> WASHINGTON - Attorney General-designate Eric H. Holder Jr. yesterday brushed aside Republican concerns about his record as he charted a new, less divisive course for the Justice Department on issues of national security.

> In his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Holder declared that the interrogation practice known as waterboarding amounted to torture - categorically departing from the interpretation of his Bush administration predecessors and cheering opponents of such interrogation techniques.

> "In three words, the world changed, because you stated without hesitation that waterboarding is torture," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D., Ill.).

> Holder promised to perform a "damage assessment" to evaluate how politically motivated hiring during the Bush era might continue to affect the department. And he pledged to work closely with Congress and serve as "the people's lawyer," rather than devote his loyalty solely to the incoming president, Barack Obama.

> Holder, deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration from 1997 to 2001 and a former judge, sidestepped efforts to define him by past mistakes.

> The GOP opposition met with frustration after Democrats blocked efforts by the panel's ranking Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, to subpoena witnesses who have been critical of Holder's involvement in Clinton-era pardons, including former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White and onetime Justice Department pardon attorney Roger Adams.

> The panel will hear today from law-enforcement officials who support Holder's nomination, as well as victims of a Puerto Rican nationalist group whose members won pardons in 1999 with Holder's support.

> Holder appeared to defuse some of the criticism by assembling support from a broad, bipartisan law-enforcement coalition and telling senators that while the pardons of the Puerto Rican nationalists were justified, he regretted his actions in the 2001 pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich.

> President Bill Clinton's clemency award in that case touched off congressional investigations and a grand jury probe in New York.

> "I've made mistakes," Holder said. "That was the most intense, most searing experience I've ever had as a lawyer. As perverse as this might sound, I will be a better attorney general if confirmed, having had the Marc Rich experience."

>

Sparks with Specter

In the only break from his cool, polite demeanor, Holder, nearly seven hours into the hearing, warned Specter not to question his integrity.

> "I will not accept that," Holder countered after Specter said he should have known better than to reject recommendations for an independent counsel to investigate Clinton-era fund-raising abuses.

> "The attorney general has an independent duty to the people and to uphold the rule of law," Specter said.

> The issue of independence in that office resonates in part because of findings by the department's inspector general that Bush administration appointees violated personnel laws and packed the civil rights division with conservatives.

> Holder called that conduct "appalling." He said he would closely examine the department's record on civil rights enforcement, which has been criticized by Democrats as weak, but stopped short of saying that a new leadership team would weed out people who had been hired under an illegal process.

>

A 'false choice'

Holder said the country remained in a state of war, but he warned against accepting a "false choice" between upholding civil liberties and protecting national security.

> The United States should not "farm out" interrogation to contractors working for the CIA, he said, and the questioning of detainees should follow the safeguards spelled out in the Army Field Manual and the Geneva Conventions.

> "I will use every available tactic to defeat our adversaries, and I will do so within the letter and spirit of the law," Holder told a standing-room-only audience in the Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building.

> Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D., Vt.) said the hearing offered a "historic opportunity for the country to move past the partisanship of the past decade" and to install the first African American to serve as the nation's top law-enforcement officer.

> Holder avoided directly addressing the possibility that Bush-era officials could face criminal prosecutions for their involvement in wiretapping and interrogation policies.

> But he cited the words of Obama, who has decried calls "to criminalize policy differences where they might exist."

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