Eli Lake, Columnist

Why Trump Won't Reopen the CIA's Black Sites

Why build our own secret prisons when we can just turn suspects over to allies who will do our dirty work?

January 26, 2017 at 10:00 AM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Out of sight.
Photographer: Jimin Lai/AFP/Getty Images

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For the last two months, Washington was under the impression that Donald Trump didn't really mean it when he promised on the campaign trail to bring back torture.

The president himself said in November that he had discussed waterboarding with retired general James Mattis, and Mattis (who is now Trump's secretary of defense) told him waterboarding was not as useful as a "pack of cigarettes and a couple beers." Trump's new CIA director, Mike Pompeo, went further. In his confirmation hearings earlier this month, he said he would not follow an order to bring back a torture program and he did not expect to be given such an order. Bullet dodged.