CIA director and Obama in opposition over Gitmo terrorist detentions

Although President Barack Obama promised during his presidential campaign in 2008 to close down the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military detention center that holds inmates captured during the war on terrorism, the Central Intelligence Agency director, Leon Panetta, appears to have missed Obama's Gitmo message.

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Testifying before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, Panetta contradicted Obama when he said, “We would probably move them quickly into military jurisdiction at Bagram (Air Force base in Afghanistan) for questioning and then, eventually, move them probably to Guantanamo." If ever a situation arose where Al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri were captured, they would be kept at Guantanamo Bay, Leon Panetta told a panel of Senators on Thursday. Press Secretary Jay Carney replied to questions regarding Panetta's testimony during his daily press briefing saying, “I'm not going to speculate about what, you know, would happen if we were to capture Osama bin Laden. I can tell you that this government is very focused on bringing to justice a perpetrator of the attacks on 9/11." Carney reiterated the White House talking point that the President was committed to closing Guantanamo, despite legislation he signed last month that would effectively bar the transfer of prisoners to the U.S. mainland. The committee's vice-chairman, Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss, agreed with Panetta’s statement, saying, “Guantanamo would probably be the best choice for detaining a high-value suspect like bin Laden or Al-Zawahiri.” Meanwhile on Friday, after deliberating for about five hours and thirty minutes, a military commission panel sentenced Sudanese detainee Noor Uthman Muhammed to 14 years of confinement at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. However, if Noor fully cooperates with U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, his incarceration will less than three years -- until December 2013, according to Cheryl Pellerin of the American Forces Press Service who covered Noor's Gitmo trial. "The protections afforded to Noor Uthman in this military commission are unprecedented in the history of military commissions," Navy Capt. John Murphy, chief prosecutor for the Office of Military Commissions, told reporters after the trial. "Full cooperation cuts across every aspect of our work -- testimony, debriefing, meeting with agents, preparing other cases, providing intelligence information, and also being fully available to assist the government in any forum," he said, noting that potential forums include federal court, military commissions, grand juries, civil proceedings and others. If Noor does not cooperate, Murphy added, he would face serving the original 14-year sentence.