WASHINGTON _ Are the use of torture and covert international holding cells for suspected terrorists known as "black sites" back on the table?
White House advisers to President Donald Trump have apparently drafted a three-page executive order that would pave the way to restarting interrogation programs using methods widely condemned as torture and re-open black site prisons overseas.
The existence of the order, which was not seen by McClatchy but reported by both The New York Times and The Washington Post, drew immediate bipartisan opposition.
"The president 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," Sen. John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.
Trump tweeted late Tuesday that Wednesday would be a "big day" on "national security" but it wasn't immediately clear if, or whether, Trump would make announcements related to how U.S. forces treat suspected terrorists abroad.
Trump changed tone on use of torture during his campaign, announcing at rallies in early 2016 adamant support for techniques like waterboarding _ which involves dunking suspects in water in simulated drowning _ adamantly saying such techniques are effective.
"Don't tell me it doesn't work _ torture works," Trump said in Bluffton, South Carolina on Feb. 17, 2016. "Half these guys (say): 'Torture doesn't work.' Believe me, it works."
But after a November meeting with retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, who Trump has installed as secretary of defense, Trump said that Mattis had swayed his thinking.
"He said, 'I've never found it to be useful,'" Trump told editors and reporters at the New York Times Nov. 23, adding that Mattis suggested it was better to build trust and reward suspects who cooperated. "'Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers, and I'll do better,'" Trump quoted Mattis as telling him.
Trump said that Mattis' view affected him, but added: "I'm not saying it changed my mind."
Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who is ranking member of the House intelligence panel, said that a return to the use of torture and "black site" prisons, as well as the continued operation of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as a holding facility for terror suspects, would be a "black eye" for the United States and harm relations with allies opposed to such practices.
Schiff also said use of torture debilitates U.S. personnel who employ it.
"It's corrosive to the morale of the (intelligence community) should we ever get back into the business of enhanced interrogation techniques," Schiff said at a forum at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Jeremy Bash, a former chief of staff to former CIA Director Leon Panetta, said few operatives support a routine to the use of torture.
"We haven't engaged in waterboarding since 2004, and somehow we managed to keep our country safe," Bash said at the forum. "I've picked up precisely zero appetite for doing it again."
Congress codified a prohibition on torture in a 2015 defense spending law that limited interrogation techniques to those included in the Army Field Manual which proscribes methods involving "the use or threat of force."
The CIA operated "black site" prisons at distinct periods between 2002 and 2008 in Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Afghanistan and Thailand, denying their existence.
The CIA declined to comment on the reports such prisons were again on the table.
One intelligence insider said subsequent divulging of the existence of black sites embarrassed some of the nations that hosted them, making re-establishment of the practice troublesome.
"You'd have to find a willing country to host one of these sites," he said.
