Intelligence Chief Blair Defends Move to Delay Key Detainee Reports

The decision to delay by six months a key report on detainee policy shows "tremendous amount of attention" the Obama administration is paying to the issues of interrogations and detention policy, the top U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, in his first public comments on the delay of a plan to close Guantanamo Bay prison, said the issues of interrogation and detention policy reflect the "seriousness" with which the Obama administration is treating the matter.

"Although no one likes to miss a deadline, looking at it from the inside, it's really a mark of the seriousness ... with which we are taking it and of really taking the time to get the answer right," Blair said after an address to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

He spoke after officials revealed that the task forces appointed to make recommendations on how terror suspects are detained and interrogated would need more time.

Officials said the report on detention policy would take another six months and the report on interrogation policy would take another two months.

The delay reveals the trouble President Obama and his administration may be having sticking to the goal of closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp by the start of 2010, a promise made by the president just days into his administration.

Since Obama's announcement that he would close Gitmo, just 5 percent of the detainees there have been transferred.

The fate of the 229 remaining detainees present complex legal questions. Some cannot be tried, but they remain a threat and cannot be freed for national security reasons.

These complications and others would have to be addressed by those working on new policy recommendations.

Blair also said that the United States has not been able to determine who committed the July 4 cyberattack that infiltrated a number of government Web sites.

Blair called the attack "relatively unsophisticated" but said due to the nature of the attack it "takes some time" to track the hack.

The intelligence chief also addressed the recent controversy on Capitol Hill over a secret CIA proposal to set up terrorist hit squads, calling the scuffle one of a series of "legacy issues" the new administration is working through.

Democrats in Congress are starting an inquiry into why many lawmakers were not briefed on the plan, which never got off the ground and which CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress about last month after he killed the idea.

"What I'm finding in my six months in the job is that there are a lot of legacy issues that we have to work our way through as we establish a new relationship with the Congress, and this is one of several," Blair said.

He said going forward he will err on the side of telling Congress when dealing with sensitive intelligence programs.

"I find that I've been very clear with the Congress, that we will lean on the side of telling them about things," he said.

Earlier in his address, Blair stressed that he wants the network, which he oversees, of the most secretive government agencies in the country to be a little less secret if possible.

"There will always be an element of secrecy in our profession," he said. "But I don't think there has to be so much an element of mystery as we currently have.

"Much of our job is straightforward. We try to steal the secrets that our enemies seek to keep from us. But secrets alone aren't enough to support policymakers and American officials and fighters on the field. A huge amount of the information that's both available and extremely important is in the open. ... The trick is to meld the two together in order to answer the mission requirements."

He said he would "guarantee" that intelligence agencies would pay "close attention" to privacy and civil liberties concerns of Americans.

FOX News' Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.