White House Draft Order Calls For Review On Use Of CIA ‘Black Sites’ Overseas

An executive order drafted by the Trump administration calls for a policy review that could authorize the CIA to reopen “black site” prisons overseas and potentially restart an interrogation program that was dismantled in 2009 after using methods widely condemned as torture.

A copy of the document obtained by The Washington Post would revoke former President Barack Obama’s decision to end the CIA program and reinstate a 2007 order issued by President Bush that allowed a modified version of the “rendition and interrogation” operation to continue.

The draft, labeled “Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants” notes that the United States has “refrained from exercising certain authorities critical to its defense” in the war on terrorism, including “a halt to all classified interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency.”

The document stops short of instructing the CIA to rebuild prisons or resume interrogating terrorism suspects, a prospect that is likely to face opposition from an agency that faced criminal investigations and searing criticism after the interrogation program was exposed.

The order calls for a recommendation to the president on whether he should “reinstate a program of high-value alien terrorists to be operated outside the United States and whether such a program should include the use of detention facilities operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.”

It is unclear if Trump will sign the order.

Members of congress denounced the draft order, which was first reported by The New York Times on Wednesday. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that Trump “can sign whatever executive orders he likes. But the law is the law. We are not bringing back torture in the United States of America.”

Human rights organizations expressed outrage.

The draft order “authorizes the CIA to restart their detention program which was the source of so much of the torture that undermined our national security,” said Elisa Massimino, president of Human Rights First. Those policies “made fighting the war harder and strengthened the resolve of our enemies. That’s what’s at stake here.”

The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment. The copy obtained by the Post contains editing marks and significant errors, including a reference to “the atrocities of September 11, 2011” missing the actual date of the 9/11 attacks by a decade.