After Tough Week, Gonzales Says He Remains Focused

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales met privately with top members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday to offer an olive branch, but he did not seem too happy about it.

Gonzales had agreed to let Congress limit his powers and interview Justice Department officials as part of an escalating battle over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. He knew that another scandal on FBI abuses was about to break and that some GOP lawmakers were hinting that he was in over his head.

"What else do you want us to do?" the normally taciturn Gonzales asked in exasperation, according to several officials with knowledge of the meeting.

For two years, Gonzales, 51, has led the Justice Department through a series of prominent controversies, including complaints of political meddling in civil rights cases and clashes over the powers of the federal government to detain terrorism suspects and spy on Americans. But under the protection of a Republican Congress, and insulated by his status as one of President Bush's closest confidants, Gonzales emerged largely unscathed.

Now, the former White House counsel finds himself at the center of two of the fiercest political disputes to recently engulf the Bush administration, which is already coping with a deteriorating Iraq war and a newly Democratic Congress. Some of the sharpest criticism has come from fellow Republicans, including a suggestion by Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) that Gonzales may leave office soon.

Bush said yesterday that his administration is working to halt law enforcement abuses of new anti-terrorism intelligence-gathering powers, and he expressed continued confidence in Gonzales and in FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.

Gonzales, who has served Bush for 12 years in Texas and Washington, said in an interview that he remains "focused on my job."

"I don't have the luxury of being discouraged," Gonzales said. "I've got the kind of job where you can't do that."

He added later, referring to the FBI scandal: "If there are questions raised, I have an obligation to make sure that we're doing things in the right way. I expect people to do their jobs. And if they don't, there's going to be accountability."

His comments came at the end of an unquestionably difficult week for Gonzales, who managed to anger lawmakers in both parties by dismissing the U.S. attorney firings in a newspaper column as an "overblown personnel matter." The description did not play well in the wake of public hearings in which several fired prosecutors alleged that they had been the targets of possible intimidation by GOP lawmakers and the Justice Department.

Then came news Friday that the FBI had abused its expanded authority under the USA Patriot Act antiterrorism law to seize the personal records of thousands of Americans and legal residents, a revelation that angered libertarian Republicans as much as liberal Democrats.

The kicker came out of a courtroom in Miami, where federal prosecutors had to admit that the government had lost the videotape of the final interrogation of terrorism suspect Jose Padilla, posing a serious risk to the case.