"In March 2011, Chairman Howard P. 'Buck' McKeon and Ranking Minority Member Adam Smith directed the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee to undertake an in-depth, comprehensive bipartisan investigation of procedures to dispatch detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility (GTMO) over the past decade. This necessarily included an examination of mechanisms intended to prevent former detainees from reengaging in terror-related activities. In conducting this study, committee staff travelled to eleven countries, interviewed nearly every senior official directly involved in these matters in both the Bush and Obama administrations, received briefings from the Department of Defense and Department of State, consulted with eighteen subject matter experts, met with two former detainees, and reviewed thousands of pages of classified and unclassified documents. Subcommittee Members convened a hearing, three Member briefings (including one that was classified), and travelled to several relevant locations. This report finds that the Bush and Obama administrations, in reaction to domestic political pressures, a desire to earn goodwill abroad, and in an attempt to advance strategic national security goals, sought to 'release' or 'transfer' GTMO detainees elsewhere. Those 'released' were judged a sufficiently low threat that they were sent to countries with no expectation of follow up. 'Transferred' detainees, because they were assessed as relatively more dangerous, were conveyed with the expectation that some process would be applied in the receiving nation to mitigate the threat they potentially posed."