Dems Seek to Interview Gonzales Aide

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales gestures as he addresses reporters during a media availability after he conducted a round table discussion with law enforcement officials about his Project Safe Childhood initiative in Boston, Friday, March 30, 2007. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia) (Stephan Savoia - AP)

WASHINGTON -- House Democrats on Tuesday asked a top Justice Department aide to come to Capitol Hill for a private interview in the next week on the firing of federal prosecutors, arguing that she cannot simply refuse to testify on the matter.

Monica Goodling, who has said she would assert her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid appearing at Senate hearings, must tell Congress which specific questions she's refusing to answer, Democrats said in a letter to her lawyer.

Goodling was senior counsel to embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and was the department's White House liaison before she took a leave earlier this month amid the uproar over the ouster of eight U.S. attorneys.

Senate Judiciary Committee members, meanwhile, are pressing Gonzales to say how he plans to deal with Goodling taking the Fifth Amendment. Her action, they say, means he can't fulfill his pledge to make Justice employees available for questioning under oath.

"Who do we talk to at the Department of Justice? The office of the Attorney General appears to be hopelessly conflicted," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the Judiciary chairman, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said in a letter to Gonzales released Tuesday.

Leahy and Whitehouse asked whether Gonzales plans to name a special counsel or set up some other "appropriate firewalls so that a non-conflicted person with appropriate knowledge and authority" can discuss Goodling's testimony.

President Bush, who is scrambling to recover from a personnel flap that has morphed into a full-blown scandal for his administration, said Tuesday that he regretted the uproar over prosecutors.

"I am genuinely concerned about their reputations, now that this has become a Washington, D.C., focus. I'm sorry it's come to this. On the other hand, there had been no credible evidence of any wrongdoing," the president said at a Rose Garden news conference.

With Gonzales' credibility about his role in question and the White House now pushing to get him to Capitol Hill quickly to testify about it, lawmakers say Goodling's account could be crucial to their probe of the firings.

After the Senate Judiciary Committee authorized a subpoena for Goodling, her lawyer John Dowd told lawmakers last week that she would not appear. He called the congressional investigation a perjury trap for his client and said she could be in "legal jeopardy" even if she testified truthfully.

"Her claims do not constitute a valid basis for invoking the privilege against self-incrimination," Reps. John Conyers of Michigan and Linda Sanchez of California wrote in a letter to Dowd Tuesday.

Lawmakers' doubts about Gonzales' credibility and that of his deputy, Paul McNulty, do "not in any way excuse your client from answering questions honestly and to the best of her ability," wrote Conyers, the House Judiciary chairman, and Sanchez, who heads the subcommittee handling the inquiry.