Probes of Bush Officials Loom

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama raised the possibility of prosecuting Bush administration lawyers who approved so-called enhanced interrogation techniques on terror suspects.

Mr. Obama, speaking to reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office, also laid out the parameters for a bipartisan commission to examine government tactics used in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, although he was careful to say he wasn't endorsing such a panel.

Together, the remarks put the president squarely in the center of a growing battle between liberals who want to hold Bush administration officials accountable for what they call torture, and conservatives who say Mr. Obama has damaged national security by revealing interrogation secrets.

White House reporter Jonathan Weisman discusses the shift in the Obama administration, which has now signaled they may prosecute Bush-era lawyers who approved the CIA's harsh interrogations.

The president last week overruled objections from Central Intelligence Agency officials and released documents that described such interrogation tactics as waterboarding, slamming prisoners against walls and confining them in cramped spaces -- sometimes populated with insects -- to induce fear.

Mr. Obama drew a distinction Tuesday between those who carried out the interrogations and those who argued for them, reiterating that he didn't think those who followed legal guidance should be prosecuted. "With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general, within the parameters of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that," the president said.

The CIA memos, he said, "reflected, in my view, us losing our moral bearings."

The comments were a marked contrast with the tone set by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who said Sunday that the people who formulated the Bush policies wouldn't be subject to prosecution. On ABC's "This Week," Mr. Emanuel said, "It's time for reflection. It's not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back in a sense of anger and retribution."

Even Mr. Obama's director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, defended the harsh practices. He wrote in a letter to colleagues last week that "high-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country."

The letter also expressed some sympathy for Bush administration officials operating in the months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.