Gates' remarks at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee was one of the clearest signs yet of the dim prospects for carrying out one of President Barack Obama's earliest executive orders: to shutter the facility where the US military has detained suspected terrorists since 2002. 

Asked what the US would do about holding so-called high-value targets, which presumably would include Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders, Gates responded, "I think the honest answer to that is, we don't know”.

"If we capture them outside the area where we are at war and are not covered by the existing war authorizations, one possibility is for a person to be in the custody of their home government", Gates said. "Another possibility is that we bring them to the US. 

On January 22, 2009, two days after his inauguration, Obama issued an executive order requiring that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed within a year, seemingly fulfilling an oft-made promise during his campaign. But controversy over whether to try the suspected terrorists imprisoned there in federal court or in military commissions brought the issue to a legal and political stalemate.