Gonzales: going, going, gone?

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[q]Gonzales faces calls for resignation, cancels trip

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales abruptly canceled travel plans Tuesday amid growing calls for his ouster over the firings of eight federal prosecutors during a White House-directed housecleaning of U.S. attorneys.

Gonzales also accepted the resignation of his top aide, Kyle Sampson, who authorities said failed to brief other senior Justice Department officials of his discussions about the firings with then-White House counsel Harriet Miers. Miers resigned in January.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, who is leading a Senate investigation of the firings, called for the second time in three days for Gonzales to step down.

Additionally, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said Gonzales "ought to be shown the door -- he ought not to be in this administration. We have got to end corruption in our government. It is not OK to be corrupt."

Gonzales was expected to respond to the criticism as early as Tuesday afternoon. Sampson declined comment.

The government's 93 U.S. attorneys are presidential appointees who can be hired and fired at will. But critics say the fate of the eight who were dismissed last year appeared to have been politically motivated. And Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike said they were outraged that Justice Department officials weren't forthcoming on how the firings unfolded -- even when asked, under oath, by Congress.

A Justice Department official said Tuesday that Miers, in a February 2005 discussion with Sampson, suggested firing all of the U.S. attorneys. White House spokesman Tony Snow described the idea as a move to get fresh faces in the 4-year term jobs, and said that it was not a firm recommendation by Miers.

Sampson, according to the Justice official, rejected the idea to fire all of the prosecutors but spent the next year drawing up a list of potential dismissals. On January 9, 2006, Sampson sent Miers a memo listing what the official described as roughly 10 names of prosecutors who were viewed as underperforming in their jobs.

By September, Sampson began moving forward with the firings, the Justice official said. The White House did not ask for names to be added or removed from that list, the official said. Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty signed off on the list around that time, the official said.

Gonzales was aware of the discussions with the White House, but McNulty and other senior department officials were not, the official said.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, called the Justice Department's management dysfunctional for sending Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Will Moschella to testify before the panel last week "without knowing all the facts."

"They're going to have to come up with some answers," Sensenbrenner said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press. "If they don't, they're going to lose everyone's confidence."

"What I'd like to hear is the truth," he said, complaining about the Justice Department's different explanations for the dismissals. If that record is not corrected, Sensenbrenner said, "then the Justice Department and the attorney general himself are going to die by a thousand cuts."

Allegations of pressure

President Bush made "no recommendations on specific individuals," Snow said. "We don't have anything to indicate the president made any calls on specific us attorneys."

On Monday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino acknowledged that complaints about the job performance of prosecutors occasionally came to the White House and were passed on to the Justice Department, perhaps including some informally from Bush to Gonzales.

Some of the prosecutors who were fired have said they felt pressured by powerful Republicans in their home states to rush investigations of potential voter fraud involving Democrats.

Perino said deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, vaguely recalls telling Miers that he also thought firing all 93 was ill-advised.

Dating back to mid-2004, the White House's legislative affairs, political affairs and chief of staff's office had received complaints from a variety of sources about the lack of vigorous prosecution of election fraud cases in various locations, including Philadelphia, Milwaukee and New Mexico, she said

Those complaints were passed on to the Justice Department or Miers' office.

"The president recalls hearing complaints about election fraud not being vigorously prosecuted and believes he may have informally mentioned it to the attorney general during a brief discussion on other Department of Justice matters," Perino said, adding that the conversation would have taken place in October 2006.

"At no time did any White House officials, including the president, direct the Department of Justice to take specific action against any individual U.S. attorney," Perino said.

Democrats target Rove

Congressional Democrats have also singled out Rove for questioning about the firings of the eight prosecutors and whether the dismissals were politically motivated.

Those demands to question Rove signaled anew Democrats' shifting focus beyond the Justice Department and toward the White House in the inquiry.

Last week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Michigan, said he would seek to interview Miers and deputy counsel William Kelly for insight on their roles, if any, in the firings.

