WASHINGTON -- President-elect Donald Trump, in an interview with The New York Times, suggested a turnabout on the need for torture as a tool in the fight against terrorism, which he repeatedly endorsed during the campaign.
Trump suggested that he has changed his mind about the usefulness of waterboarding and other forms of torture after talking with James Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, who headed the U.S. Central Command.
"He said, 'I've never found it to be useful,'" Trump said, describing the general's view of torturing terrorism suspects. He added that Mattis found more value in building trust and rewarding cooperation with terror suspects: "'Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers, and I'll do better.'" He added, "I was very impressed by that answer."
Torture, Trump said, is "not going to make the kind of a difference that a lot of people are thinking."
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Trump repeated that Mattis was being "seriously, seriously considered" to be secretary of defense. "I think it's time, maybe, for a general," he said.
Trump had supported waterboarding during the presidential campaign and his pick for CIA director has called those who have done it "patriots" not "torturers." Yet a Trump administration faces steep legal and legislative hurdles to reinstate the interrogation practice that simulates drowning.
Under a law approved last year, all government employees, including intelligence agents, must abide by Army guidelines for interrogating prisoners -- guidelines that don't permit waterboarding. Those rules are subject to review, but it's not clear whether they can be revised to allow the practice.
If the Trump administration were to try to change the law or the guidelines, the effort would run into bipartisan opposition in Congress. The most formidable obstacle there would be a fellow Republican, John McCain. The senator from Arizona and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who was beaten as a prisoner of war in Vietnam in the 1960s, adamantly opposes waterboarding.
McCain has clashed before with Trump, who during the campaign said the former Navy pilot wasn't a war hero because he had been captured. At a security conference in Canada last weekend, McCain indicated he was ready to take on Trump again as McCain begins another six-year term after winning re-election.
"I don't give a damn what the president of the United States wants to do or anybody else wants to do," McCain said. "We will not waterboard. We will not do it."
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Waterboarding and other harsh methods were used in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to try to obtain useful information from terrorist suspects. Many intelligence, military and law enforcement officials say the practice is ineffective as well as immoral. They say it breaks down trust between the suspect and interrogators, and often prompts a detainee to say anything to stop the harsh treatment.
But Trump, who revved up his supporters with tough talk against Islamic State extremists, pledging to interrogate terrorist suspects with waterboarding and a "hell of a lot worse."
"Don't tell me it doesn't work," Trump has said. "Torture works, OK folks?"
Trump's nominee for the CIA is Rep. Mike Pompeo, a congressman from Kansas who has criticized President Barack Obama for "ending our interrogation program," which Obama did not do. Pompeo criticized the release of the Senate's 2014 report on harsh interrogation of detainees and argued that the CIA program operated within the law.
"Our men and women who were tasked to keep us safe in the aftermath of 9/11 -- our military and our intelligence warriors -- are ... not torturers, they are patriots," Pompeo said then.
The views of Trump's other nominees are more opaque.
Trump's national security adviser, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, has not ruled out the use of waterboarding. "If the nation was in grave danger from a terrorist attack involving weapons of mass destruction, and we had certain individuals in our custody with information that might avoid it, then I would probably OK enhanced interrogation techniques within certain limits," he told Politico in October.
Trump's pick for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., was one of a few senators who voted against bipartisan anti-torture provisions in 2005 and 2015. But in 2008, Sessions said: "I am glad we are no longer utilizing waterboarding. I hope we never have to do it again." That was before the rise of Islamic State militants.
Waterboarding has been prohibited since 2009. Two days after taking office, Obama issued an executive order prohibiting all government employees from using any interrogation method that wasn't spelled out in the Army Field Manual, a military how-to guide.
Wanting to ensure that no future president could tear up the order, McCain teamed up with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to turn it into law. Their anti-torture amendment was adopted in a 78-21 bipartisan vote and became law late last year.
The law requires the Army to conduct a review of the field manual every three years in consultation with the attorney general, the FBI director and the director of national intelligence. The first review deadline is Dec. 19, 2017, during Trump's first year in office.
It's not clear whether the review could result in changes allowing waterboarding or other harsh interrogation methods.
Information for this article was contributed by Michael D. Shear, Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times; and by Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press.
A Section on 11/23/2016