Murtha's Gitmo idea called 'ludicrous'

Chicago Tribune - Prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention center are welcome in Cambria County if housing them means construction contracts for a prison and security jobs inside, at least one businessman says.

"I don't see any downside," Bob Layo, president of the Greater Johnstown/Cambria County Chamber of Commerce, said Thursday. "There has to be an added level of security for those types of prisoners, so they would probably build new facilities and add staff."

Where to place the terror suspects became a key topic after President Barack Obama signed orders to close the detention center, review military war crimes trials and ban the harshest interrogation methods.

Rep. John Murtha, Johnstown's outspoken, veteran Democrat, praised the idea of closing the prison. When pressed during a television interview this week, he said he would have no problem bringing the prisoners to his district.

They are "no more dangerous in my district than in Guantanamo," Murtha said.

That's a "ludicrous" position because the 90 miles of water separating the Cuban detention facility from U.S. soil gives Americans extra protection, said Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, a nonprofit with 12,000 members.

"I don't think the average murderer or rapist hates all Americans or hates what America stands for like the terrorist prisoners from Guantanamo," said Gramley, who lives in Venango County. "You intermix them with the prison population, and there's the very real possibility they would influence those individuals in prison."

From a security standpoint, terror suspects would have to go into a maximum-security prison -- and they would pose no more danger than other inmates, said Joseph Bobak, professor of criminology and forensic science at Mount Aloysius College in Cresson, which is six miles from the low-security federal prison in Loretto.

"We have thousands of prisoners incarcerated who are as evil, violent and uncontrollable as I imagine any of the terrorist detainees are," Bobak said.

He and others questioned, however, why the Obama administration wants to move the prisoners if it has a secure place to hold them.

"The trouble is once they get here, I'm sure the courts would give them all the rights a normal prisoner has," said Gregory Rogers, director of the Intelligence and National Security Program at Point Park University.

It's not likely that any of the detainees would end up in Murtha's district.

At least three military prisons -- in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., Camp Pendleton, Calif., and Charleston, S.C. -- could house some of the Guantanamo detainees, an administration official said. Also under consideration, the official said, is the Supermax prison in Florence, Colo., which houses 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.