E-Mails Shed Light on Firings

Mar 20, 11:47 AM

Current Headlines: By Laurie Kellman THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' hold on his job grew more uncertain Monday as the Justice Department released e- mails with new details about the firings of federal prosecutors. The White House said it hoped Gonzales would survive the tumult.

Asked if the attorney general had contained the political damage from the dismissals of eight federal prosecutors, White House spokesman Tony Snow said, "I don't know."

Documents released Monday night by the Justice Department show that Gonzales was unhappy with how Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty explained the firings to the Senate Judiciary Committee in early February.

"The Attorney General is extremely upset with the stories on the US Attys this morning," Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse, who was traveling with Gonzales in South America at the time, wrote in a Feb. 7 e-mail. "He also thought some of the DAG's statements were inaccurate."

In a statement Monday night, Roehrkasse said he was referring to Gonzales' concerns over the firing of Bud Cummins in Little Rock, whom he believed was dismissed because of performance issues. At the hearing, McNulty indicated Cummins was being replaced by a political ally.

President Bush also was unhappy with the Justice Department's explanation of events.

"The fact that both Republicans and Democrats feel like there was not straightforward communications troubles me," he said last Wednesday.

Snow declined Monday to predict how long Gonzales would stay in his job but reiterated President Bush's support of him.

"No one's prophetic enough to know what the next 21 months hold," Snow said. "We hope he stays."

The new e-mails show that Justice Department officials wanted to quickly get the firings behind them after Republican losses in the midterm elections and sought a "green light" from the White House to go ahead with them.

"Not sure whether this will be determined to require the boss's attention," then-White House counsel Harriet Miers wrote in an e- mail response to Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson.

Not publicly released in the e-mails sent to Congress was a March 2005 document listing Chicago prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's performance in the "not distinguished" category, according to a government official who described its contents to The Associated Press.

The document, written by Sampson, specifically took issue with Fitzgerald's leadership of a terrorism panel he chaired as part of an advisory committee to the attorney general.

In it, Fitzgerald was included among prosecutors "doing an inadequate job with their committees" and whose performance was "questionable," said the government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the full contents of the document were not publicly released. The Justice Department released a redacted version of the chart last week.

Fitzgerald this month won convictions against former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the CIA leak case. Sampson resigned from his post last week.

Justice officials described the chart as only Sampson's assessment -- which was not reflected by others in the department.

Roehrkasse described Fitzgerald "as one of the most experienced and well-respected prosecutors at the Justice Department."

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