People in the news

Daniel Fried

Special Envoy to Guantanamo Bay (since April 2009)

(State Department)

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs , State Department (2005 to 2009); Director for European and Eurasian Affairs, State Department (2001 to 2005); U.S. Ambassador to Poland (1997 to 2001)

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Path to Power

Fried joined the Foreign Service in 1977. He served in Washington at the Economic Bureau of the State Department until 1979, when he moved to Leningrad. He was transferred to Belgrade in 1982 and stayed for three years before returning to D.C. to serve in the Office of Soviet Affairs where he honed his expertise in Russia and the former Soviet Union.

In 1987, Fried became the Polish Desk Officer at the State Department. He moved to Warsaw in 1989 to oversee the country's transition to democracy. He stayed there until 1993, when he joined President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC).

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The Issues

As ambassador to Guantanamo, Fried has embraced one of the Obama administration's top foreign policy priorities.

In this position, his significant ties to European nations should prove invaluable as he negotiates with them. The Obama administration has said it hopes to resettle as many as 60 of the remaining 240 prisoners in Europe. Some detainees cannot be resettled in their home countries because they might be subject to abuse or for other reasons.

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Human-rights advocates have said that Fried's appointment will likely make the resettlement process smoother. "It is a sign that the administration is taking this issue very seriously and that it realizes this is a problem that has to be solved in an international context," Geneve Mantri, a counterterrorism specialist at Amnesty International, told the New York Times.

Fried has long advocated for increased cooperation between Europe and the United States. "There is no closer partnership in the world than that between the United States and Europe," he said in 2007. "We do form a single community of values, interests, and responsibilities. Our roles in the world are not the same, but they are inextricably close, by choice but also by our very natures."

Eastern Europe and Russia

America's top goal abroad should be helping to create a "whole, free and at peace" Europe, Fried believes. To achieve this, he writes that Eastern European countries such as Kosovo must be allowed to declare their independence.

Fried believes that the U.S. should try to develop a strong working relationship with Russia based on respect and cooperation. Russia is central to many United States goals, he said. "Working with Russia on Iran remains in our national interest," he said at a 2008 hearing.

Fried opposes congressional efforts to label as genocide the Turkish murder of thousands of Armenians during and after World War I. "It would do far greater harm than good," he wrote in a letter signed in 2007. "It would do nothing to advance Turkish-Armenian reconciliation."

NATO

Fried supports strengthening NATO so that it can address challenges "that have roots far beyond Europe," such as violent extremism, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and increasingly scarce oil and gas resources. He would also like to see NATO expand to include Ukraine, Turkey, and other Eastern European countries.

Fried has called NATO's work in Afghanistan essential to success there and would like the organization to commit additional resources for training Afghani police forces. He also thinks NATO can play an important role in ending genocide in the Sudan.

The Network

As special envoy to Guantanamo, Fried will work closely with Attorney General Eric Holder to develop a policy for how to handle detainees at Guantanamo Bay. He will also work with Justice Department lawyers J. Douglas Wilson and Brad Wiegmann, who have been tasked with recommending the legal rules for detention of future terrorism suspects.

In the State Department, Fried used to report to Undersecretary for Political Affairs William Burns, who has kept that position under Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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