President Obama acknowledged yesterday that lawyers from the Bush Administration who drafted memos authorising the use of harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects could potentially face prosecution.

Although he once again stressed that it would be inappropriate to take action against CIA personnel — provided they had followed guidance issued by the White House — Mr Obama added that those responsible for writing the rules could yet be pursued through the courts.

“I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney- General within the perimeters of various laws, and I don’t want to prejudge that,” he said during a brief Oval Office press conference with King Abdullah of Jordan.

The President’s comments reversed the position adopted at the weekend by Rahm Emanuel, the White House Chief of Staff, who stated that those who had devised policy during the Bush era should not be prosecuted.

On Monday aides scrambled to correct Mr Emanuel’s statement and officials have also emphasised that any CIA operative who went beyond the guidance issued between 2002 and 2005 could face sanctions.

Last week’s release of four top-secret memos detailing the legal advice given to the CIA over the interrogation of detainees has prompted a degree of soul-searching in America about the use of techniques that many regard as torture.

There is also a much greater appetite on Capitol Hill for taking legal action against those responsible. Diane Feinstein, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman, has urged Mr Obama to withhold judgment on possible prosecutions until the end of the year when her panel should have completed an inquiry.

The three Bush Administration lawyers who signed the memos, John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, are expected to be sharply criticised by an internal Justice Department inquiry, which could recommend they be disbarred or even prosecuted.

Mr Obama said yesterday that the memos showed how America had lost its “moral bearings” during this period, adding that “if and when there needs to be a further accounting of what took place” Congress should consider a bipartisan inquiry without the usual point-scoring.

“We should be looking forward and not backwards. I do worry about this getting so politicised that we cannot function effectively and it hampers our ability to carry out critical national security operations,” he said.

At a later White House briefing, press secretary Robert Gibbs said that Mr Obama had made plain that no one is “above the rule of law” but that any decision “would rightly be made” by the Attorney-General rather than the President himself.

When pressed for more details about an independent inquiry Mr Gibbs said that Mr Obama regarded the 9/11 Commission, set up to investigate the terror attacks on the US seven years ago, as a model but emphasised that Congress would also have a big say over the shape and scope of such a panel.

Mr Obama’s decision to publish the documents has been criticised by former — and some current — CIA officials, who have warned that it gives terrorists too much knowledge of how far any interrogation they might face would go.

Dick Cheney, the former Vice-President, said he found it a “little bit disturbing” that Mr Obama had chosen to publish only information showing what was done to detainees rather than the crucial information gleaned from such interrogations.

“I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw, that lay out what we learnt through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country,” he told Fox News.

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