A Washington Lawyer Named State Department GTMO Envoy
Ask and you shall receive...
No sooner had I observed on Friday that the President had still not named the two senior envoys at the State and Defense Departments to help with Guantanamo transfers than the Huffington Post reports that on Monday Secretary Kerry will name Clifford Sloan, a partner at Skadden Arps in Washington (where he is a law partner of former White House Counsel Greg Craig), to be the State Department envoy. Sloan is the former publisher
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Ask and you shall receive...
No sooner had I observed on Friday that the President had still not named the two senior envoys at the State and Defense Departments to help with Guantanamo transfers than the Huffington Post reports that on Monday Secretary Kerry will name Clifford Sloan, a partner at Skadden Arps in Washington (where he is a law partner of former White House Counsel Greg Craig), to be the State Department envoy. Sloan is the former publisher of Slate magazine and previously served as Associate Counsel to President Bill Clinton. From the Huff Post story, it sounds like Mr. Sloan may spend as much time negotiating with Congress as with foreign countries.
This strikes me as a potentially very good appointment with the right mandate.
No word yet on a senior envoy at DoD.
John B. Bellinger III is a partner in the international and national security law practices at Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC. He is also Adjunct Senior Fellow in International and National Security Law at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as The Legal Adviser for the Department of State from 2005–2009, as Senior Associate Counsel to the President and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council at the White House from 2001–2005, and as Counsel for National Security Matters in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice from 1997–2001.
