Donald Trump May Choose Bush-Era Torture Architect for CIA Chief

President-elect Donald Trump may choose an architect of the George W. Bush administration’s torture program, Jose Rodriguez, to head the CIA, The Intercept reported Friday.

The Intercept cites a post-election prediction from Dentons, a law firm where Trump confidante Newt Gingrich (himself a potential secretary of state) serves as an advisor. “Dentons was also retained by Make America Number 1, one of the primary Super PACs supporting Trump’s candidacy,” the outlet writes.

Rodriguez directed the National Clandestine Service and “helped develop the CIA black sites, secret prisons operated in foreign countries where interrogators used a range of torture tactics, including the use of ‘waterboarding,’ the simulated drowning technique once used by the Khmer Rouge and Nazi agents to glean information from detainees,” The Intercept writes.

The horrific torture techniques used by the Bush-era CIA have been made public by former detainees and rights organizations in the years since the program ended. They include beatings, makeshift electric chairs, hanging detainees from ceilings by the wrists for days at a time, holding drills to detainees’ heads and threatening their families with rape, as well as various forms of water torture.

Trump campaigned on a promise to bring back waterboarding. “I like [waterboarding] a lot,” he told a cheering crowd in June. “I don’t think it’s tough enough.”