Storm over terror memos won’t die

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Eric Holder left open the possibility Thursday of prosecuting former Bush administration officials but ruled out filing charges merely over disagreements about policy.

“I will not permit the criminalization of policy differences,” Holder testified before a House Appropriations subcommittee.

“However, it is my responsibility as attorney general to enforce the law. It is my duty to enforce the law. If I see evidence of wrongdoing I will pursue it to the full extent of the law,” he said.

Holder has made similar statements in the past, but he and other senior Obama administration officials are being scrutinized on the matter since the government released four legal memos detailing harsh treatment of terror suspects authorized during the Bush administration.

Obama said last week that CIA operatives who followed the memos’ instructions would not face prosecution. The president did not rule out charges against those who authorized and approved the methods — nor did Holder in his testimony.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., who is chairman of the Appropriations Committee, criticized what he called the lies of the Bush administration, yet he urged Holder to be careful in whatever course he took.

“It seems to me the important question isn’t whether or not there is widespread prosecution of people,” Obey said. “The important question is whether or not we’re going to strike the right balance between pursuing personal wrongdoing and making sure the country has the correct narrative about what did happen.”

The Obama administration struggled to quell persistent Democratic demands for a potentially explosive probe of harsh Bush administration detainee interrogations Thursday, abruptly declaring opposition to an independent commission. Republicans stepped up their own criticism of Barack Obama’s handling of the sensitive issue.

At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs sought to underscore Obama’s resistance to an independent commission two days after the president himself said such an approach would be preferable to a partisan congressional investigation into the questioning techniques that critics say amount to torture.

Gibbs said that after internal White House debate, Obama determined the independent commission “concept didn’t seem altogether that workable in this case.”

House Republican leader John Boehner, meanwhile, appeared to raise the stakes in a meeting at the White House, urging the president to release internal CIA and other memos evaluating whether waterboarding and other harsh “enhanced” techniques had succeeded in gaining valuable information. Obama made no commitment, according to officials briefed on the session.

At the Capitol, Boehner said Obama’s release last week of Bush-era memos outlining the legal case for waterboarding and other techniques marked “the latest example of the administration’s disarray when it comes to national security.”

He said their disclosure “provides a chilling effect on our intelligence officers all around the world.” He also said additional details, already made public, show that members of both houses of Congress and both parties were briefed by the CIA when waterboarding was used on prisoners captured in the anti-terror war. “And not a word was raised at that time, not one word,” Boehner said.

Though Obama has been critical of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques, he has not said whether he believes they were successful in obtaining useful information.

The controversy has flared at an inopportune time for Obama, approaching the 100-day milestone of an administration focused day and night so far on efforts to grapple with the weak economy — efforts that polls show the country generally approves.