Bush admits running secret CIA prisons

US president George Bush finally acknowledged that the CIA ran secret prisons overseas and said tough interrogation forced terrorist leaders to reveal plots to attack the US and its allies, including Britain.

Bush said yesterday that 14 suspects – including the alleged mastermind of the September 11 2001 attacks and architects of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 – had been turned over to the US Defence Department and moved to the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for trial.