Obama Stumps for Guantanamo Closure

President Barack Obama on Friday admitted he fell short on his vow to empty the prison camps at Guantanamo, calling it a rare unfulfilled campaign promise, then stumped for closure by calling the Pentagon outpost too expensive.

"The costs of holding folks in Guantanamo is massively higher than it is in holding them in a SuperMax maximum-security prison here in the United States," Obama said at a White House news conference a day before the Sept. 11 anniversary.

The Pentagon reports the annual cost of running the prison camps, staffed by a variety of U.S. military troops, at $116 million. With a current population of 176 war-on-terror detainees, that's more than $650,000 each.

In contrast, it costs nearly $5,575 a year to keep a prisoner in federal detention, said Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley on Friday. A SuperMax captive's cost might be a bit higher, she said, because of additional security.

Obama also defended his administration's practice of choosing to send some Guantanamo detainees to trial in civilian courts and others to the Pentagon's military commissions.

Soon after taking office, Obama signed an executive order setting a one-year deadline to empty the prison camps that were then holding some 260 detainees. The Jan. 22 closure date passed with business as usual in the outpost in southeast Cuba.

Friday, he cited Guantanamo as a rare failure to deliver on a campaign promise. "You know, we have succeeded on delivering a lot of campaign promises," he said. "One where we've fallen short is closing Guantanamo. I wanted to close it sooner. We have missed that deadline. It's not for lack of trying. It's because the politics of it are difficult."

Congress blocked White House efforts to buy an Illinois federal prison and turn it into a SuperMax style facility where Guantanamo captives could both be held and tried by military tribunals.

He also appeared to make a pitch for a U.S. soil trial for confessed 9/11 conspirator Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four accused plotters, now held at Guantanamo after years in Bush-era CIA custody.

Asked whether the Sept. 11 mass murder trial will ever happen, he replied:

"We're going to work with members of Congress, and this is going to have to be on a bipartisan basis, to move this forward in a way that is consistent with our standards of due process; consistent with our Constitution; consistent also with our image in the world of -- of a country that cares about rule of law," he said.

"Al Qaeda operatives still cite Guantanamo as a justification for attacks against the United States. Still to this day," the president said. "There's no reason for us to give them that kind of talking point."