# The Guantanamo airfare catch

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "The Guantanamo airfare catch," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-guantanamo-airfare-catch/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The pair of legal traps John Kiriakou describes around the detainees at Guantanamo Bay who have been cleared for release: no country will take them and Congress defunded the ability to pay for their flights, while a separate 2009 statute forbids any of them from setting foot on United States soil — so that even a conviction could not be served in an American prison.*

- **First obstacle:** No country will take detainees cleared for release
- **Second obstacle:** Congress defunded the money to pay their airfare
- **Third obstacle:** A 2009 law bars them from United States soil
- **Consequence:** A convicted detainee could not be held in a US prison
- **Kiriakou's other example:** Evidence tainted by torture, so convictions are unlikely anyway
- **Rall's suggestion:** A GoFundMe for the airfare

**The Guantanamo airfare catch** is the name for a pair of statutory dead ends John Kiriakou described in January 2026, immediately after setting out a comparable trap in the restoration of felons' gun rights. Rall had said he loves catch-22s; Kiriakou supplied one from his own field.

## Cleared and still held

The first is the position of the detainees at [Guantanamo Bay](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/guantanamo-bay) who have been cleared for release. No country would take them — and, separately, Congress defunded the ability to pay for their airfare somewhere.[1] Rall's response, that somebody should run a GoFundMe for the plane tickets, was the closest the exchange came to a remedy.[1]

## The bar on American soil

The second was passed in 2009, under [Barack Obama](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/barack-obama): a law providing that none of them are permitted on United States soil.[2]

Kiriakou then drew out the consequence, which he treats as the reductio. Even if a detainee were found guilty of a crime — which he says they will not be, *"because everything they said was was because of torture and nothing can be used against them"* — they could not be sent to a United States prison, because they are not allowed on United States territory.[2]

## What he takes from it

His summary of the whole arrangement was one word repeated — ridiculous — and the observation that closes the passage is about the origin of the problem rather than its administration: *"We kidnapped them and then it's like, well, we can't let them here. Like, we stole them from their own country."*[2][3]

The catch belongs with his wider view that the prison's intractability is not an accident of drafting but the accumulated result of every branch of government preferring the status quo to a decision.

## See also

- [Guantanamo Bay](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/guantanamo-bay)
- [The ATF funding rider](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-atf-funding-rider)
- [Barack Obama](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/barack-obama)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)

## Sources

1. Is Trump Bidening Out? | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou (2026-01-30), at 34:58. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDPkwpAs6Io&t=2098s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-30-deprogram-show-with-is-trump-bidening-out-deprogram-with-ted/
2. Is Trump Bidening Out? | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou (2026-01-30), at 35:28. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDPkwpAs6Io&t=2128s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-30-deprogram-show-with-is-trump-bidening-out-deprogram-with-ted/
3. Is Trump Bidening Out? | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou (2026-01-30), at 35:59. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDPkwpAs6Io&t=2159s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-30-deprogram-show-with-is-trump-bidening-out-deprogram-with-ted/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-guantanamo-airfare-catch/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt