President Barack Obama's decision to ask Defense Secretary Robert Gates to stay on from the Bush Administration continues to pay dividends as Gates, in his typically plain-spoken, unemotional, everyman way provided a fairly pragmatic defense of Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba prison facility.

He made his comments to Matt Lauer on NBC's Today Show this morning.

SEC. GATES: I think that one of the points the president made was that he had no interest whatsoever in releasing publicly detainees who might come back to harm Americans. So the question is, where do you put them? I mean, the real issue is, do you close Guantanamo and put them in a prison in the United States in some way or somewhere, or are you forced to keep Guantanamo open because all the other possibilities are closed off legislatively?

The truth is, it's probably one of the finest prisons in the world today, but it has a taint. It is — the name itself is a condemnation. What the president was saying is this will be an advertisement for al Qaeda as long as it's open.

 

MR. LAUER: What's your best option when you think about those who cannot be put on trial? How do you find a way to detain them? Where should they be?

SEC. GATES: We have many terrorists in U.S. prisons today. I mean, this started 20 years ago when I was at CIA, and we captured a Hezbollah terrorist who had been involved in killing an American sailor on an aircraft that had been taken hostage in Beirut. We brought him to the United States, put him on trial and put him in prison.

MR. LAUER: Why is there so much of an emotional issue when people talk about even the possibility of bringing some of these people to the States?

SEC. GATES: The truth is, there's a lot of fear-mongering about this. We've never had an escape from a Supermax prison, and that's where these guys will go; and if not one of the existing ones, we'll create a new one.