White House draft order calls for review on use of CIA ‘black site’ prisons 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.

The document, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, would revoke a 2009 decision by then-President Barack Obama to end the CIA program and would reinstate a 2007 order issued by President George W. 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 against 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 meet opposition from an agency that faced criminal investigations and searing criticism after the interrogation program was exposed.

Read the whole story from The Washington Post.

Featured image courtesy of AP.