The use of "extreme rendition" is one of the most controversial legacies of President George W. Bush. It was so contentious that during the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to "eliminate the practice of extreme rendition, where we outsource our torture to other countries."

As we have previously noted, extreme rendition -- sometimes called "extraordinary rendition" -- refers to taking terrorism suspects to nations where they are at a high risk of being tortured or imprisoned indefinitely. This practice became common following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

On Aug. 24, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Special Task Force on Interrogations and Transfer Policies had finished its review. The United States would continue to send individuals to other countries, the panel decided, but the United States would seek "assurances from the receiving country" that the suspect would not be tortured. But the specific recommendations themselves were -- and remain -- classified.

To gauge the progress on implementing these principles, we interviewed human rights and legal experts. There was broad consensus among these experts that if extraordinary rendition is happening at all, it's happening less frequently than it did under Bush. But there was also agreement that we can't really be certain what is going on.

There are two reasons for the uncertainty. One is that rendition activities are performed by top secret intelligence agencies, so in the normal course of affairs, the public is unlikely to know many details of what goes on. The second is that it's extremely difficult to "prove a negative" -- that is, to demonstrate with any certainty that something is not happening.

"I see no evidence that they have engaged in this practice," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor. "They have not abandoned non-extraordinary rendition, at least in theory, which means the capture of an individual to take him to another country, but they would claim that they will not do so for purposes of torture."

Steven Watt, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union's human rights program, suggested that Obama has "partially fulfilled the promise to end extreme rendition." He gave Obama credit for officially ending the practice but added that there is still a possibility that ordinary renditions can turn into extraordinary renditions even if that's not the intent of the policy.

Much hinges on how believable the promises from other nations are. Jen Nessel, a spokeswoman for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a human-rights advocacy group, said her organization believes that "'guarantees" of no torture are worthless," though she acknowledged that "there is some debate about the issue."

Tom Malinowski, the Washington Director for Human Rights Watch, said that there is no evidence that the Obama administration has sent to suspects to the most repressive countries believed to be used by the Bush administration, such as Syria, Egypt and Libya (each of which, in any case, has undergone major governmental changes during Obama's tenure, and would not necessarily be receptive to such requests any more).

However, Malinowski added that a "big problem" is that the Obama administration "has placed a much greater emphasis on asking foreign intelligence and security services to take the lead in arresting terrorism suspects around the world."

For instance, he said, "instead of having the CIA detain an Egyptian, and then rendering him to Egypt, the U.S. is now more likely to pass the intelligence to the Egyptians and ask them to make the arrest themselves. That's not technically a rendition – and it's not prohibited by human rights treaties in the way some renditions are -- but some would argue that it has the same effect. And because these detainees never pass through U.S. hands, we have no information about how many people are involved and where they end up detained."

We conclude that Obama has partially met the promise by officially ending the practice of extraordinary rendition. No evidence has emerged that the administration has continued the policy of its predecessors surreptitiously. Still, too little is known about current activities to rate this a Promise Kept. Not even the task force's full recommendations have been released publicly yet. On balance, we rate this a Compromise.