need” to promote legitimate objectives of Congress, Nixon v. Administrator of General Servs., 433 U.S. 425, 443 (1977). As just discussed, the Administration had determined that providing notice as specified in the statute would undermine the Executive’s efforts to protect the life of a U.S. soldier. Congress’s desire to have 30 days to weigh in on the determination that the Secretary had already made, in accordance with criteria specified by Congress, that the transfer did not pose the risks that Congress was seeking to avoid, was not a sufficiently weighty interest to justify this frustration of the Executive's ability to carry out these constitutionally assigned functions. Thus, even though, as a general matter, Congress had authority under its constitutional powers related to war and the military to enact section 1035(d), that provision would have been unconstitutional to the extent it applied to the unique circumstances of this transfer. And, just as section 1035(d) would be unconstitutional to the extent it was construed as applicable to the transfer, the broader reading of section 8111 would likewise be unconstitutional as applied to that transfer, because it would attempt to impose through the spending power the same unconstitutional requirement that section 1035(d) would attempt to impose directly.