The Pentagon on Wednesday named Rear Adm. David B. Woods, a pilot now working on Navy policy and strategy, as the 11th commander of its detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Woods, a Utah native in his 50s, inherits a blueprint for closure written to comply with President Barack Obama’s Jan. 22, 2009, executive order and 171 captives confined to five prison camps. Four of them are convicts.
He also runs an intelligence unit and is responsible for "Camp Justice," the war court compound built atop an abandoned airfield during the Bush administration to put the accused Sept. 11, 2001, conspirators and other alleged war criminals on trial.
Woods’ background is flying the EA-6B Prowler, an airplane that made its debut in Vietnam. It jams enemy radar, air defense batteries and military communications, a key electronic warfare component of contemporary shock-and-awe campaigns.
During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars he was air wing commander aboard the USS Nimitz, responsible for all aircraft that flew off that carrier. His current job is as director of strategy and policy at the Chief of Naval Operations’ headquarters in Washington.
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