Wheels falling off of fascist express

White House backtracks in row over U.S. attorneys

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Slapped even by GOP allies, the Bush administration is beating an abrupt retreat on eight federal prosecutors it fired and then publicly pilloried.

Just hours after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dismissed the hubbub as an "overblown personnel matter," a Republican senator Thursday mused that Gonzales might soon suffer the same fate as the canned U.S. attorneys.

A short time later, Gonzales and his security detail shuttled to the Capitol for a private meeting on Democratic turf, bearing two offerings:

# President Bush would not stand in the way of a Democratic-sponsored bill that would cancel the attorney general's power to appoint federal prosecutors without Senate confirmation. Gonzales' Justice Department previously had dismissed the legislation as unreasonable.

# There would be no need for subpoenas to compel testimony by five of Gonzales' aides involved in the firings, as the Democrats had threatened. Cloistered in the stately hideaway of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vermont, the attorney general assured those present that he would permit the aides to tell their stories.

It was a striking reversal for an administration noted for standing its ground even in the face of overwhelming opposition.

Gone were the department's biting assertions that the prosecutors were a bunch of "disgruntled employees grandstanding before Congress."

And the department no longer tried to shrug off the uproar as "an overblown personnel matter," as Gonzales had written in an opinion piece published Thursday in USA Today.

Agency officials also ceased describing majority Democrats as lawmakers who would "would rather play politics" than deal with facts.

The shift from offense to silence was so abrupt that one of Bush's chief advisers who was speaking out of town apparently missed the memo.

"My view is this is unfortunately a very big attempt by some in the Congress to make a political stink about it," presidential adviser Karl Rove said Thursday during a speech at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service.

Back in Washington, a consensus was emerging among senators of both parties, and Gonzales himself, that the firings had been botched chiefly because the prosecutors had not been told the reasons for their dismissals.

The matter snowballed -- some of those fired complained publicly, and a senior Justice Department official warned one that further complaints in the press would force the agency to defend itself, according to an e-mail made public this week.

On Tuesday, during an eight-hour marathon of congressional hearings, the Justice Department followed through. William Moschella, principle associate deputy attorney general, publicly enumerated the reasons each prosecutor was fired, one by one.

Flash forward two days, to Specter, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, reading Gonzales' USA Today column into the record. He paused.

"One day there will be a new attorney general, maybe sooner rather than later," he mused. "But these [prosecutors] who were plastered across the newspapers all across the country, they will never recover their reputations."

Two staunch White House allies, Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, lamented the damage to the prosecutors' resumes -- adding, however, that the uproar had been the result of poor execution rather than a political purge.

The prosecutors weren't the only ones whose reputations suffered. One, New Mexico's David Iglesias, said the dismissals followed calls from members of Congress -- Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, New Mexico Republicans -- concerning sensitive political corruption investigations.

Still unclear is whether Gonzales will allow his aides to speak with the Senate panel in private or at a public hearing. The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday also demanded to speak with the officials.

They are: Michael Elston, Kyle Sampson, Monica Goodling, Bill Mercer and Mike Battle.

Sampson is Gonzales' chief of staff, Elston is staff chief to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and Mercer is associate attorney general. Goodling is Gonzales' senior counsel and White House liaison, and Battle is the departing director of the office that oversees the 93 U.S. attorneys.

Original article posted here.