Our Prisons Could Safely Hold Every Gitmo Detainee

US prisons are capable of taking on all 166 Guantanamo Bay detainees, thereby allowing the US to close the facility, a report finds. "This report demonstrates that if the political will exists, we could finally close Guantanamo without imperiling our national security," says Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who commissioned the report in 2008. Indeed, 98 prisons across the US already hold terror convicts, the Government Accountability Office report says.

"As far as I know, there hasn't been a single security problem reported in any of these cases," Feinstein notes. "This fact outweighs not only the high cost of maintaining Guantanamo—which costs more than $114 million a year—but also provides the same degree of security without the criticism of operating a military prison in an isolated location." Six Defense Department prisons and 98 Justice Department prisons could absorb the detainees, though current inmates would have to be moved and some adjustments made to the buildings, the AP reports. (More Guantanamo Bay stories.)