Gonzales defends firings

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Alberto Gonzales rejected growing calls for his resignation Tuesday as scores of newly released documents detailed a two-year campaign by the Justice Department and White House to purge federal prosecutors.

Gonzales acknowledged his department mishandled the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys and misled Congress about how they were fired. He said he was ultimately to blame for those “mistakes” but stood by the firings.

“I acknowledge that mistakes were made here,” Gonzales told reporters at a news briefing. “I accept that responsibility.”

“…I believe very strongly in our obligation to ensure that when I provide information to the Congress that it’s accurate and that it’s complete. And I am very dismayed that that may not have occurred here,” he said.

Gonzales also accepted the resignation of his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. The aide, along with then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers, had begun discussing possible firings of U.S. attorneys in early 2005, according to e-mails released Tuesday.

Democrats clamored for Gonzales to resign. Republicans also said they were outraged at being misled over the circumstances of the firings. GOP Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a Judiciary Committee member, said the situation could cause Gonzales to “die by a thousand cuts.”

For nearly two months, Democrats have accused the Justice Department of playing politics with the prosecutors’ jobs. Top Justice officials, including Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, have maintained in congressional testimony the dismissals were based on the prosecutors’ performance, not politics.

The e-mails released Tuesday revealed that the firings were considered and discussed for two years by Justice Department and White House officials. The issue first arose in a February 2005 discussion between Sampson and Miers, officials said.

At the time, Miers suggested the possibility of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys. Such purges of the political appointees often come at the beginning of a new president’s administration, not midway through.

The e-mails show Sampson discouraged the across-the-board housecleaning but began a review to weed out prosecutors whom the administration deemed to be performing poorly.

Sampson then drew up an elaborate five-step plan to replace the targeted prosecutors with as little political fallout as possible, which he sent in a Nov. 15, 2006, e-mail to Miers, deputy White House counsel William Kelley and McNulty.

White House approval came a month later.

John McKay of Seattle was one of the eight U.S. attorneys whose dismissal has raised a firestorm in Congress; he was dismissed in December.

The other seven fired prosecutors headed the U.S. attorneys’ offices in Albuquerque, N.M.; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Las Vegas; Little Rock, Ark.; Phoenix; San Diego; and San Francisco.