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BERLIN — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder spent days gingerly, privately asking for help before taking his plea public: The United States needs Europe's assistance to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
In publicizing his appeal, Holder compared the effort to close Guantanamo to the historic alliances of the Cold War and the fall of the so-called Iron Curtain in this once-divided city.
"I know that Europe did not open Guantanamo, and that in fact a great many on this continent opposed it," Holder said in a speech Wednesday night. "To close Guantanamo, we must all make sacrifices and we must all be willing to make unpopular choices."
Holder spoke at the American Academy in Berlin, not long after telling reporters that the Obama administration had approved the release of about 30 Guantanamo detainees.
There are currently 241 inmates at the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and President Barack Obama has ordered the detention center shuttered in the next nine months.
Holder's speech capped several days of private meetings in London, Prague and Berlin, in which he sought the help of European officials to find homes for those Guantanamo detainees that the U.S. believes no longer are dangerous to America or its allies.
"The story of the last half-century is one of each side of the Atlantic turning to the other for help in times of need, and today is no different," Holder said before a select group of about 100 policy experts, academics and journalists.
Asked about the decision by Bush administration officials to authorize tough interrogation techniques, Holder said he believed that many of them would, privately, admit to having made some mistakes in the pressure and worry that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
"I don't suspect that would be true of Vice President Dick Cheney," Holder added.
Germany's former justice minister, Herta Daubler-Gmelin, a fierce critic of previous President George W. Bush, said Holder "made a very good impression. He's very honest about this society in transformation in America."
She said she expected Germany would eventually be one of the countries that accepts Guantanamo detainees.
Before the speech, Holder said the U.S. has decided to release a group of about 30 detainees.
He said the United States is weeks away from asking certain countries to take detainees.
The Bush administration had approved about 60 detainees for release, and Holder aides would not say if the 30 he was referring to were part of that group. Separately, about 20 detainees have been ordered released by the courts, though those cases remain unresolved.
Congressional Republicans — already critical of Obama's move to close the detention center — criticized Holder for announcing Guantanamo decisions to European audiences rather than in the U.S.
"Releasing terrorists endangers American lives both here and abroad," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas.
The senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, Smith complained the Obama administration "is sharing more information with foreign countries at overseas press conferences" than with the U.S. Congress.
Several European nations, including Portugal and Lithuania, have said they will consider taking such detainees. Others, like Germany, are divided on the issue.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy already has made what was billed as a symbolic gesture of agreeing to take one Guantanamo detainee.
