Prosecutor purge dogs White House by Olivier Knox
Fri Mar 16, 12:36 PM ET
The White House on Friday faced growing calls, even from Republican allies, for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign or be fired as a controversy over purged federal prosecutors deepened.
Late Thursday, newly released electronic mail suggested that US President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, played a bigger role in the decision to remove a handful of US Attorneys than the White House has said.
Democrats, who took control of the US Congress from Bush's Republicans in November, seized on the news to renew their calls for top officials to testify before lawmakers in what could be damaging hearings for the White House.
"Karl Rove was in the middle of this mess from the beginning. It is now imperative that he testify before Congress and give all the details of his involvement," said Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer.
"The reason it's so imperative that people testify under oath is that every time new information comes out, it proves that the White House was not telling the truth in their previous statements," he charged.
At the White House, spokesman Tony Snow said White House counsel Fred Fielding was still in discussions with lawmakers about the best way to provide information but declined to promise that top aides would speak under oath.
"There has been no decision at this juncture about whether there will or will not be such participation," he said.
The Justice Department has acknowledged misleading lawmakers by providing incomplete information about the firings of seven prosecutors in early December 2006, but has said they were removed for performance-related issues.
Another was pushed in June 2006 to resign and finally left office in late December. The White House says it very briefly considered replacing all 93 US attorneys but quickly shot down that notion.
Critics have charged that some of them were fired for political reasons, noting that one, Carol Lam in California, played a central role in a major corruption case that led to a prison term for a Republican congressman and may have led to the resignation of a top CIA official.
Another was the target of complaints by Republican elected officials that eventually reached Bush -- though he has denied ordering the removal of any specific US attorneys.
And White House officials deny any wrongdoing, noting that Bush praised the investigation and conviction of the Republican congressman, Randall "Duke" Cunningham.
Snow has also brushed aside talk of Gonzales resigning and, when asked Friday whether Bush would fire the attorney general, carefully replied "I know of no such plan."
In the US Congress, two Republicans have openly called for Gonzales to go, while others have stopped short of that while saying they have lost confidence in the attorney general and others that they are deeply troubled.
"The president should fire the attorney general and replace him as soon as possible with someone who can provide strong, aggressive leadership," Republican Senator John Sununu (news, bio, voting record) said Wednesday.
The purge is not Gonzales's only headache: He also faces controversies tied to the revelations that the FBI abused its power to get Americans' personal information and a news report accusing him of helping to quash an internal probe that might have targeted him.
The National Journal publication that covers US politics said Gonzales advised Bush to shut down the investigation into the warrantless wiretapping program the president ordered after the September 11 terrorist attacks at a time when Gonzales knew his own conduct might come under scrutiny.
The American Civil Liberties Union has called for a special prosecutor to investigate the program after Bush shuttered the original internal probe in April 2006. |