Rove emerged as the Democrats' newest target after weekend news reports said the New Mexico Republican Party's chairman urged Rove to fire David Iglesias, then the state's U.S. attorney.

In a statement Monday, Conyers said stories about Rove's alleged link to Iglesias' dismissal "raise even more alarm bells for us."

"As a result, we would want to ensure that Karl Rove was one of the White House staff that we interview in connection with our investigation," said Conyers.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, who is leading his chamber's probe into the firings, said he also wants to question Rove.

In an interview this weekend with The Associated Press, New Mexico GOP chairman Allen Weh said Iglesias' "termination had already occurred" by the time he spoke with Rove at a holiday party last December. But Weh made no secret of his dissatisfaction with Iglesias, in part from the prosecutor's failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation.

The White House has said previously that Rove wasn't involved in the firings, but did alert Miers to complaints about Iglesias. It was not immediately clear whether Rove also told Gonzales about the complaints.

Last week, Rove called the two-month controversy "a very big attempt by some in the Congress to make a political stink about it."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

[/q]
 
ABC News

EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Clinton Calls for Gonzales' Resignation
Senator Tells ABC News 'Buck Should Stop Somewhere' Over Issue of Fired Attorneys
By JAKE TAPPER AND CINDY SMITH

March 13, 2007 — - In an exclusive interview to air Wednesday morning, March 14, on "Good Morning America," Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, for the first time called for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

"The buck should stop somewhere," Clinton told ABC News senior political correspondent Jake Tapper, "and the attorney general -- who still seems to confuse his prior role as the president's personal attorney with his duty to the system of justice and to the entire country -- should resign.

"I'm deeply disturbed by what we have learned thus far," Clinton said, "and I join those who are calling for a full and thorough investigation to try to get to the bottom of these very political decisions that interfere with prosecutorial responsibility by U.S. attorneys, and I think that the attorney general should resign."

Clinton said the evidence so far pointed to "direct interference with the way U.S. attorneys are supposed to operate -- to be impartial. There's evidence of political interference and political pressure being put on them to engage in partisan political activities." Clinton added there were "so many examples of an abuse of power, of going in and removing people not on the basis of performance but, in fact, because they were performing well, they were fulfilling their responsibilities as a U.S. attorney, and that wasn't within the political agenda of the administration."

When Clinton's husband took office in 1993, one of the first actions his attorney general took was to remove every U.S. attorney. Clinton was asked how this was different from the termination of eight U.S. attorneys last December.

"There is a great difference," Clinton said. "When a new president comes in, a new president gets to clean house. It's not done on a case-by-case basis where you didn't do what some senator or member of Congress told you to do in terms of investigations into your opponents. It is 'Let's start afresh' and every president has done that."

When asked what she'd like to see from President Bush and White House aide Karl Rove, Clinton said, "The president needs to be very forthcoming -- what did he say, what did he know, what did he do? And Karl Rove is clearly in the middle of this from all the evidence we have seen so far, and I think he owes the Congress and the country an explanation."
 
Gonzales will be gone by friday.

too bad. but that's what being an unblinking loyalist to this president gets you.
 
It's only a matter of time.

Bush is becoming a good predictor. When he praises somebody, you know they're gone within the next week. :wink:

This is such a criminal administration that it would be hilarious were it not so tragic.
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:
Yeah those who claim this administration love their country I find laughable.


Of course the Bush regime loves it since they can manipulate the electorate, empty the government coffers, do pretty much whatever they feel like and get away with it. What a country!!! :wink:
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:
Yeah those who claim this administration love their country I find laughable.


That immediately reminded me of something Erich Mielke, the chief of the Eastern Germany Stasi, said when the citizens were protesting against the regime: "But I love you all."
 
Well at least one Republican has the courage to say it..

