Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., addressees the audience during a campaign rally Monday, Feb. 22, 2016, in Amherst, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne) COLUMBIA, S.C. – In a Columbia, South Carolina, forum hosted by CNN, the Democratic presidential candidates discussed Guantanamo Bay and the CIA.
Hillary Clinton said she supports the effort by President Barack Obama to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
She said the prison is a “continuing recruitment advertisement for terrorists” and that Obama is right to try to close it.
Obama’s plan leaves unanswered the politically thorny question of where in the U.S a new facility would be located to house some of the most dangerous inmates. Clinton says that should be a “matter of negotiation” with Republicans, who she hopes will join the effort to shutter the facility.
Clinton also reiterated her pledge to release transcripts of paid speeches to Wall Street banks only if every other presidential candidate does the same.
Bernie Sanders largely stood by his 1974 critique of the CIA as a “dangerous institution” used to “prop up fascist dictatorships.”
Sanders said “that was 40 years ago” and that he believes the CIA plays “an important role.” But he said the agency nonetheless has “done things which they should not have done on behalf of the United States government.”
Sanders pointed first to Iran’s Mohammad Mossadeq, a democratically elected prime minister who was overthrown in 1953, with CIA documents later confirming the agency’s role. Sanders said, “That led to the Iranian Revolution, and we are where we are today.”
He named the overthrow of Salvadore Allende in Chile, referring to a democratically elected communist who was ousted in a 1973 coup by hard-right dictator Augusto Pinochet. Sanders said Allende had won an election and the CIA overthrew him.