WASHINGTON: Former US vice president Dick Cheney Friday slammed a Justice Department probe into alleged abusive interrogation techniques by CIA agents as an "outrageous political act."
In an interview with Fox News on Sunday to be aired at the weekend, Cheney said the investigation would do long term damage to America's ability to protect itself, adding the administration should not punish agents for doing their jobs.
Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Monday he had named assistant US attorney John Durham to review the CIA interrogations of detainees at secret sites overseas to determine whether any laws were broken.
But Cheney, who has called on the Central Intelligence Agency to release proof that harsh interrogation techniques provided key information in stopping attacks, slammed the probe.
"We had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from al Qaeda," he told Fox.
"The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, How did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?'" Cheney said.
"Instead, they're out there now threatening to disbar the lawyers who gave us the legal opinions threatening contrary to what the president originally said.
"They're going to go out and investigate the CIA personnel who carried out those investigations," Cheney added.
The Department of Justice on Monday revealed details of a report by a CIA inspector general showing that interrogators at secret CIA prisons threatened to kill the children of September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Other detainees were threatened with the rape of family members, execution, shooting and torture.
"I have concluded that the information known to me warrants opening a preliminary review into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations," Holder said.
But Durham's probe will be limited to examining whether there is sufficient evidence to charge individual agents with violating the special interrogation rules they were given after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
If Durham's investigation concludes that US laws were broken, it is not clear whether Holder would chose to go ahead with prosecutions.
Obama had previously made clear that CIA interrogators, acting on the basis of legal guidelines drawn up by former president George W. Bush's administration would not face the wrath of the law.
