Washington ? Alberto Gonzales was confirmed by the Senate as the nation’s first Hispanic attorney general Thursday after contentious debate in which his controversial role as a legal architect of the Bush administration’s policy toward suspected terrorists overshadowed his rags-to-riches life story.

Gonzales was approved on a 60-36 vote, with all of the “no” votes coming from Democrats, plus the Senate’s lone independent.

Vice President Dick Cheney later swore in Gonzales in a private ceremony at the White House, according to a White House spokeswoman.

Several Democrats spoke out sharply against Gonzales, 49, for his role in crafting a pair of memos in 2002 that critics say laid the foundation for a wide-ranging series of abuses, including torture of suspects detained in the war on terror.

Gonzales “was at the center of an overly aggressive legal framework for the interrogation of detainees” in which torture “was either permitted or perceived to be permitted,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

In particular, Levin and other Democrats pointed to a January 2002 memo written by Gonzales as White House counsel in which he argued that the Geneva Conventions setting standards for the humane treatment of prisoners did not necessarily apply to al-Qaida or Taliban detainees.

Gonzales also commissioned a since-repudiated Justice Department memo that stated that harsh treatment of prisoners did not meet the definition of torture unless it caused pain equivalent to organ failure or death.

Republican senators complained that Democrats were making Gonzales a fall guy for legal opinions written by Justice Department lawyers and for interrogation policies devised by the Defense Department.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, noted that Gonzales in his Senate confirmation hearing last month rejected the use of torture. “Sooner or later you’ve got to take people at their word,” Hatch said.

He and other Republicans repeatedly tried to bring attention back to Gonzales’ Horatio Alger biography as the son of immigrant Mexican laborers who went to Harvard Law School, became a successful corporate lawyer, and eventually Bush’s White House attorney.

Gonzales succeeds John Ashcroft.