Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think I was on the record last week saying that after these two witnesses were to come before us today, it would be time to get back to identity theft and other things. As a result of this correspondence, I no longer feel that way.
As I said before to this committee, and I mean it—I work a lot overseas, as people know—there are human lives at the end of this chain affected by the decisions that are made, not made, revealed, or concealed. I worry about this, not just for detainees and others, but also for our troops over there. They would also probably like clarification about who they're turning these people over to.
We were encouraged to ask these two people to come, and we've been told, “No, they're not the right ones. I will come. The buck stops here with me, but I'm out of town and won't be here.”
I'm not comfortable with that, and it's got me to change my position on where we should go with this. Like you, I want to speak to the people who were directly involved with this decision. As a committee, we have a right to hear that. What we're hearing from the bureaucracy is “No, we'll decide what's going to happen.”
I believe that people's lives depend on our abilities to do this properly, to get this information properly. They have no right to get in our way of doing that. So I very much concur with you that I would like to see these other two witnesses.
Thank you.