Obama: Guantanamo a negative U.S. symbol

WASHINGTON -- President Obama defended his decision to close the Guantanamo prison camp on Thursday saying it "became a symbol that helped al-Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause" and likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.

"It is a rallying cry for our enemies," Obama said in a speech at the National Archives.

"We are less than eight years removed from the deadliest attack on American soil in our history," he said. "We know that al-Qaeda is actively planning to attack us again. We know that this threat will be with us for a long time, and that we must use all elements of our power to defeat it."

Obama said he would work with Congress to figure out a system for imprisoning detainees and said he realized some of them would end up in U.S. prisons.

He said about 500 detainees already have been released by the Bush administration and 50 are being transferred to other countries. Government lawyers are reviewing 240 at Guantanamo now.

The president also talked about national security, and whether information should be public or remain secret. Obama said he is applying a case-by-case basis, "a surgical approach."

He defended his decision to withhold photos of harsh interrogation practices at Guantanamo, saying "I have never argued, and I never will, that our most sensitive national security matters should be an open book."

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Across town, former Vice President Cheney defended the Bush administration's national security policies, saying they were rooted in a determination not to forget the terrible harm of Sept. 11.

Cheney said Thursday that though the administrations and policies have changed, the stakes for the country have not.

He said the Bush administration was driven by a desire to make sure Sept. 11 did not become "a prelude to something worse."

Meanwhile, House Republicans on Thursday will demand that a bipartisan panel investigate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's claims that the CIA misled her in 2002 about whether waterboarding had been used against a terrorist suspect.