WASHINGTON -- The lone U.S. prisoner of war from the Afghan conflict, captured by insurgents nearly five years ago, has been released to U.S. forces in exchange for five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials from President Barack Obama's administration said Saturday.
The soldier, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, 28, was handed over to U.S. special-operations troops inside Afghanistan near the Pakistani border about 10:30 a.m. Saturday in a tense but uneventful exchange with 18 Taliban officials, U.S. officials said. Moments later, Bergdahl was whisked away in a helicopter by commandos, U.S. officials said. He was found in good condition and able to walk.
According to a senior defense official traveling with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in Singapore, once Bergdahl climbed onto the noisy helicopter he took a pen and wrote on a paper plate, "SF?" -- asking the troops whether they were special-operations forces.
They shouted back at him over the roar of the rotors: "Yes. We've been looking for you for a long time."
Then, according to the official, Bergdahl began to cry.
Officials said Bergdahl was transferred to Bagram Air Field, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan, for medical examinations. A defense official said he would be sent to Germany for additional care before returning to the United States.
The defense official said Bergdahl was tentatively scheduled to go to the San Antonio Military Medical Center, where he would be reunited with his family. The military was working Saturday to connect Bergdahl with his family over the telephone or by videoconference.
The five Taliban detainees at Guantanamo, including two senior militant commanders said to be implicated in the deaths of thousands of Shiites in Afghanistan, departed the base on a U.S. military aircraft Saturday afternoon. They were being transferred to the custody of officials from Qatar, who will accompany them back to that Persian Gulf state. They will be subject to security restrictions, including a one-year travel ban.
"The United States has coordinated closely with Qatar to ensure that security measures are in place and the national security of the United States will not be compromised," Hagel said.
The Taliban members are considered to be among the most senior militants at Guantanamo and would otherwise be among the last to leave. Senior administration officials warned that the discussions over the prisoner swap, which were secretly restarted last fall after collapsing several months earlier, did not necessarily presage the resumption of broader peace talks to end the 13-year war.
"This is the only issue we've discussed with the Taliban in recent months," said one senior Obama administration official involved in the talks. "We do hope that having succeeded in this narrow but important step, it will create the possibility of expanding the dialogue to other issues. But we don't have any promises to that effect."
Obama called the soldier's parents Saturday, shortly after Bergdahl was transferred to the U.S. military. The Bergdahl family was in Washington after a visit for Memorial Day, officials said.
"While Bowe was gone, he was never forgotten," Obama said later in a statement from the White House Rose Garden, where he was joined by Bob and Jani Bergdahl.
"Sgt. Bergdahl's recovery is a reminder of America's unwavering commitment to leave no man or woman in uniform behind on the battlefield," Obama said.
Bergdahl's parents, who have waged a tireless campaign for their son's release, have sometimes criticized the Obama administration's lack of action. But in a statement from the family released Saturday, they praised the U.S. and Qatari governments for their help.
"We cannot wait to wrap our arms around our only son," they said. "Today, we are ecstatic!"
The news of Bergdahl's release spread quickly in his hometown of Hailey, Idaho, and residents immediately began making plans for a welcome-home celebration.
An annual event called Bring Bowe Back scheduled for June 28 was quickly renamed Bowe Is Back.
"It is going to be Bowe's official welcome-home party, even if he's not quite home yet," organizer Stefanie O'Neill said Saturday.
In Hailey, a town of 7,000, residents have hung yellow ribbons from trees and utility poles and planted a tree in a park each year since he was captured. Signs reading "Bring Bowe Home" were placed in shop windows.
"We were in the process of buying our fifth tree, and we don't need it now," O'Neill said.
Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter issued a statement welcoming the news.
"Today, Idaho gives thanks," Otter said. "Soon we all will celebrate Bowe's freedom and homecoming."
Negotiations and internal deliberations about the potential for a swap have waxed and waned for years, but they intensified in the past several weeks as an agreement appeared within reach, according to an official familiar with the matter.
Among other complications, there was a potential legal obstacle: Congress has imposed statutory restrictions on the transfer of detainees out of the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The statutes say Hagel must determine that a transfer is in the interest of national security and that steps have been taken to substantially mitigate a future threat by a released detainee. He must notify Congress 30 days before any transfer of his determination.
