The press secretary also seemed to acknowledge a report that the Obama administration will issue an executive order to allow some detainees to be held indefinitely without a trial.

“Some would be tried in federal courts, as we’ve seen done in the past. Some would be tried in military commissions, likely spending the rest of their lives in a maximum security prison that nobody, including terrorists, have ever escaped from,” he said. “And some, regrettably, will have to be indefinitely detained.

“I say regrettably not because it’s a bad thing necessarily for them in terms of the fact that they’re very dangerous people and we have to make sure that even if we can’t prosecute them,” he continued. “We’re not putting them back out on the battlefield.”