President Trump is poised to reopen the CIA's overseas "black site" prisons, The New York Times reports. Trump's draft order, titled "Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants," walks back restrictions on torture and handling detainees. If signed by the president, the International Committee of the Red Cross would also lose access to detainees in U.S. custody, a provision that was granted by President Barack Obama and is required in order to follow wartime rules detailed in the Geneva Conventions.
The order does not specify which CIA prisons would reopen, or specifically direct that torture be revived, but it is "flirting with a return to the 'enhanced interrogation program' and the environment that gave rise to it," said Elisa Massimino, the director of Human Rights First.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, condemned the draft. "The president can sign whatever executive order he likes. But the law is the law," McCain said in a statement. "We are not bring back torture in the United States of America."
The White House did not offer a statement to The New York Times.