That's the message Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and Attorney General Eric Holder delivered to Congress this week in response to questions about how decisions were made about who among the Guantanamo detainees should be released, who should be tried and who should be held indfinitely without trial.

Depending on how you feel about the current regime of detentions, including the conclusion that "about 50" should be held indefinitely, the letter is either reassuring or frightening.

The bottom line: if any of the agencies involved in the review disagreed with the others' conclusion that someone should be released, then the individual was not put on the release list. That means the veto power on release was held by the agency that most wanted to keep detainees indefinitely.

"The Review Panel made disposition determinations only by unanimous agreement," Blair and Holder wrote the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees in a letter dated March 17. "[N]o determinations were made over the objection of any of the six agencies," who were identified in the letter as the departments of Justice, State, Defense and Homeland Security, plus the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Those who participated in the deliberations came from the CIA, the National Counter Terrorism Center, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the FBI. There were federal prosecutors, State Department analysts, military officers and military prosecutors. One hundred federal employees served on the task force over its lifetime. Decisions were made by senior officials and when there was a disagreement, it went to the principals, meaning the secretaries of the departments and the heads of the agencies, for a decison.

The Director of National Intelligence agreed with the recommended disposition of each of the 240 detainees subject to the review, including the more than half of the detainees the group concluded ought to be released or transferred to other countries.

Sounds like a very thorough process. Until you remember that the Justice Department and the Defense Department, relying on evidence gathered in part by the Intelligence Community, have fought to keep at least 33 detainees at Guantanamo in instances where federal court judges later found there was no evidence to hold them. The case of Fouad al Rabia, the 50-year-old fat Kuwaiti Airlines employee who was held for years even though his own interrogators didn't believe his tortured confession, should give pause to anyone willing to rely on evidence gleaned from intelligence sources. It's worth reading District Judge Collen Kollar Kotelly's opinion in the case to see one arbiter's opinion of the quality of the evidence in one case.

For a look at Holder and Blair's letter, click here.