Secretary of State Antony Blinken told 60 Minutes’ Norah O’Donnell that the Biden Administration did intend to close the military prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base on the coast of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and would “bring some focus” to the issue in the coming months. He also reaffirmed President Joe Biden’s commitment to continuing American support for the government in Afghanistan, even as our troops are brought home.

“Are you prepared for a worst case scenario in Afghanistan,” asked O’Donnell, “where the U.S. -backed government fails, and the Taliban takes over?”

Blinken replied that the Biden administration believed that they had to “be prepared for every scenario,” and were watching the situation “in a very clear-eyed way.”

“But Norah, we’ve been engaged in Afghanistan for 20 years,” said Blinken, “and we sometimes forget why we went there in the first place, and that was to deal with the people who attacked us on 9/11. And we did.”

“Just because our troops are coming home doesn’t mean we’re leaving. We’re not,” he continued, saying that the American embassy would be staying and economic, development, and humanitarian support would continue from the U.S. and our allies.

O’Donnell then turned the conversation to Cuba, asking if the Biden administration would close Guantanamo Bay?

“We believe that it should be, that’s certainly a goal, but it’s something that we’ll bring some focus to in the months ahead,” replied Blinken.

Blinken is presumably referring to the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, not the entire naval base.

The base commonly referred to as “Gitmo” was first leased from Cuba in 1903. Since the Castro Regime took over in the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Cuba’s communist government has insisted that the base’s presence on the island nation is illegal, but has mostly focused their actions on installing barriers around the base like barbed wire fences, minefields, and the 8 mile, 10 foot wide “cactus curtain” they planted in 1961.

The detention camp at Gitmo was opened in 2002 by former President George W. Bush to house prisoners detained during the War of Terror following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Former President Barack Obama promised to close the camp but bipartisan opposition from Congress blocked him from doing so. Former President Donald Trump signed an executive order in 2018 keeping the camp open indefinitely.

According to a report by the New York Times, a total 780 people have been detained at the military prison at Gitmo over the years, with 731 being transferred, 9 who died in custody, and 40 remaining there, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the principal architects of the September 11th attacks.

Watch the video above, via CBS.

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