“My question is, did the president approve that?” Feinstein asked.

“I can’t speak to whether people were in fact waterboarded or whether the president approved it,” Mukasey said. “I can’t do it because I’m not authorized to discuss it.”

“Given that waterboarding is not part of the current program and may never be added to the current program, I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to pass definitive judgment on the technique’s legality,” Mukasey said.

“There are some circumstances where current law would appear clearly to prohibit waterboarding’s use,” Mukasey said.

“But other circumstances would present a far closer question.”

That answer hardly satisfied committee Democrats, who have been sharply critical of Mukasey since he declined to state explicitly whether he believed waterboarding was torture during his confirmation hearings last October.

Republicans defended Mukasey and said Democrats are targeting a practice no longer in use in order to score political points.

“I think it’s been an embarrassment to our nation from a lot of these hearings when we’ve suggested wide-scale abuse that is not true,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).

In addition to the torture issue, Mukasey faced tough questions from both sides on a range of subjects, including the administration’s warrantless surveillance program and the 2006 firings of nine U.S. attorneys for allegedly political reasons. Mukasey reiterated the Bush administration’s support for providing retroactive immunity for telecommunications firms participating in the wiretapping program, and said a proposal to substitute the government as a plaintiff in about 40 lawsuits against phone companies would “open up their conduct and means and methods to scrutiny.”

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, pressed Mukasey on whether the Bush administration violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when authorizing wiretapping without court warrants.