First GOP senator says Bush should fire Gonzales
By Klaus Marre, The Hill
March 14, 2007

John Sununu (N.H.) Wednesday became the first Senate Republican to call on President Bush to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

“The President should fire the Attorney General and replace him as soon as possible with someone who can provide strong, aggressive leadership prosecuting the war on terrorism, running the Department of Justice, and working with the President and Congress on important homeland security matters,” Sununu said in a statement.

The senator has often been critical of the Department of Justice under Gonzales and said earlier Wednesday that his confidence in the attorney general’s leadership was “weak to begin with.”

In order to fight terrorists at home and abroad effectively, Sununu argued that the country would need “a strong, credible Attorney General who holds the confidence of Congress and the American people.”

He added: “I do not believe Alberto Gonzales can fill that role.”
 
Subpoena :drool:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Thursday he doesn't care what the White House and Justice Department think of his subpoenas -- he wants answers.

In a voice vote, the committee authorized the use of subpoenas to elicit testimony from five current and former Justice Department officials in the probe into the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys. Subpoenas were authorized for six of the attorneys as well.

"If I do not get the cooperation, I will subpoena," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, the panel's chairman, during the Thursday hearing. "We will have testimony under oath before this committee. We'll have the chance for both Republicans and Democrats to ask questions, and we'll find out what happened."

But the committee's ranking Republican warned against moving too hastily.

"I think the subpoena issue has to be handled with great delicacy because when a subpoena is issued there is a suggestion that the person will not come in voluntarily," said Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. "When the person will not come in voluntarily, there is a suggestion that the person has something to hide."

The committee postponed a vote on the authorization to use subpoenas to compel White House officials to testify, including President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, and former White House counsel Harriet Miers.

Most of the federal prosecutors claim they were the political casualties of rankling the White House, and some say they were pressured by members of Congress to expedite politically charged cases.

Justice Department officials initially told Congress the removals were performance-related, which prompted an outcry from the fired lawyers.

The administration later admitted one of the fired prosecutors had been removed to make way for a former aide to Rove but said the remainder were fired over management concerns and policy disagreements.

"I'm surprised that they're saying that there's no politics involved, and we're still 2½ weeks away from April Fool's Day," Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, told CNN on Wednesday. "How can they possibly stand there with a straight face and say that's not politics? Of course it's politics."
 
Congress Must Force Gonzales Out
March 15, 2007(The Nation) This column was written by John Nichols.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says he is not going anywhere.

Never mind that he is caught up in the biggest scandal involving a sitting Attorney General since the sordid days of the 1920s.

Never mind that the scandal that plagues Gonzales involves the same sort of concerns about the politicization of the Department of Justice and the federal bureaucracy that ultimately forced Richard Nixon from office in the 1970s.

Never mind that even Republicans are saying the firing of U.S. attorneys who would not agree to launch pre-election prosecutions of Democrats has created "a crisis with the Justice Department" — to borrow a phrase from conservative Nevada Senator John Ensign — while Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are beginning to echo the assessment of New York Senator Charles Schumer, who says that Gonzales has engaged in an "unprecedented breach of trust and abuse of power."

Never mind that Schumer well sums up the crisis when he says that Gonzales has "either forgotten the oath he took to uphold the Constitution or doesn't understand that his duty to uphold the law is greater than his duty to protect the president."

Never mind that Schumer and a growing number of senators and presidential candidates have called on Gonzales to step down.

Gonzales knows that calls for his resignation are no more consequential than complaints about his disregard for the rule of law when it comes to torture and civil liberties.

While he may in fact have violated his oath of office and placed himself in direct conflict with the Constitution, the Attorney General claims that he is accountable only to his president.

"I work for the American people and serve at the pleasure of the president," says Gonzales.

President Bush, the Attorney General argues, will decide whether he will continue to run the Justice Department.

Gonzales ought to peruse his Constitution a little more closely.

The Attorney General does serve at the pleasure of the president, who nominated him to serve in the position two years ago and who, according to initial White House statements, "has all the confidence in the world" in Gonzales.

