US defense secretary Chuck Hagel forcefully rejected criticism for trading five Taliban leaders for army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in a combative appearance before a congressional committee on Wednesday.



Hagel aggressively and at times angrily defended the trade, saying he took its risks "damn seriously" and making conspicuous reference to his Vietnam combat experience.

"I would never sign off on any decision that I did not feel was in the best interests of this country. Nor would the president of the United States, who made the final decision with the full support of his national security team," Hagel said in front of a phalanx of uniformed officers.

The deal ended the five-year captivity of the only US prisoner in the Afghanistan war in exchange for five senior Taliban held at Guantánamo Bay. Criticism of the deal and the lack of legally required congressional notification around it, almost all from Republicans, has sparked nearly two weeks of outrage.

But any hope the Obama administration had of tamping down the political fire over the trade seemed to evaporate during the hearing.



Hagel, who was at times as dismissive of his critics as they were of him, described an extraordinary process of secret back-channel negotiations brokered by Qatar, fueled by fears about risks to the life or health of the only US prisoner of war in Afghanistan after five years of captivity, culminating with a 12 May agreement with the Qataris to take custody of the Taliban detainees.



But Hagel, who said Congress now has the terms of the agreement, insisted the trade was not firm until the day the US took custody of Bergdahl. That has been the crux of the rationale the Obama administration has offered for not informing Congress about taking the five detainees out of Guantánamo, a violation of a law Congress passed to hinder the administration's ability to close the detention facility.

"The exchange needed to take place quickly, efficiently and quietly," Hagel said, saying that the "exceptional circumstances" of the trade justified violating the notification requirement.

"We did not know until the moment sergeant Bergdahl was handed over safely to US special operations forces that the Taliban would hold up their end of the deal. So it wasn’t until we recovered Bergdahl on May 31 that we moved ahead with the transfer of the five Guantánamo detainees."

Hagel attempted to reframe the trade as a "military operation" subject to the fog of war, rather than a detainee swap. That reframing allowed Hagel to argue that the swap did not violate the tradition of not negotiating with terrorists – though various US administrations have quietly done exactly that throughout history – rather than defend the negotiation outright.

"Because Sergeant Bergdahl was a detained combatant being held by an enemy force, and not a hostage, it was fully consistent with our longstanding policy not to offer concessions to hostage takers," Hagel argued.

Hagel also claimed that the Taliban initially wanted all Taliban detainees at Guantánamo in a trade for Bergdahl, suggesting that the US might have got a bargain. "There were different variations of that engagement over the years," he said.



But the Bergdahl swap is a rare alignment of nearly everything Republicans find disastrous about Obama's foreign policy. It links the administration goal of closing Guantánamo with ramping down the Afghanistan war and negotiating with averred US enemies, a confluence of disputed policies that helps explain why the trade has ignited conservative furore.

Initially, Buck McKeon, a California Republican and chair of the committee, blasted the White House for what he called its "unprecedented negotiations with terrorists" and its decision to ignore the congressional notification requirement ahead of Guantánamo releases. McKeon framed the Bergdahl release as a pretext or prologue to what he suggested was the Obama administration's impending closure of Guantánamo Bay, a policy hated by congressional Republicans and obstructed by legislators of both parties.

"In the president’s rush to close Gitmo, are other deals in the works to release these dangerous individuals,” McKeon asked, adding that the White House has put "immense pressure" on Hagel to transfer detainees "so it can claim victory for closing Gitmo."

Short of saying he recognised the trust of the committee with the Pentagon "has been broken", Hagel gave no quarter to the administration's critics. In an unsubtle reference to his Vietnam combat experience and the relative military inexperience on the House panel, Hagel said that "a few of you … have experienced war and seen it up close." He mused "it is pretty easy" in Washington "to give analysis, usually uninformed."

As the hearing wore on, the administration's critics emphasised the extralegal lack of congressional notification more than they sought to dispute the merits of the trade.

"We didn't need to know the operational details … I don't think we would have pushed back at all," McKeon said. "I wish that you or somebody had sat down with the leadership in Congress including the Senate and told us the things you have told us here."

His likely successor as chairman, Republican Mac Thornberry of Texas, also focused on the administration blindsiding Congress about the transfer.

"It's not just about this incident, it's not just somebody having their feelings hurt. This decision undermines the working relationship" between Congress and the administration on national security issues, Thornberry said.

"What we're trying to get across is that we're a nation of laws," said Randy Forbes, a senior Republican on the panel.

A rare point of agreement in the hearing came on separating out Bergdahl's decision to walk off base in 2009 from the merits and legality of the Taliban swap. McKeon, who will not seek re-election this year, said the committee will have a distinct "time and process" for questioning whether Bergdahl defected, as several of his platoon-mates have accused.

The army has pledged its own investigation after Bergdahl's mental and physical health have been established, and Hagel said he was "offended and disappointment" with innuendo about Bergdahl and his family being terrorist sympathisers. The Washington Post on Wednesday published an article based on writings by Berdgahl, provided to it by a friend, that suggested his psychological state was precarious, and that he had previously been discharged from the US Coast Guard after 26 days of training.

Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the panel, had the role of defending the administration within the committee. Smith said it was unrealistic to think that the US can avoid negotiating with the Taliban after nearly 13 years of war and keep holding the Guantánamo populace indefinitely.

But Smith said that the administration should have discussed the trade with Congress "when you were thinking about doing this deal" months earlier, and suggested there was a limit to the value of the detainees justifiably tradable for Bergdahl. "Would we have traded Khalid Shaikh Mohammed for him,” asked Smith, referring to the accused architect of the 9/11 attacks. "Absolutely not."

Hagel said he had "hope" that the deal might lead to some sort of negotiated settlement to the longest war in US history – as was the goal of an early and failed iteration of the deal – but "the current situation that we were in was a straight Get-Bergdahl."

But several Republicans argued that the trouble was with the trade itself. "The Obama administration has handed back blood-bought gains to US enemies," said Trent Franks of Arizona. Joe Wilson of South Carolina called the deal "inconceivable."

