CIA Says It Will Close Secret Prisons

CIA Director Leon Panetta has told Congress the spy agency has taken no new prisoners since he became director in February.

He also says the CIA has terminated contracts with private companies that provided security at secret overseas CIA prisons. That will save up to $4 million.

Panetta told agency employees in an e-mail Thursday that the secret prisons are no longer used and the CIA is making plans to permanently shutter them.

But the CIA can still hold prisoners temporarily. Panetta says if more prisoners are taken, they will be interrogated by agency employees and handed over quickly to their home country or a country with a legal claim.

The Washington Post reported in November, 2005 that the CIA has maintained secret prisons, also known as "black sites" in at least eight foreign countries since shortly after the 9/11 attacks.

The prisons were used, in part, to isolate prisoners, conduct so-called "enhanced interrogations" and to torture high-level al Qaeda suspects outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law.