Bush, Key Senator Still Backing Gonzales

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales takes a question during a news conference in Washington, Friday, March 9, 2007.Gonzales approved plans to fire several U.S. attorneys in a November meeting, according to documents released Friday that contradict earlier claims that he was not closely involved in the dismissals. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, FILE) (Charles Dharapak - AP)

Also, several Republicans in both the House and Senate said they needed to learn more about how closely he was involved in the firings. Still stopping short of calling for Gonzales' resignation, Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., "thinks it's better to have an attorney general that Congress has confidence in," spokesman R.C. Hammond said.

At issue were statements Gonzales made at a March 13 news conference that appear to conflict with what the documents show.

On that day, Gonzales portrayed himself as largely unaware of the process of firing the prosecutors, depending instead on then-chief of staff Kyle Sampson _ who resigned March 12 _ to handle it.

"I never saw documents," Gonzales said then. "We never had a discussion about where things stood. What I knew was that there was ongoing effort that was led by Mr. Sampson, vetted through the Department of Justice, to ascertain where we could make improvements in U.S. attorney performances around the country."

At the same news conference, Gonzales said he was "very dismayed" that the department may have given incomplete or misleading information to Senate and House panels investigating whether firings were politically motivated. The attorney general said he would take "corrective actions" to prevent it happening again.

The new documents, however, included a page from Gonzales' calendar that shows he participated in an hourlong Nov. 27 meeting with five senior officials at the department to discuss the firings.

At the meeting, aides said, Gonzales approved detailed "roll out" plans for the firings. That plan involved notifying Republican home-state senators of the impending dismissals, preparing for potential political upheaval, naming replacements and submitting them to the Senate for confirmation.

Six of the eight prosecutors who were ordered to resign are named in the plan.

"A good lawyer will tell you, when the story keeps changing, it's usually because someone has something to hide," Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., renewing his demand that Gonzales quit.

Roehrkasse, the Justice spokesman, said Gonzales does not remember "deliberations over which U.S. attorneys should or should not be replaced."

"Towards the end of the process, he recalls a discussion with Kyle Sampson about the list of names recommended for replacement and some of the considerations that went into those recommendations," Roehrkasse said of Gonzales. "He concurred."

There is little in the thousands of department documents released over the past two weeks that directly name Gonzales. An e-mail from Jan. 9, 2005, mentions a conversation between Gonzales and Sampson about White House suggestions to replace all 93 U.S. attorneys as part of a second-term house cleaning.

"Judge and I discussed briefly a couple of weeks ago," Sampson wrote back to White House aide David Leitch; Gonzales is a former Texas state Supreme Court justice. The across-the-board firings, however, were ultimately rejected. Gonzales himself called it a "bad idea" and "disruptive."

Sampson is scheduled to testify Thursday before Leahy's committee about his _ and, presumably, Gonzales' _ role in planning and carrying out the dismissals.

One e-mail in the new batch of documents highlights anew the White House's political team involvement in the firings.

"Does a list of all vacant, or about to be vacant, US Attorney slots exist anywhere?" White House deputy political director J. Scott Jennings wrote in an e-mail to Sampson last Dec. 3. The e-mail, titled "USATTY" was written from the Internet domain address of "gwb43.com," which is registered to the National Republican Committee.

Sampson answered back a few minutes later, the e-mails show. "My office. Want me to send to you tomorrow?" he wrote.

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Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.