House Republican Leader John A. Boehner Thursday slammed proposals for investigations into harsh interrogation methods used on terrorism suspects under the George W. Bush administration, as a key Senate Republican accused the Obama administration of politicizing national security issues.

With leading congressional Democrats calling for either committee hearings or an independent investigation into methods that critics say amounted to illegal torture, Boehner, R-Ohio, said such probes would yield nothing new and might even make the country less safe.

“I don’t see what we’re going to learn that congressional leaders didn’t already know,” Boehner said. He said after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Republican and Democratic leaders were regularly briefed on the interrogation of terrorism suspects and that as far as he knew, no one raised objections.

Democrats have said they didn’t know all the details of the methods used and even if they did couldn’t raise public objections because their briefings were secret.

Boehner reacted strongly when he was asked about whether anyone from the Bush administration should pay a price for allowing torture.

“I’m not going to allow our professionals and our allies around the world to get denigrated because they were working to keep our country safe,” he said.

Across the Capitol, Sen. Christopher S. Bond , R-Mo., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “The administration has ‘cherry-picked’ the release of classified information that only tells the side of the story they want to share.”

Bond said the White House withheld details showing the program’s value. He cited a letter he said was circulated to the intelligence community by Obama’s director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis C. Blair , the same day Obama released the CIA memos. Blair said the harsh interrogations produced “high-value information” and gave the U.S. government a “deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country,” Bond said.

“Protecting American families from terrorist attacks should not be a political issue,” Bond said.