Washington Times:

“I want to make clear that any transfer from Guantanamo will be undertaken after consultation with Congress and pursuant to all legal requirements for transfers, including those spelled out in the FY2012 [National] Defense Authorization Act,” she said of the law signed by President Obama that December requiring that he notify Congress ahead of time.

Fewer than three years later, Mr. Obama freed five hard-line Talibancommanders from the prison at Guantanamo Bay. As the five left Cuba, U.S. specials forces troops rendezvoused with the Taliban on May 31, 2014, at a remote location in Afghanistan to pick up Sgt. Bergdahl. TheArmy would later charge him with desertion.

The White House neither consulted with Congress nor gave proper notification for the “illegal transfer.”

Those are the conclusions in a new report by the House Armed Services Committee, issued over the dissent of panel Democrats. The role of Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic Party presidential front-runner, is described in the report’s detailed chronology, gleaned from secret testimony from some of the players and classified documents.

The Clinton letter remains secret to this day. The committee could only disclose the sentence that ended up in a nonclassified letter from then-Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who led the intelligence committee and is one of those who sounded the alarm on any swap back in 2011.

The behind-the-scenes House probe came up with four major findings. The key one: Mr. Obama flatly violated the law on prison transfer notification to Congress. It matches the same conclusion from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The report also accuses the White House, Pentagon and State Department of a conscious campaign to mislead defense leaders inCongress when they made further inquiries. One example: White Housepress secretary Jay Carney told reporters “as we have long said we would not make any decision about the transfer of any detainees without consulting Congress and without doing so in accordance with U.S. law.”

In another finding, the White House, during negotiations with Qatar, an intermediary with the Taliban, excluded officials knowledgeable about the “Taliban Five,” including the Pentagon’s then-top intelligence officer, Michael Vickers.

He was locked out of interagency meetings. “I didn’t participate in any [meetings] and nobody told me about them,” he told the committee.