Two of the officials who will be in charge of carrying out President Donald Trump's terrorism detainee policies, Defense Secretary James Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, were blindsided by reports of a draft executive order that would require the CIA to reconsider using interrogation techniques that some consider torture, according to sources with knowledge of their thinking.
Lawmakers in both parties denounced the draft order on Wednesday even as White House press secretary Sean Spicer said he had no idea where it came from and that it is not a White House document.
The document, obtained and published by The New York Times and Washington Post, calls for the director of national intelligence to review whether to bring back the CIAs infamous black-site prisons. Those were secret overseas facilities where the CIA carried out brutal interrogations of terrorism suspects from 2001 to 2006, as documented in the Senate Intelligence Committee's 2014 investigation into the issue.
The draft order says terrorism suspects in U.S. custody will not be subject to "torture" or degrading treatment. But it characterizes a 2016 law barring torture as "a significant statutory barrier" and would revoke an executive order signed by President Barack Obama stating that suspects must be treated in compliance with international law.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/torture-mattis-pompeo-defense-234180