Gibbs: 'I don't know' when Gitmo will close

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Thursday admitted he was not sure when the White House would finish closing its military prison in Guanatanamo Bay, Mexico.

President Barack Obama initially promised to shutter the facility by the beginning of 2010, but a series of political and legal obstacles rendered that deadline impossible. Now, the Obama administration no longer has a timetable for closing Gitmo, Gibbs said Thursday, though he stressed officials have made "great progress" in that lengthy, difficult process.

"I don't know when the process will be done," he said during the day's press briefing. "There's been progress on issues of siting a new detention facility. The president won't meet the deadline he laid out a year ago, but the president, his national security team, our generals in Iraq and Afghanistan understand the support for al-Qaeda that Guantanamo provides them, in recruiting, in attracting those that seek to do us harm."

Closing Guantanamo Bay by the beginning of 2010 was one of Obama's first stated goals, as the president believes the military prison has become a recruitment tool for extremists abroad.

But the White House acknowledged as early as December that it was going to overshoot its self-imposed deadline. In addition to growing apprehension about detaining terrorists domestically, the fallout from the Flight 253 terror plot turned public opinion against transferring those same detainees to international prisons.

That latter concern prompted a number of Democratic lawmakers to question whether the president would close the facility at all. But the White House has maintained its original plans are intact; a position Gibbs repeated on Thursday.

"To keep the American people safe, the president pledged to close Guantanamo Bay, and he'll do that," the press secretary said.

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