April 23 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is seeking to substitute Bush administration political appointees for intelligence-agency professionals as targets of public outrage over interrogation techniques used on suspected terrorists.

Obama’s decision to rule out prosecuting those who conducted the interrogations reflects his need to avoid antagonizing the Central Intelligence Agency as the U.S. fights two wars and faces terrorist threats. Still, he risks a bruising political fight with Republicans furious over potential prosecutions of senior Bush administration officials.

“When you get one administration prosecuting its predecessor, you start creating the conditions of a banana republic,” said Philip Heymann, a law professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who served as deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton. “Every Republican in the country would think this was a dangerous attack on the two-party system.”

Prosecuting Republican appointees may destroy any semblance of national security bipartisanship, as well as further expose Obama to opposition-party accusations that he’s jeopardizing the nation’s safety in case of another terrorist attack.

Obama is calculating he can control events by steering a course between those demanding he move against all connected with harsh interrogations and others objecting to any action.

Vetoing Commission

In an example of his approach, he vetoed a proposal to create an independent commission to probe the issue even though there was support for the idea among his advisers, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Instead, Obama last week ordered the release of memos that authorized the tough techniques.

Lawmakers pressed Obama in two different directions yesterday over how to deal with those responsible for the interrogations.

Senator Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, urged the president to hold open the possibility of prosecuting the interrogators. The American Civil Liberties Union and the other groups said they would present Attorney General Eric Holder with more than 250,000 signatures demanding an independent prosecutor begin a criminal investigation.

Republican Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, along with Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, criticized Obama for suggesting Justice Department officials who approved the interrogation methods, which included waterboarding, could be held legally accountable.

Unlikely to Prosecute

Heymann said the Obama administration is unlikely to pursue criminal charges against the Justice Department lawyers because doing so would likely lead to investigations of senior officials under former President George W. Bush. In addition, accusing the lawyers of aiding and abetting torture would be difficult, he said.

“If they went after them, the government would have to say, ‘This wasn’t your honest legal advice,’” Heymann said. “That doesn’t sound like a very good case.”

On April 21, the president said he would leave it to Holder to decide if the authors of the Justice Department memos should be tried. Holder yesterday told reporters he will “follow the evidence wherever it takes us.”

Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to say whether department lawyers may face criminal charges.

Ethics Review

She said in a statement the agency’s professional ethics office is reviewing whether the legal advice in the memos by Office of Legal Counsel officials was “consistent with the professional standards that apply to department attorneys.”

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is calling for an independent commission to investigate the Bush administration’s conduct on the interrogations.

Some of that conduct was laid out in four memos Obama released last week, showing that Justice Department lawyers authorized the CIA to use such techniques as sleep deprivation, slapping, nudity and waterboarding that simulates drowning.

One memo said the CIA used waterboarding at least 266 times on two prisoners: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Abu Zubaydah, a reputed al- Qaeda leader and associate of Osama bin Laden.

Members of the so-called Church Committee, a Senate panel that in the 1970s uncovered assassination plots and surveillance abuses carried out by intelligence agencies, said the best forums for an investigation of the matter were the House and Senate intelligence committees.

‘Boomerang’ Effect

Members of those panels are familiar with U.S. operations and could protect classified information with closed hearings, said former Democratic Senator Robert Morgan of North Carolina, who was on the Church Committee.

An independent commission “might boomerang,” said Morgan. “It might arouse a lot of contention over and beyond what it should be.”

He and former Senator Walter Huddleston, a Kentucky Democrat, also said prosecuting people would distract from establishing firmer guidelines for the treatment of terror suspects.

“We thought we had done that” with the committee chaired by Idaho Democratic Senator Frank Church in the 1970s, Huddleston said. Standards “have a way of going by the wayside” without oversight, Huddleston said.

By agreeing not to prosecute CIA interrogators, Obama is trying to maintain good relations with the intelligence community and military, said Michael Scharf, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland.

“What Obama is trying to do is avoid saying something that says ‘I am against the intelligence community. I am against the military,’” he said. “That would set him back.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Jeff Bliss in Washington jbliss@bloomberg.net; Justin Blum in Washington at jblum4@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: April 23, 2009 00:01 EDT