But Gonzales occupies the venerable position of Attorney General because the Senate, which is empowered by the Constitution to provide the president with advice and consent regarding Cabinet picks, consented to his becoming the nation's chief law enforcement officer.




http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/15/opinion/printable2572926.shtml
 
By JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG
EXCLUSIVE: E-Mails Show Rove's Role in U.S. Attorney Firings

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2954988&page=2
March 15, 2007 — New unreleased e-mails from top administration officials show that the idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys was raised by White House adviser Karl Rove in early January 2005, indicating Rove was more involved in the plan than the White House previously acknowledged.

The e-mails also show that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales discussed the idea of firing the attorneys en masse while he was still White House counsel, weeks before he was confirmed as attorney general.

The e-mails directly contradict White House assertions that the notion originated with recently departed White House counsel Harriet Miers, and was her idea alone.

Two independent sources in a position to know have described the contents of the e-mail exchange, which could be released as early as Friday. They put Rove at the epicenter of the imbroglio and raise questions about Gonzales' explanations of the matter.

The e-mail exchange is dated early January 2005, more than a month before the White House acknowledged it was considering firing all the U.S. attorneys — and while Gonzales was still White House counsel. On its face, the plan is not improper, inappropriate or even unusual: The president has the right to fire U.S. attorneys at any time, and presidents have done so when they took office.

What has made the issue a political firestorm is the White House's insistence that the idea came from Miers and was swiftly rejected.

White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters Tuesday that Miers had suggested firing all 93, and that it was "her idea only." Snow said Miers' idea was quickly rejected by the Department of Justice.However, Miers was Bush's staff secretary at that time in January 2005. She did not become White House counsel for another month, after Gonzales left to become attorney general.

The latest e-mails show that Gonzales and Rove were both involved in the discussion, and neither rejected it out of hand.

According to the e-mails, Rove raised the issue with then-deputy White House Counsel David Leitch, prompting Leitch to e-mail Kyle Sampson, then a lawyer for the Justice Department. Sampson moved over to the Justice Department after working with Gonzales at the White House.

Sampson responded to Leitch that he had discussed the idea with Gonzales two weeks earlier, and that they were considering several different options.
 
I wonder...the 28% who still support Bush - do they find this acceptable? I mean, is it a total lost cause even trying to point out the corruption and shamefulness of this administration to them?
 
anitram said:
I wonder...the 28% who still support Bush - do they find this acceptable? I mean, is it a total lost cause even trying to point out the corruption and shamefulness of this administration to them?

They'll justify it somehow-and when all else fails, start talking about Clinton's blow jobs.

Second Republican says Gonzales should go

A second Senate Republican stepped forward today to say that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should leave his post because of the way the Justice Department handled the firings of eight federal prosecutors, USA TODAY's Kathy Kiely tells us.

"For the Justice Department to be effective before the U.S. Senate, it would be helpful" if Gonzales resigned, Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., told Kiely.

Meanwhile, GOP Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota said he is "deeply concerned about how this whole process has been handled." Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he was "withholding judgment" on Gonzales' tenure, but characterized the attorney general's explanations for the firings as "unacceptable" and "mystifying."
 
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are the drumbeats getting louder?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Arkansas Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor bluntly accused Attorney General Alberto Gonzales of lying to the Senate about replacing federal prosecutors with interim appointees and joined calls for Gonzales' resignation Thursday.

"When an attorney general lies to a United States senator, I think it is time for that attorney general to go," Pryor said on the Senate floor.
 
Rohrabacher voices harsh criticism of DoJ, Gonzales
By Klaus Marre
March 16, 2007

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (Calif.) on Friday became the latest Republican to strongly criticize the Department of Justice (DoJ) and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, but he stopped short of calling for Gonzales’s resignation.

“It is ultimately the President’s decision but perhaps it would benefit this Administration if the Attorney General was replaced with someone with a more professional focus rather than personal loyalty,” Rohrabacher said.

