Ex-Aide Contradicts Gonzales on Firings

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales former Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 29, 2007, before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Justice Department firings of U.S. Attorneys. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook) (Dennis Cook - AP)

After someone changes a story several times, Leahy said, "people tend not to believe it."

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Gonzales "has many questions to answer." Sampson's conflicting account with Gonzales' poses "a real question as to whether he's acting in a competent way as attorney general."

A growing number of Democrats and Republicans have called for Gonzales to step down.

The stony-faced Sampson, a longtime and loyal aide to Gonzales, said other senior Justice Department officials helped to plan the firings, which the White House first suggested shortly after President Bush won a second term in 2004.

Sampson said he was never aware of any case where prosecutors were told to step down because they refused to help Republicans in local election or corruption investigations. He also said he saw little difference between dismissing prosecutors for political reasons versus performance-related ones.

"A U.S. attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective, either because he or she has alienated the leadership of the department in Washington or cannot work constructively with law enforcement or other governmental constituencies in the district, is unsuccessful," Sampson said.

But Sampson admitted he should have been more careful to prevent Paul McNulty, the deputy attorney general, and William Moschella, the principal associate deputy attorney general, from giving incomplete or misleading information to Congress in describing the dismissals.

Sampson himself was unable to answer many of the senators' specific questions, claiming a fuzzy memory.

At one point, he recalled considering whether U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago should be among those dismissed. "Immediately after I did it, I regretted it," said Sampson of the 2006 conversation he said he had with Miers and her deputy, William Kelley. "I knew that it was the wrong thing to do. I knew that it was inappropriate."

Fitzgerald, who is widely regarded as one of the nation's top prosecutors, won convictions this month against former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the CIA leak case. He was appointed to head the investigation on Dec. 30, 2003.

Furor over the purge has outraged lawmakers and current U.S. attorneys. With televisions throughout the Justice Department tuned to Sampson's testimony, Gonzales spent two hours trying to soothe a group of seven prosecutors he met with in Washington.

He has held similar meetings across the country and planned to attend one Friday in Boston.