'I thought we were close to getting a deal,' Lindsey Graham told POLITICO last week. Graham: W.H. talks just went 'dead'

For much of the early part of the year, Sen. Lindsey Graham and the White House were locked in heated negotiations over legislation that could close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, move some of the war-on-terror prisoners there to the U.S. mainland and create a system to detain Al Qaeda members captured later.

The talks were so intense that they spurred suspicion on both the right and the left — and contributed to the South Carolina Republican’s status as White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s most frequent visitor among Republican lawmakers.


“I thought we were close to getting a deal,” Graham told POLITICO last week. “I had some meetings where I walked out of the White House and said, ‘This is great.’ These were better meetings than I ever had with the Bush administration.”

But sometime around May, according to Graham, the line of communication with the White House shut down.

“It went completely dead,” Graham said. “Like it got hit by a Predator drone.”

The breakdown, however, could leave the Obama administration with even less of a chance to resolve key issues, particularly if Republicans make substantial gains or retake either chamber — or both chambers — of Congress. Graham is viewed as a moderate willing to negotiate, but the current slate of GOP candidates, influenced by the tea party, have tacked hard right and probably would be less willing to open a dialogue with the White House.

The South Carolina Republican said he wasn’t sure why the administration backed away.

“They could never quite pull the trigger,” said Graham, who has scheduled a speech Monday at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research to discuss the state of the terrorism debate. The senator suggested that election-year politics played a role in the abrupt halt to discussion of the issue. He said the administration seemed both unwilling to pick a high-profile fight with liberals in Congress and the public in an election year and fearful that some Republicans would try to paint any bipartisan compromise as too weak.

“I think [administration officials] are reluctant to bring any legislation before the Congress because they think it could alienate their base,” Graham said. “And they’re worried about what people on the right are going to do.”

The White House did not dispute Graham’s claims of detailed and protracted negotiations over Guantanamo and other war-on-terror issues with Emanuel and White House counsel Bob Bauer, but Obama administration officials would not say precisely why the talks broke down.

“We had a number of productive discussions and remain open to bipartisan discussion of these difficult issues, but a window of opportunity did not materialize in this session to bring them to resolution,” said a White House official, who asked not to be named.

Others close to the talks said the administration had hoped the negotiations would produce a so-called grand bargain — a single piece of legislation that could clear the way for closing Guantanamo by funding the purchase of a top-security prison in Illinois in exchange for terrorism-related legal changes primarily sought by Graham and other Republicans. In most scenarios, a tacit or explicit feature of such a deal would include a White House pledge to abandon plans to try the case against alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court and instead send that case to a military commission.

Democrats familiar with the negotiations said that Graham did appear to have the backing of a few key Republican senators who could have helped such a compromise clear the likely 60-vote hurdle in the Senate. However, some Republican senators had problems with individual elements of the deal; as a result, the White House faced the prospect of a series of separate bills, each of which could have become a vehicle for GOP amendments on stricter measures.

That was unpalatable to both the White House and Democrats in Congress, according to sources.

Graham also may have lost credibility with the administration after he lashed out at the White House in disputes over the health care bill, climate legislation and immigration reform.

At a news conference earlier this month, President Barack Obama conceded he’d broken a campaign promise to close Guantanamo within a year of taking office. “It’s not for lack of trying. It’s because the politics of it are difficult,” the president said.

While members of Congress on both sides of the Guantanamo debate have described the process as essentially stalled since May, Obama seemed to suggest the discussions were ongoing.

“I’m prepared to work with Democrats and Republicans. And we, over the course of the last year, have been in constant conversations with them about setting up a sensible system,” he said.

It’s clear that administration officials did give serious consideration to at least one free-standing piece of legislation: a bill to give the government explicit authority to delay reading Miranda rights to terrorism suspects.

Talks on the issue took place in April and intensified after Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, attempted to detonate a car bomb in New York’s Times Square on May 1, congressional sources said. Shahzad, who trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan, pleaded guilty in June and warned of more attacks against America.

“We had a great discussion on Miranda warning reform,” Graham recalled about an evening session with Bauer and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “I spent three hours down at the White House — it was probably the best meeting I’ve ever been in — where we game-planned this. ... I left the meeting thinking we’re going to get a statute.”

Indeed, on May 9, Attorney General Eric Holder publicly embraced the idea on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Calling Miranda-related legislation a “new priority,” he declared: “This is a proposal that we’re going to be making.”

However, more than four months later, no legislation has been proposed or endorsed by the administration. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on when or how Miranda changes might take place. Some legal experts warn that Congress’s authority to legislate in the area is limited by Supreme Court precedent.

For most of the summer, Graham has remained relatively silent about the stalled negotiations over terrorism policy. Now, however, he’s beginning to tug the issue back onto the national stage: Last month, he quietly filed a bill to set rules for courts considering legal challenges by Guantanamo prisoners. On Monday, Graham will speak about the issue before the conservative-leaning AEI. And he said he intends to file a number of bills on the legal aspect of terrorism policy.

He’s also vowed to become downright obstinate about forcing the Senate to vote on the bills.

“I’m going to bring it up with a passion next year,” Graham vowed. “If someone wants to rename a post office, I’m going to put this legislation on it.”

Durbin has said publicly that he believes the issues might be more easily addressed in a non-election year. However, with Congress expected to become more Republican and more conservative, it’s hard to see an increased willingness to hold criminal trials or bring Guantanamo prisoners to the United States. A big change in the complexion of Congress might even lead Obama to declare his goal of closing Guantanamo simply impossible in his current term.

Some believe amending appropriations bills for the Justice Department and the Defense Department could get the Guantanamo debate rolling again after the election. However, when asked what could force action, Graham warned that another terrorist attack against the U.S. would bring urgency to the matter and not necessarily in a good way.

“There’s going to be an attack. That’s going to be the impetus. That’s going to be what it takes to get Congress and the administration talking; we have to get hit again,” the senator said, suggesting that passing a bill before that happens might be more reasonable than what would come afterward.

“If there is a successful attack, there is going to be a real violent reaction in the Congress, where we will react more emotionally than thoughtfully,” Graham said.