But to answer your question, maybe Mayer's article is referring to this?

A day before Obama signed executive orders closing Guantánamo Bay and banning torture, the White House's top lawyer privately indicated to Congress that the new president reserved the right to ignore his own (and any other president's) executive orders. In a closed-door appearance before the Senate intelligence committee, White House counsel Gregory Craig was asked whether the president was required by law to follow executive orders. According to people familiar with his remarks, who asked for anonymity when discussing a private meeting, Craig answered that the administration did not believe he was. The implication: in a national-security crisis, Obama could deviate from his own rules. A White House official said that Craig's remarks were being "mischaracterized."

Aside from the insanely dogmatic absolutism of George Bush, this is not uncommon.  As BTD continually points out, Obama is a pol and all pols act like pols.  I think the uniqueness here is the degree to which Obama has overpromised (or, perhaps, the degree to which his supporters have unrealistically high expectations).  The current talk of loopholes and task forces don't give me high hopes that he will meet those expectations.

Mr. President  on signing your recent executive order on banning torture was this order absolute or did you leave room for a loophole when torture could be used?

or

Mr. President was the executive order banning torture directed to ALL agencies or departments of the U.S. Government  whereby all agencies and departments would be totally banned to use torture in any fashion form or manner and the only interrogation methods applicable would be those written in the Army Field manual?

Top C.I.A. officials have argued for years that so-called "enhanced" interrogation techniques have yielded life-saving intelligence breakthroughs.

whether it's true is another issue entirely. much like the pentagon terrorist "recidivists", we've only their (CIA) word for any of it.

they could tell us, but then they'd have to kill all of us.

obama's executive order was crystal clear, it brooked no room for "interpretation" unless, you can't read. obviously, as BTD pointed out, obama could issue another executive order superseding this one, but i don't see that happening.

Five days after President Barack Obama signed an executive order to close the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay within a year, two Saudis who were released from the controversial U.S. prison in 2007 renewed their pledge to attack western interests in a video released by Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula on the internet today.

"We assure our leaders Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, may God protect him, and Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri, that we shall continue to follow the path of jihad," said Abu Sufian al Azdi Saeed al Shihri, a Saudi who was a prisoner at the Guantanamo prison.

"By God, our imprisonment has only made us more resilient and more committed to our principles that we had fought jihad and been taken prisoners for," added al Shihri, who's now the deputy to the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Despite such sentiments, Obama's executive orders will undoubtedly rein in the C.I.A.. Waterboarding, for instance, has gone the way of the rack, now that the C.I.A. is strictly bound by customary interpretations of the Geneva Conventions. This decision, too, was the result of intense deliberation. During the transition period, unknown to the public, Obama's legal, intelligence, and national-security advisers visited Langley for two long sessions with current and former intelligence-community members. They debated whether a ban on brutal interrogation practices would hurt their ability to gather intelligence, and the advisers asked the intelligence veterans to prepare a cost-benefit analysis. The conclusions may surprise defenders of harsh interrogation tactics. "There was unanimity among Obama's expert advisers," Craig said, "that to change the practices would not in any material way affect the collection of intelligence."