WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama told Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to take all legal measures to block hefty bonuses awarded to employees of AIG AIG.N, the insurance company that received up to $180 billion in bailout money, a White House adviser said on Monday.

“The president told Secretary Geithner ... to take every legal means that he has to push back against this, to figure out who put this in the contracts and when, and to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Austan Goolsbee, a member of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, told Reuters Financial Television.

“Obviously we’re not going to break the law, but there are a number of legal means that we have to push back, and the president instructed Secretary Geithner to do so,” he said. (Reporting by Emily Kaiser; Editing by Dan Grebler)