WASHINGTON – Attorney General Alberto Gonzales met with his senior aides on Nov. 27 to approve the imminent firings of a group of U.S. attorneys, according to new documents released Friday night, raising further questions about the nature of Gonzales’ role in the dismissals.
Justice Department officials also announced Friday night that the department’s inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility had launched a joint investigation into the dismissals, including an examination of whether they were improper and whether any Justice officials misled Congress about the matter.
The hour-long November meeting in the attorney general’s conference room included Gonzales, his deputy and four other senior Justice officials, including the Gonzales aide who coordinated the firings, Chief of Staff D. Kyle Sampson, records show. The meeting focused on a five-step plan for carrying out the firings of the prosecutors, Justice Department officials said late Friday.
Possible conflict
The previously undisclosed meeting appears to conflict with a statement by Gonzales on March 13, when he told reporters he “was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on” with the firings. He said all the details were left to Sampson, who has since resigned and who agreed Friday to testify in the Senate.
Spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said Friday night that the department does not see Gonzales’ remarks as inconsistent with the Nov. 27 meeting.
Scolinos also said there is no information on whether participants at that meeting reviewed a draft memo of the firings plan, which was dated six days earlier.
The documents were part of nearly 300 pages of new records released Friday night. That followed the announcement earlier Friday that Sampson had agreed to testify next Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sampson, who resigned March 12 after the discovery of e-mails contradicting claims that the White House was not closely involved in the firings, may be the official best positioned to describe the roles top Justice and White House officials played in the ouster of the federal prosecutors.
The Justice Department also said Friday that Monica Goodling, a senior counselor to Gonzales who worked closely with Sampson on the firings, took an indefinite personal leave from her job Monday. A Justice official said she is still employed there but it is not clear when she will return.
Sampson’s planned testimony complicates the standoff that developed this week between Democrats and the Bush administration, which has refused demands for public testimony from presidential adviser Karl Rove and other White House aides. The House and Senate judiciary committees have authorized, but not issued, subpoenas for the testimony.
Gonzales and other Justice officials have said Sampson quit because he withheld information from other officials that may have led them to give misleading testimony before Congress. Sampson’s attorney has disputed that characterization and has said that others in the Justice Department were fully aware of “several years” of discussions with the White House about dismissing the prosecutors.
The point is crucial because Justice officials said in previous statements and testimony that the White House was involved only tangentially, at the end of the process.
Congressional Democrats said Sampson’s agreement to testify should increase the political pressure on the administration to allow Rove and others to testify under oath about the U.S. attorneys’ firings. A White House spokesman declined to comment.
The White House offered this week to allow Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, and other aides to be interviewed privately, without transcripts and not under oath. Democrats swiftly rejected the offer.
Seven U.S. attorneys were fired on Dec. 7; one had been sacked months earlier. The Justice Department’s shifting explanations of the dismissals have sparked an uproar in Congress, where lawmakers from both parties have called for Gonzales’ resignation. But President Bush this week expressed support for Gonzales.
Some of the prosecutors have objected to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty’s assertion that the firings were related to their performances, and two have alleged they were pressured by elected officials over investigations.
Sampson’s attorney, Bradford Berenson, wrote in a letter Friday to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and ranking GOP member Arlen Specter, R-Pa., that he hopes the voluntary testimony “will satisfy the need of the Congress to obtain information” from Sampson.
In a March 16 statement, Berenson said the fact that White House and Justice Department officials had been discussing the firings “for several years was well known to a number of other senior officials at the department,” including those who had briefed McNulty and William Moschella, a senior McNulty aide, before they testified in Congress in February.
Since Sampson’s resignation, Justice officials have sought to distance Gonzales and the department from him.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
