Holder: Justice Department Will 'Follow the Law' in Probing Interrogation Tactics

The Justice Department will "follow the law" in investigating the Bush administration officials who cleared harsh interrogation techniques, Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday.

Holder reiterated his position a day after President Obama opened the door for potential prosecution against the lawyers who drafted memos that justified harsh interrogation tactics.

Obama has said the CIA operatives who employed those tactics using the legal guidance provided will be safe from criminal charges, but offered no such assurances to Bush administration lawyers.

"We're going to follow the evidence wherever it takes us. We're going to follow the law wherever that takes us," Holder told reporters.

"No one is above the law," Holder said.

Critics have said trying to prosecute lawyers for offering legal advice is a slippery slope toward criminalizing opinions.

"Will Democrats also investigate the members of Congress who were briefed on interrogation tactics in 2002 and raised no objection? If the lawyers are threatened with an investigation, why not the politicians who approved their actions?" asked Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas.

Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., also wrote a letter to Obama urging him not to back such prosecutions.

"Some of the legal analysis ... was, we believe, deeply flawed. We have also strongly opposed the overly coercive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, that these memos deemed legal," the letter said. "We do not believe, however, that legal analysis should be criminalized, as proposals to prosecute government lawyers suggest."

But White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs suggested Wednesday that the president has removed himself from the process.

"Let me use an example. If you go in the back of the plane, Air Force One, and spray-paint the walls and smoke in the bathroom, the president isn't going to determine whether you broke the law. A legal official is going to determine whether you broke the law," he said. "That's the determination that will be made in any instance whereby anybody knowingly breaks the law."