The report recommended that the President, in his first week in office, announce the date for closure of Guantánamo as a detention facility in conjunction with announcing the establishment of a new policy. Implementation of this new policy would be charged to a panel of eminent Americans tasked to review the files on all remaining Guantánamo detainees. The duties of the review panel would include categorizing all detainees to be released or transferred to the custody of another government or, alternatively, to be held for prosecution in the U.S. criminal justice system, whose record in international terrorism cases far outshines that of the Guantánamo military commissions. Since 2001, the U.S. criminal justice system has convicted 145 terrorist suspects, whereas the military commissions have convicted only three. Overall, this straightforward policy would help restore our reputation as a country that is built on and embraces the rule of law. The report recommended that the review panel be given a year to do this work and would make its recommendations on a rolling basis.

As it happened, President Obama signed an executive order two days after being sworn into office that tracked closely with the report. This action was a powerful and dramatic first step toward ending a bleak chapter in U.S. history. The policy gives meaning to the declaration in President Obama's inaugural address that, "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals."

Now, the hard work has begun. The Administration is pulling together staff for the review panel and gathering the materials on those detained. We have really no sense how the Bush administration made decisions on the release of nearly 500 men, a few of whom may have since taken up arms. The burden for the Obama administration is to create a credible and reliable process for making determinations on who should be released or transferred, and who should be prosecuted. The review panel ought to be as transparent as possible given national security and legal concerns, but its members should report to Congress on a regular basis through the year on how the work is unfolding.

In some cases, the review panel may need to put teams of FBI agents and prosecutors in the field to gather new, un-tortured evidence. Drawing on a report from former prosecutors on behalf of Human Rights First, who looked at the ability of the criminal justice system to handle difficult and dangerous alleged terrorist suspects, the CSIS report recommended that the best method for prosecuting those whom the Administration chooses to charge is the U.S. criminal justice system. After indictment, an individual would be held in the pre-trial detention facility associated with whatever court will hear the case. The unhelpful and misguided discussion by some in Congress on this issue has missed the point above: that since 2001, 145 international terrorists have been convicted in the U.S. criminal justice system and all were held in pre-trial detention facilities during the court cases.

For those whom the review panel determines can be released, teams of U.S. diplomats ought now to be reaching out to friends and allies around the world to discuss how other countries can help the Obama Administration untangle this knot. A maximalist way would be for countries to receive those being released, as we expect the United Kingdom to do presently. Other forms of assistance might come in sharing knowledge about what are called reintegration programs such as in Saudi Arabia. I would like to see a meeting convened as soon as possible with senior U.S. and European officials, and that mixes a range of expertise, intelligence, but also regional specialists to sort out what ought to happen to the large Yemeni population currently detained at Guantánamo. We need some collective brainstorming to puzzle through this and other issues. We need also to understand that one major constituency that does not want Guantánamo shut down is Al Qaeda's senior leadership. This detention facility has been an important recruitment tool for them for years, according to researchers at the West Point Combating Terrorism Center.

We consulted a number of uniformed service members about the dilemmas we imagined the review panel would face. Some of them said that if someone who is released takes up arms as a result of their having been detained without charge for years, but prior to their being held they had not committed a crime, well, that is the price we pay for terrible decisions made on our behalf. If someone is released who committed crimes and then takes up arms, well that is our mistake for having released them. In other words, these brave warriors were saying that they did not put their lives on the line for this country every day in order to detain indefinitely someone who might have been radicalized by Guantánamo. They were serving rather to uphold the laws and values that have made the United States a great country.

While much of the Executive Order tracks closely with the CSIS report, the Administration has left all options still on the table. Officials may decide to return to the military commissions, or they may develop a detention-without-charge regime in the United States. If they go that way because of fears associated with a small, frankly unknown number of men, the Obama Administration will not succeed in repairing the damage. Instead, their actions will enable authoritarians around the world that detain without charge. It will also be a boon to al-Qaeda. In other words, that route will not make the United States safer.

Sarah Mendelson is director of the Human Rights and Security Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.