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Document: Gonzales attended meeting on attorney firings

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A newly released document shows Attorney General Alberto Gonzales attended at least one meeting late last year in which the process of firing U.S. attorneys was discussed.

The document indicates a November 27, 2006, meeting in which the rollout of the general plan for carrying out the dismissals was discussed, Justice Department officials told reporters Friday.

Gonzales told reporters last week that he "was not involved in any discussions about what was going on."

The officials said that the participants in the meeting -- which included Gonzales and his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson -- could not "rule in or out" if the final list of eight attorneys to be fired was signed off at the meeting or if the list was even discussed.

The officials contend that Gonzales' attendance at this meeting is not contradictory to what he has previously said -- that he was not involved in the details of the firings or in selecting the specific prosecutors. That task was left to Sampson, who has resigned over the controversy.

"So far as I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers," Gonzales said in a March 13 news conference. He said he was "not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on."

Officials say Gonzales did have the final sign-off on the firings but cannot say when he first saw the completed list of those to be fired.

Also on Friday, department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said two internal watchdog offices together will investigate the firings of the U.S. attorneys, "although there is no evidence to suggest" any of them were dismissed for improper reasons.

Gonzales asked the Office of Professional Responsibility, which examines the conduct of the department's lawyers, to look into the matter this week, Roehrkasse said.

Separately, the Office of Inspector the General said it also thought it should probe the issue, so it was decided the two would do a joint investigation.

Democrats seized on the new documents late Friday.

"Clearly the attorney general was not telling the whole truth, but what is he trying to hide?" Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, told The Associated Press.

Sampson to testify under oath

The Senate and House Judiciary Committees are also probing the firings. Earlier Friday, Sampson agreed to testify under oath before the Senate committee on his role.

Sampson's lawyer, Bradford Berenson, sent a two-paragraph letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy on Friday, saying "Mr. Sampson looks forward to answering the committee's questions."

"We trust that his decision to do so will satisfy the need of the Congress to obtain information from him concerning the requested resignations of the United States attorneys," the letter said.

Sampson, one of several officials who faced a possible subpoena to testify, will appear voluntarily before the committee at 10 a.m. Thursday.

The White House has said that Gonzales will testify before the committee, but a date for his testimony has not been set. (Watch why Rep. Tom Tancredo wants Gonzales gone )

The issue of subpoenas has created a standoff between Congress and the White House, which has offered to allow key officials to be interviewed privately -- not under oath and without transcripts -- on the matter of the fired attorneys.

But Democrats on the Senate and House Judiciary committees have demanded that the officials -- including top political adviser Karl Rove and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers -- testify in public and under oath. Both committees have authorized their chairmen to issue subpoenas, but neither has done so.

In nearly identical letters sent to current White House Counsel Fred Fielding Thursday, Leahy and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers put the ball back in the White House's court, saying the offer made was unacceptable but they were willing to entertain other proposals.

The White House held its ground, however, with spokeswoman Dana Perino accusing the chairmen of engaging in "a political fishing expedition."

The White House has said that if the committee chooses to issue the subpoenas, the president's offer will be "off the table."

Dick Armey, the Republican former House majority leader, said Thursday that President Bush is on "thin ice" in claiming executive privilege.

He added that it is "hard for me to imagine that Karl Rove has any matters of information that are so important to the nation's security or its ability to conduct the business of our government that there's any reason he shouldn't testify."

Armey now is chairman of the conservative activist "Freedom Works" organization in Washington.

At issue is whether at least seven U.S. attorneys in recent months were fired because of performance problems, as the Justice Department has said, or if the dismissals were politically motivated.

In the eighth firing, a Justice Department official has acknowledged that the U.S. attorney in Arkansas was pushed out so he could be replaced by a Rove protege.

The president has the right to hire and fire U.S. attorneys at will. Another issue at the heart of the matter, however, is the administration's use of a provision in the Patriot Act that allowed for the appointment of new U.S. attorneys without confirmation by Congress.

The Senate this week voted to repeal that part of the Patriot Act.

E-mails show inner-workings

The documents released Friday show that some Justice Department officials were kept in the dark for some time about the plan to fire U.S. attorneys.

They show that spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos only found out about the plan to fire some U.S. attorneys when she received a November 17, 2006, e-mail from a White House staffer asking her about the department's communications plans for handling the story.

By this time, senior Justice Department and White House officials were well along in planning the firings.

Scolinos e-mailed back to Cathie Martin, a White House communications official: "Thanks for flagging -- we are not looped in -- first I have heard of it."

After speaking with Sampson, Scolinos e-mailed back to Martin the same day saying only six U.S. attorneys were involved and adding, "I think most of them will resign quietly."

Scolinos told Martin she did not believe the U.S. attorneys would not want to draw attention to performance issues because it would affect their future job prospects.

Scolinos added in her e-mail to Martin, "I don't see it as being a national story."

The e-mails show Martin asked for the list of the six individuals and that Scolinos sent one back a few days later after obtaining it from Sampson.

CNN's Kevin Bohn and Carol Cratty contributed to this report.

Copyright 2007 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

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