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ABC assigned its White House correspondent to the day's second major story from Barack Obama. The President decided what to do after the detention center at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay closes. "Residents of Thomson Ill did not react the way you might think," speculated ABC's Jake Tapper, when Obama decided that the federal government would buy the town's recently-built Correctional Center and move 100-or-so alleged terrorists there from Cuba. "They like the idea," Tapper told us.
The maximum security prison in Thomson was built in 2001 but because of budget cuts in Illinois it never housed more than 200 minimum security inmates. CBS sent Dean Reynolds to Thomson, three hours west of Chicago on the Iowa line. He found a facility with a modern surveillance system and a courtroom for trials, ready to hire 3,000-or-so locals. "The transferred terrorists will be totally isolated, receiving visitors only from their own attorneys, federal officials and the Red Cross."
NBC chose the Pentagon angle, assigning Jim Miklaszewski to check into the legality of the Commander-in-Chief's plan: "Federal law says Guantanamo detainees can only be brought to the United States to stand trial. Administration officials say, however, that some 30-to-40 detainees may never go on to trial…Without granting all detainees legal rights, human rights advocates accused the President of simply creating another Guantanamo in America."
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