In this Sunday's first reading Moses admonishes the people of Israel to observe carefully the statutes and decrees he was setting forth so that other nations could say of them, "This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people." Critics say the U.S. government's apparent flouting of internationally accepted interrogation policies in secret detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan hurt U.S. standing around the world.

Amid revelations that Central Intelligence Agency interrogators threatened terror suspects with handguns and an electric drill, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Monday appointed a prosecutor to conduct a preliminary review to determine whether criminal prosecutions are warranted in some detainee abuse cases.

The threats against the detainees, who were hooded, shackled, and in some cases naked, were among new details in volumes of documents released Monday by the Justice Department. The records included a 2004 report by the CIA's Office of Inspector General, which noted that some of the interrogation tactics used by the agency were "inconsistent with the public policy positions that the United States has taken regarding human rights."

Holder's decision to investigate further, coupled with the release of the graphic details about interrogation practices that President Barack Obama ordered halted when he took office in January, ignited a political storm at a delicate time in Washington.

Leading Republicans denounced Holder's appointment of John H. Durham, a career prosecutor, saying it will hinder intelligence-gathering in the fight against terrorists, while some Democrats criticized the investigation as too limited. They renewed calls for an independent review of most of the controversial anti-terrorism policies adopted by George W. Bush's administration.

 "The documents underscore how closely supervised the program was by officials in Washington," said Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union, whose Freedom of Information Act lawsuit forced disclosure of the records. "Any investigation that began and ended with the so-called rogue interrogators would be completely inadequate."

Tom Parker, policy director for counterterrorism and human rights at Amnesty International, USA said the documents were "chilling." "They show how deeply rooted this new culture of mistreatment became," he said.

But defenders of the program say the tight rules demonstrate the government's attempt to keep the program within the law. "Elaborate care went into figuring out the precise gradations of coercion," said David B. Rivkin, Jr., a lawyer who served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. "Yes, it's jarring. But it shows how both the lawyers and the nonlawyers tried to do the right thing."

Source: Articles by James Vicini and Jeremy Pelofsky for Reuters, Paul Kain and Carrie Johnson for the Washington Post, Peter Eisler for USA TODAY, and David Johnston, Scott Shane, and Mark Mazzetti for the New York Times