While the administration’s handling of the firing of eight U.S. attorneys has led Democrats to call for Gonzales’s resignation, the fallout of the growing scandal has also revealed that some Republicans have deep reservations about the attorney general and DoJ on a variety of issues.

For Rohrabacher, one such issue is the case of imprisoned border patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.

“There’s been a pattern of arrogance in this Administration,” Rohrabacher said. “They’ve demonstrated contempt for Congressional oversight and now we see a misuse of FBI authority, heavy-handed firings of U.S. Attorneys along with the ruthless prosecutions.
 
Hazy memories, like the corners of my mind...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House on Friday backed away from its earlier version of whose idea it was to get rid some of the 93 U.S. attorneys, which has grown into a scandal that threatens Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' job.

The White House said previously the idea for sacking federal prosecutors in Bush's second term came from former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, who wanted "new blood" in those offices. Miers became White House counsel after Gonzales moved to the attorney general's office.

But on Friday, White House press secretary Tony Snow said, "It has been described as her idea, but ... I don't want to try to vouch for origination. At this juncture, people have hazy memories."
 
I read the title to this thread, and thought it might be about this story:

Off-Duty Baggage Worker Charged With Assault On Flight
NWA Assault Criminal Complaint


(WCCO) Minneapolis An off-duty airline employee was arrested after a woman on a flight from Seattle complained that the man had ejaculated on her.

The FBI identified the man as Samuel Oscar Gonzalez, 20, of Lakewood, Wash. He was charged in federal court with simple assault, a misdemeanor.

It happened on the redeye Monday morning from Seattle to Minneapolis. The woman was headed back to college.

Near the end of the flight, the FBI said Gonzalez sat next to the woman as she was trying to sleep. He touched her, which she described as spooning, lifted her shirt and then got up and left. Court documents said she felt a warm fluid on her back, clothes and seat after he walked away. She told the officers he had ejaculated on her.

The woman told the flight attendants about the incident. They moved her to another seat and called police from the air. The crew also moved the man to a seat near the front of the plane until the end of the flight.

Northwest Airlines Corp. said the flight crew asked that police meet the flight from Seattle when it arrived early Monday in Minneapolis, and that's where officers arrested Gonzalez.

The victim told her boyfriend she was told Gonzalez is a Northwest employee.

"I know she was really upset, just kind of confused about what's going on, what's happening," said the victim's boyfriend, Mark, who asked to be identified only by his first name.

Northwest said that Gonzalez was an equipment service worker, a category that includes baggage handlers, but said he was not working at the time.

They released a statement that said, “The NWA employee has been suspended pending a review of the incident. Northwest is cooperating fully with law enforcement authorities on this matter."

The FBI said Gonzalez was detained after his initial appearance in federal court on Monday. He could face up to six months in jail.

:yikes:
 
re: Gonzales: going, going, gone?

zoney! said:
I read the title to this thread, and thought it might be about this story:



:yikes:

except your Gonzales was not going.... gone.

it seems he was...

.... never mind.
 
I guess Bush is going to keep riding Gonzales all the way down

Perhaps he would like someone else to have lower poll numbers than him.


Bush Aides Worry About Bush's Loyalty to Gonzales

By Paul Bedard
Posted 3/16/07

There is a growing frustration among Republican strategists and even Bush advisers that the president will stick with troubled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales too long, causing damage to him just as his polls appear to be bottoming out.

"I worry that he hangs on to the AG long enough to do maximum damage to himself," said one adviser to the administration and congressional Republicans. A key congressional aide said Republicans fear he will repeat his firing of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, which came after the midterm election despite GOP calls for his ouster.

"It's about as frustrating as it was for them to hang on to Rumsfeld and then fire him the day after the election," said the aide. Another GOP adviser said that he had hoped Bush would "act like Bob Gates," the new defense secretary, who cleaned house after the Walter Reed Army Medical Center was hit for bad conditions.

