Mukasey is pressed on waterboarding

Waterboarding involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his or her cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning.

"Would waterboarding be torture if it was done to you?" asked Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.

"I would feel that it was," Mukasey said.

Under further questioning later, however, Mukasey did not rule out the possible need for waterboarding terror suspects in order to save American lives.

"What about the circumstances where the information would save lives, many lives?" asked Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. "Would that justify it?"

"Those circumstances have not been set out," Mukasey answered. "That is not part of the program. We don't know concretely what they are. And we don't know how that would work."

Mukasey added: "It is unresolved, because I have not been presented with a concrete situation."

Following a similar back-and-forth earlier, Senator Joe Biden, Democrat of Delaware, remarked: "I've never heard torture referenced in those ways. . . . You're the first person I've ever heard say what you just said."

For the most part, Mukasey appeared unruffled by Democrats who grew increasingly exasperated with his hedging. The most emotion he showed throughout the five-hour hearing was tapping his fingers on his legal pad of paper to make a point to Durbin.

As he promised the Senate panel last fall he would do, Mukasey said he has reviewed Justice Department memos about the CIA's interrogation program and concluded that the spy agency doesn't currently engage in waterboarding.

Beyond that, Mukasey said he would not discuss the legality of the classified program for fear of tipping off US enemies about interrogation methods.

"There are circumstances where waterboarding is clearly unlawful," Mukasey said. "What I have said is simply that there may be circumstances in which that presents a difficult question. I haven't said that there are circumstances in which it's clearly lawful.

"I'm not get into any discussion, in the abstract, of circumstances in which it might be," Mukasey said.