President Barack Obama has opened the possibility of prosecution for Bush-era lawyers who authorised brutal interrogation of terror suspects and suggested US Congress might order a full investigation.
Less than a week after declaring it was time for the nation to move on rather than "laying blame for the past," Mr Obama found himself describing what might be done next to investigate what he called the loss of "our moral bearings."
His comments all but ensured that the vexing issue of detainee interrogation during the Bush administration will live on well into the new president's term.
President Obama, who severely criticised the harsh techniques during the campaign, is feeling pressure from his party's liberal wing to come down hard on the subject. At the same time, Republicans including former vice president Dick Cheney are insisting the methods helped protect the nation and are assailing Mr Obama for revealing Justice Department memos detailing them.
Answering a reporter's question yesterday, the US president said it would be up to his attorney general to determine whether "those who formulated those legal decisions" behind the interrogation methods should be prosecuted.
The methods, described in Bush-era memos Mr Obama released last Thursday, included such grim and demeaning tactics as slamming detainees against walls and subjecting them to simulated drowning. He repeated that CIA operatives who did the interrogating should not be charged with crimes because they thought they were following the law.
"I think there are a host of very complicated issues involved here," the president said. "As a general deal, I think that we should be looking forward and not backwards. I do worry about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively, and it hampers our ability to carry out national security operations."
He suggested that Congress might set up a bipartisan review, outside its typical hearings, if it wants a "further accounting" of what happened during the period when the interrogation methods were authorized. His press secretary later said the independent September 11th commission, which investigated and then reported on the terror attacks of 2001, might be a model.
The three men facing the most scrutiny are former Justice Department officials Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury. Mr Bybee is currently a judge on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr Yoo is a professor at the University of California-Berkeley.