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Officials: Cliff Sloan selected as Guantanamo closure envoy

The Obama administration is tapping veteran lawyer Clifford Sloan as the State Department's new envoy dedicating to closing the prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, two officials with knowledge of the appointment said Sunday.

Sloan served as an associate White House counsel in the early years of the Clinton Administration and as an assistant Solicitor General in President George H.W. Bush's Justice Department. He's currently a partner at Skadden Arps handling high-stakes appellate litigation.

"I've known and respected Cliff Sloan for nearly ten years. His intellect and skill as a negotiator is respected across party lines, and he's served presidents Republican and Democratic with equal skill. I appreciate his willingness to take on this challenge," Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement Sunday evening.

Closing Guantanamo "will not be easy, but if anyone can effectively navigate the space between agencies and branches of government, it’s Cliff," Kerry added, lauding Sloan as "the kind of bridge-builder we need to finish this job.”

A State Department official made available statements of support for Sloan from former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, former Solicitor General Kenneth Starr, former Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minow.

Sloan's appointment, reported earlier Sunday by the Associated Press, is expected to be announced Monday. The announcement of a parallel Pentagon envoy also appears to be imminent.

However, the most intriguing part of the forthcoming announcement is a portion of Kerry's statement in which he echoes some of Obama's more liberal recent rhetoric on Guantanamo in which the president either seemed to forget or perhaps deliberately abandon his long-settled decision to hold about four dozen Guantanamo detainees indefinitely without trial.

"Our fidelity to the rule of law likewise compels us also to end the long, uncertain detention of the detainees at Guantanamo. We can do it in a way that makes us more secure, not less," Kerry said in the statement.

Precisely what the president and administration mean by such statements is unclear, particularly as the list of prisoners deemed untriable seems to be growing longer, not shorter.