But in keeping Gonzales amid deep concerns in the West Wing over the handling of the firing of federal prosecutors, the adviser said that the president is rekindling the image of incompetence.

"This nicely enhances the Democratic legend that the GOP is both corrupt and incompetent," the adviser said. "I am beginning to wish that Kerry won–at least we would still have Congress. What a crummy lost opportunity this entire second term has become."
 
Note to Gonzales on CIA Prosecution Preceded Firing of U.S. Attorney

By Chitra Ragavan
Posted 3/19/07

On May 11, 2006, Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, sent a confidential E-mail to the White House counsel's office regarding the "removal and replacement" of U.S. attorneys whose four-year terms had expired, including the U.S. attorney in San Diego, Carol Lam: "The real problem we have right now with Carol Lam," Sampson wrote, "that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires."

So what was the "real problem" that Sampson thought the administration had with Lam?

U.S. News has learned that on May 10, one day before Sampson's E-mail to the White House counsel's office, the U.S. attorney's office in San Diego alerted the Justice Department that the FBI would execute search warrants in two days for the No. 3 official at the CIA, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, in connection with the spiraling corruption probe into former Republican Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham of California.

Now Democratic members of Congress want to know whether that alert triggered Sampson's E-mail and whether Lam's firing and those of seven other federal prosecutors were politically motivated. Sampson's E-mail, sent one day after the alert, raises serious questions as to whether the CIA tried to intervene in a politically charged investigation and tried to get Lam fired.

In politically sensitive cases, the U.S. attorney's office notifies senior Justice Department leadership of developments in the case by sending what's known as an urgent report.

In this case, the U.S. attorney in San Diego sent an urgent report to Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty at 10:16 a.m. on May 10, notifying them of the imminent search. Foggo was under investigation for allegedly accepting gifts and favors from his best friend, a defense contractor named Brent Wilkes, who also allegedly was bribing Cunningham. Wilkes had close ties to prominent Republicans. Both Wilkes and Foggo have since been indicted by a federal grand jury on corruption charges. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Although the FBI had worked closely with the CIA in connection with targeting CIA spies like Aldrich Ames, never in the agency's history had such a search warrant been issued against such a high-level CIA official for nonespionage criminal conduct.
 
deep said:


i don't think so



it could be next friday, though


he very well may not make it to friday


they really can not claim executive privilage for him

they can make a case for Rove and Myers

White House Seeking Gonzales Replacements

By: Mike Allen
March 19, 2007 07:24 PM EST


Republican officials operating at the behest of the White House have begun seeking a possible successor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose support among GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill has collapsed, according to party sources familiar with the discussions.

Among the names floated Monday by administration officials are Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House anti-terrorism coordinator Frances Townsend. Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson is a White House prospect. So is former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, but sources were unsure whether he would want the job
 
White House Offers to Make Rove, Miers Available for Interview in Attorneys Probe



By PETE YOST and LARA JAKES JORDAN

WASHINGTON Mar 20, 2007 (AP)— The White House offered Tuesday to make political strategist Karl Rove and former counsel Harriet Miers available for interviews but not testimony under oath before congressional committees investigating the firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, said he would still press for White House aides to testify under oath, saying that White House counsel Fred Fielding "indicated he didn't want to negotiate" whether Rove and others would have to appear in a full hearing. "That doesn't mean we're not going to try," Schumer said.

The White House move was announced after the Senate voted overwhelmingly to end the Bush administration's ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies. That had come as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of the prosecutors.

Gonzales got a morale boost with an early-morning call from President Bush, their first conversation since a week ago, when the president said he was unhappy with how the Justice Department handled the firings.

The White House offered to arrange interviews with Rove, Miers, deputy White House counsel William Kelley and J. Scott Jennings, a deputy to White House political director Sara Taylor, who works for Rove.

"Such interviews would be private and conducted without the need for an oath, transcript, subsequent testimony, or the subsequent issuance of subpoenas," Fielding said in a letter to the chairman of the House and Senate judiciary committees.
 
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