An internal watchdog office at the Justice Department is investigating whether Bush administration attorneys violated professional standards by issuing legal opinions that authorized the CIA to use water-boarding and other harsh interrogation techniques, officials disclosed Friday.

H. Marshall Jarrett, counsel for the Office of Professional Responsibility, wrote in a letter to Democratic lawmakers that his office is investigating the circumstances surrounding Justice documents that established a legal basis for the CIA's interrogation program, including a now-infamous memo from August 2002 that narrowly defined torture and has since been rescinded by the department.

The inquiry is the second publicly disclosed Justice investigation related to the CIA's use of water-boarding, a type of simulated drowning that is considered torture by most human-rights groups and legal scholars.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey in January assigned a special U.S. attorney to investigate whether CIA officials committed crimes by destroying videotapes that show the interrogations of two high-level Al-Qaida detainees, including one who was water-boarded.

The Office of Professional Responsibility is not empowered to conduct criminal investigations, but it can recommend them. The results of its investigations are usually confidential. But in his letter Monday to Sens. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Jarrett wrote that investigators will consider releasing the results of the torture-related probe publicly "because of the significant public interest in this matter."
 Second Justice inquiry of waterboarding revealed revauthorization
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