The president got a standing ovation at Congress this week for reiterating his pledge to empty the prison camps at Guantánamo Bay. What he didn't mention is that some tough decisions still await.

Some on Capitol Hill and the human rights community seek a Truth Commission with subpoena power to examine U.S. detention policy worldwide. Others want the government to widen a Bush era probe into the CIA's destruction of interrogation videos.

One month into the Obama administration, Attorney General Eric Holder made his first visit to the base as he figures out where to move the 240 or so detainees -- who range from alleged al Qaeda arch-terrorists snatched around the globe to suspected foot soldiers seized in Afghanistan.

''It's going to take us a good portion of that time to look at all of the files that we have to examine, until we get our hands around what Guantánamo is, and also what Guantánamo was,'' Holder told reporters Wednesday.

He spoke even as Guantánamo advocates are cranking up a grass-roots campaign to keep the prison camps and a renewed round of Congressional camp tours that highlight the indignities that U.S. guards have had to endure.

By week's end, the White House had already retreated from one Bush detention decision. It indicted Ali Saleh al Marri, 43, the lone ''enemy combatant'' on U.S. soil, on charges he provided material support for terrorism.

Marri has been jailed without charges at a Navy brig for five-plus years on suspicions he was part of an al Qaeda sleeper cell. Charging him headed off a Supreme Court showdown over presidential powers in that case.

Meantime, the Justice Department is deciding which other cases to defend in the courts -- from Guantánamo habeas corpus petitions to the role of a Boeing Co. unit in shuttling U.S. rendered detainees around the globe.

`TOUGH DECISIONS'

''There will be tough strategic decisions to make that have legal, policy and political dimensions,'' said Columbia University Professor Matthew Waxman, who oversaw detainee affairs at the Pentagon in 2004 and 2005.

Together, he says, they reflect ``a tension between the new administration's specific desire to distance itself from Bush administration policies and positions and its general desire to preserve executive powers and prerogatives.''

Obama himself demonstrated that tension during his first prime-time White House press conference, answering a blogger's question about accountability efforts.

''My view is also that nobody's above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen,'' he said. ``My general orientation is to say let's get it right moving forward.''

Counters Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union: ``There's no way to move forward without looking back.''

Accountability advocates say the effort breaks down to three separate tracks:

• The Truth Commission, sought by some to shed light on the global detention network the Bush White House set up.

A University of San Francisco law professor is leading a nongovernmental effort to gather oral histories and hold public hearings to let freed detainees tell their stories.

Michigan Rep. John Conyers has introduced legislation to create an independent commission with national security clearances and subpoena power ``to review the existing record, make policy recommendations and publish an authoritative account of these events.''

SENATE HEARINGS

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, like Conyers a Democrat, holds hearings next week at the Senate Judiciary Committee on what topics a ''truth and reconciliation commission'' should tackle.

• A more robust Justice Department probe, with ideas ranging from creation of an independent prosecutor to expansion of two ongoing investigations.

One looks at the CIA's destruction of interrogation videos of two war on terror captives, both now at Guantánamo, who were waterboarded in secret custody. Holder has said he considers waterboarding to be torture.

At issue, for now, is not the waterboarding but whether the order and decision to destroy the tapes was legal.

The other looks at whether Justice Department appointees committed ethical lapses in advising on the permissibility of certain ``enhanced interrogation techniques.''

• Lawsuits, which the GOP-led Justice Department fought vigorously in the federal courts and name Bush-era defendants.

Civil liberties lawyers filed a lawsuit in federal court days into the Obama administration against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others alleging torture, arbitrary detention and wrongful death over two Arabs who hanged themselves in their cells at Guantánamo in the summer of 2006.

The civil action, the first fresh torture lawsuit of the Obama era, seeks unspecified damages as the opening salvo in a campaign seeking accountability.