CONYERS: Well, are you ready to start a criminal investigation into whether this confirmed use of waterboarding by United States agents was illegal?

MUKASEY: That's a direct question, and I will give a direct answer.

No, I am not, for this reason: Whatever was done as part of a CIA program at the time that it was done was the subject of a Department of Justice opinion through the Office of Legal Counsel and was found to be permissible under the law as it existed then.

For me to use the occasion of the disclosure that that technique was once part of the CIA program -- an authorized part of the CIA program, would be for me to tell anybody who relied, justifiably, on a Justice Department opinion that not only may they no longer rely on that Justice Department opinion, but that they
will now be subject to criminal investigation for having done so.

Fine. If that is the case, then you prosecute the people who authorized it at OLC. The idea that this could be legal, when the Cambodians have a display devoted to waterboarding at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, is sheer insanity.

Oh, and purely as an aside, "I was just following orders" is no more valid now than it was in 1945. Mr. Attorney General, you're supporting a position of the worst government of the past 100 years, and I don't mean the one you work for.