In this case, the administration did not notify Congress ahead of time, officials said. They noted that Obama has claimed the transfer restrictions are a potentially unconstitutional intrusion on his powers as the commander in chief. In December, he issued a signing statement saying that he could lawfully override them. An administration official said the circumstances of a fast-moving prisoner exchange deal made it appropriate to act outside the statutory framework for transfers.
The top Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services committees, Rep. Howard McKeon of California and Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, said the release of the Taliban prisoners "clearly violated laws" governing the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo Bay.
"We must carefully examine the means by which we secured his freedom," Inhofe and McKeon said in a joint statement. "Trading five senior Taliban leaders from detention in Guantanamo Bay for Bergdahl's release may have consequences for the rest of our forces and all Americans. Our terrorist adversaries now have a strong incentive to capture Americans."
The transfer is consistent with Obama's plans to close Guantanamo Bay and transfer security responsibility in Afghanistan to the Afghan government as U.S. combat operations come to a close, said an administration official, who requested anonymity to discuss strategy.
The transfer reduces the detainee population at Guantanamo to 149. That includes 12 Afghans -- each deemed far less important and dangerous than the five who were included in the swap.
Bergdahl was believed to have been held by the militant Haqqani network in the tribal area of Pakistan's northwest frontier, on the Afghan border. He was captured in Paktika province in Afghanistan on June 30, 2009.
The circumstances of how he was separated from his unit and captured have remained a mystery.
Hopes for Bergdahl's release were lifted once again in November when members of the Taliban signaled they were prepared to engage the United States on the limited issue of a prisoner swap, but not on wider issues including reconciliation with the government of Afghanistan, a senior administration official said Saturday.
The discussions resumed with the Qatari government acting as an intermediary, the official said.
The latest evidence indicating that Bergdahl, who was promoted twice while being held as a prisoner, was still alive came in January, when a video was obtained by the U.S. military showing him alert but also apparently in declining health.
In the past week, negotiations culminated in an agreement for a Taliban delegation to take Bergdahl across the border to Afghanistan, where he would be retrieved by U.S. special-operations troops.
Obama called the emir of Qatar on Tuesday, and each gave assurances about the proposed transfers, an administration official said Saturday.
Bergdahl was handed over about 7 p.m. local time without incident with the special-operations troops spending only a few minutes on the ground, said U.S. officials, who did not disclose the swap's location inside Afghanistan.
The details of what the government believes it knows about the five former Taliban leaders were made public in classified military files given to WikiLeaks by Pfc. Bradley Manning, now known as Chelsea Manning.
Mohammad Nabi is described in the files as "one of the most significant former Taliban leaders detained" at Guantanamo. He is said to have strong operational ties to anti-coalition militia groups, including al-Qaida, the Taliban and the Haqqani network.
A former Taliban provincial governor, Mullah Norullah Nori, also is "considered one of the most significant former Taliban officials" at the prison, according to the documents.
Both Nori and a third detainee being exchanged, Mullah Mohammad Fazl, a former Taliban deputy defense minister, are accused of having commanded forces that killed thousands of Shiite Muslims, a minority group in Afghanistan, before the Taliban were toppled in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The fourth detainee is Abdul Haq Wasiq, a former top Taliban intelligence official. The fifth prisoner is Khairullah Khairkhwa, a former minister of the interior and provincial governor.
The Western official in Kabul said the Afghan government was not told about the deal beforehand because there had been a number of false starts since the negotiations had picked up in the past few weeks.
One of the Americans' chief concerns was that word of the plan would leak, and the Taliban would get cold feet or face pressure from hard-line elements in the insurgency not to release Bergdahl.
The Americans also feared the possibility of the exchange being upended by an outburst from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who might see the prisoner swap as an attempt to open peace talks with the Taliban behind his back. He has previously claimed that the U.S. aimed to weaken the Afghan government by cutting a separate peace deal with the Taliban and its backers in Pakistan, and "no one wanted to deal with that kind of stuff right now," the Western official said.
Information for this article was contributed by Eric Schmitt, Charlie Savage, Helene Cooper and Matthew Rosenberg of The New York Times; by Julie Pace, Lolita C. Baldor, Deb Riechmann, Darlene Superville, Rahim Faiez, Zarar Khan, Kimberlee Kruesi and Bob Moen of The Associated Press; and by Gopal Ratnam, Derek Wallbank and Mike Dorning of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 06/01/2014