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GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba (CNN) -- The Obama administration is drafting executive orders calling for the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, two administration officials said.

The revelation coincided with a judge's decision on Wednesday to halt the September 11 terrorism cases at the behest of President Obama. On Tuesday, he directed Defense Secretary Robert Gates to ask prosecutors to seek stays for 120 days so terrorism cases at the facility can be reviewed, according to a military official close to the proceedings.

The officials say the White House is expected to call for:

• Closing the detention facility within a year.

• A systematic review of detention policies and procedures and a review of all individual cases.

• A policy requiring the Army field manual for interrogations to apply to all people in U.S. custody. This is aimed at closing any potential loophole that might allow the CIA to engage in what many say are coercive interrogations.

It was not clear who would conduct the review, although the White House, the Defense Department and the Justice Department are expected to be deeply involved, the officials said.

The Pentagon has been reviewing the possibility of sending detainees who are not released or sent back to their home countries to Camp Pendleton in California; the Navy brig at Charleston, South Carolina; and Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

There has been significant opposition from members of Congress in these states to such a plan.

Obama, who assumed office at noon Tuesday, appeared to be moving quickly on his campaign promise to close the controversial facility.

There are five defendants in the September 11 terrorist attacks case, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the confessed organizer of the operation. The other defendants are Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Aziz Abdul Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi.

A different judge granted a prosecution request for a continuance in the case of another detainee at Guantanamo, an official said.

That case involves Omar Khadr, a Canadian charged with the murder of Sgt. Christopher Speer in Afghanistan and providing material support for terrorism. Khadr was 15 years old when he was captured in July 2002. His trial was set to begin next week. Video Watch what may happen to Gitmo's inmates »

"The defense did not oppose the prosecution's request for a continuance, so Presiding Judge Pat Parrish has granted the motion for a 120-day continuance," said Joe DellaVedova, a military commissions spokesman.

Prosecutors in all ongoing cases were expected to file requests for stays Wednesday, a military official said.

The camp holds about 245 detainees. Twenty-one of them have been charged with crimes, and 60 others have been cleared for release, but no country has agreed to take them.

Josh Colangelo, an attorney who represents some detainees through the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, said the 120-day stay would affect only people charged with crimes.

"For the majority of detainees who never have been and never will be charged with crimes, this doesn't have any particular meaning," Colangelo said.

"Taking a step back, though, it shows that the Obama administration knows what virtually the rest of the world has known for quite a long time, which is that these military commissions are unfairly constituted and beyond that are perceived as being show trials by most of the world."

Among the remaining detainees, it should be determined who should be prosecuted and who should be released, said Sarah Mendelson, director of the human rights and security initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

For some, FBI agents and prosecutors will need to build cases with untainted evidence, not information gained from torture, according to a column Mendelson co-wrote with a former FBI special agent for The Washington Post about two months ago. Video Watch former detainee describe conditions at Guantanamo Bay »



Gabor Rona, an observer for Human Rights Watch, also called the order "a first step."

"The very fact that it's one of his first acts reflects a sense of urgency that the U.S. cannot afford one more day of counterproductive and illegal proceedings in the fight against terrorism," said Rona, who was in Cuba to watch the proceedings scheduled this week.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, has introduced legislation that would close the Guantanamo detention facility. It calls for detainees' cases to be disposed of in the following ways: charge the detainees with crimes and try them in the United States through the federal courts or military justice system, transfer them to an international tribunal, send them to their homeland or to the custody of another country, hold them as prisoners of war or release them.

Her legislation, co-sponsored by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, would also reform detention and interrogation practices, ending the "indefinite and secret detention and coercive interrogations that have been used by the CIA and at Guantanamo since 2002."

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Barack Obama issued four executive orders Thursday to demonstrate a clean break from the Bush administration on the war on terror, including one requiring that the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay be closed within a year.

A second executive order formally bans torture by requiring that the Army field manual be used as the guide for terror interrogations. The order essentially ends the Bush administration's CIA program of enhanced interrogation methods.

A third executive order establishes an interagency task force to lead a systematic review of detention policies and procedures and a review of all individual cases.

A fourth executive order delays the trial of Ali al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident who has been contesting his detention for more than five years as an enemy combatant in a military brig without the government bringing any charges against him.

The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay became a lightning rod for critics who charged that the Bush administration had used torture on terror detainees. President George W. Bush and other senior officials repeatedly denied that the U.S. government had used torture to extract intelligence from terror suspects.

Obama's move will set off a fierce legal struggle over where the prison's detainees will go next.

Officials said new White House Counsel Greg Craig briefed congressional Republicans Wednesday afternoon about the three upcoming executive orders

"The key question is where do you put these terrorists," House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement issued Wednesday. "Do you bring them inside our borders? Do you release them back into the battlefield?"

Rep. Bill Young of Florida, the top Republican on the Defense Appropriations Committee, said Wednesday the executive orders "will leave some wiggle room for the administration."

Young said he has "quite a bit of anxiety" about transferring detainees to United States facilities.

"Number one, they're dangerous," he said. "Secondly, once they become present in the United States, what is their legal status? What is their constitutional status? I worry about that, because I don't want them to have the same constitutional rights that you and I have. They're our enemy."

He said he asked Craig what the government plans to do with two recently built facilities at Guantanamo, which he said cost $500 million. He said Craig had no answer, but pledged to discuss the issue further.

Young said he suggested reopening Alcatraz, the closed federal prison on an island outside San Francisco, California -- in Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district.
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"Put them in Alcatraz, where supposedly they can't escape from," Young said, but added the suggestion "didn't go over well."

The revelation coincided with a judge's decision on Wednesday to halt the September 11 terrorism cases at the behest of President Obama. On Tuesday, he directed Defense Secretary Robert Gates to ask prosecutors to seek stays for 120 days so terrorism cases at the facility can be reviewed, according to a military official close to the proceedings.