US President Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order that could lead to the reinstatement of a CIA program to interrogate terrorist suspects in secret overseas “black site” prisons using techniques that have been condemned as torture, two US officials told Reuters on Wednesday.
The black sites were used to detain suspects who were captured in the “war on terrorism” launched by former President George W. Bush after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks.
The defunct program of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, which included simulated drowning known as water boarding, were found by a 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report to have been ineffective in producing valuable intelligence.
The executive order calls for a high-level review that would recommend to Trump “whether to reinitiate a program of interrogation of high-value alien terrorists to be operated outside the United States” and whether the CIA should run the facilities,” according to a copy of the draft published by the Washington Post.
The two US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Trump is expected to sign the order, entitled, “Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants,” in the next few days.
There is widespread opposition in Congress, in US intelligence agencies and within the military to reopening black sites and revisiting the use of harsh interrogation techniques, according to multiple serving officers.
The order also would authorise a review of interrogation techniques that US officials could use on terrorism suspects, keep open the detention centre at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and end access to all detainees in US custody by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In doing so, the order would revoke decisions by former President Barack Obama to close the Guantanamo centre, end the “black site” program and grant the ICRC access to all detainees in US custody and restrict interrogation methods to those in a US Army field manual.