Prez to Shut Gitmo, Secret CIA Prisons

The president will sign orders today ordering the Guantanamo Bay detention center shut down within a year—and directing the CIA to dismantle its network of secret prisons overseas, government officials tell the New York Times. The CIA will still be allowed to detain terror suspects in foreign countries, but will be barred from holding them in long-term detention.

The presidential orders call for an immediate review of the cases of all 245 detainees still at Guantanamo and of prison conditions. The CIA will be ordered to abandon coercive interrogation methods and to use the same rule book as the military. The orders will leave the door open for the president to bring back the CIA's detention and interrogation program, which some observers believe may be necessary if Osama bin Laden is captured.
(More Guantanamo Bay stories.)