Noose tightens around embattled US attorney general

The Raw Story Noose tightens around embattled US attorney general Noose tightens around embattled US attorney general Published: Tuesday March 27, 2007 The noose tightened Tuesday around beleaguered US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, after a top aide, fearing criminal prosecution, refused to testify in a scandal over the dismissals of eight federal prosecutors. Questions about what role Gonzales might have played in the affair intensified, after senior aide Monica Goodling invoked her Fifth Amendment rights to avoid potential self-incrimination and declined to answer lawmakers' questions about the firings. "The hostile and questionable environment in the present congressional proceedings is at best ambiguous," her lawyer John Dowd said in a statement. "More accurately, the environment can be described as legally perilous." Goodling, 33, is on a leave from her post as counsel to the attorney general and as the Justice Department's White House liaison. She is refusing to appear at a US Senate hearing Thursday at which another former senior aide who played a key role in the firings is to testify. Lawmakers want to shed light on why the eight US attorneys -- powerful local and regional prosecutors who are appointed by the president -- were fired, even as several of them were in the middle of sensitive corruption investigations. But the overriding question remains what role might have been played by Gonzales, who, in a television interview broadcast late Monday, gave the first indication that he is weighing whether he should leave his high-power post, in light of the scandal. "Every cabinet official has to ask themselves every day, 'Is it still appropriate for me to lead a cabinet department?' It's something that I've been asking myself more lately than perhaps others," he said. "At the end of the day, it's not about Alberto Gonzales. It's about this great Department of Justice that does so many wonderful things for the American people," he said. Gonzales who said he would ride out the controversy "as long as I have the confidence of the president," said nevertheless that it "pained" him. "The attacks on my credibility ... really have pained me and my family," he told NBC television. "I grew up with nothing but my integrity. And someday, when I leave this office, I am confident that I will leave with my integrity," he said. "I would never have asked for their resignations to interfere with a public corruption case or in any way to interfere with an ongoing investigation. I just wouldn't do that," the US top prosecutor continued. "I've got nothing to hide in terms of what I've done," he said. His assertions came after a new batch of e-mails released Friday showed he may have had more involvement in last year's firings than he first indicated. Copies of e-mail messages and other documents sent by the Justice Department to Congress indicate Gonzales attended an hour-long meeting in November on the firings with his then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, the aide in charge of putting together a list of those to be dismissed. Gonzales however told reporters two weeks ago that the dismissals were an "effort that was led by Mr. Sampson," and that they "never had a discussion about where things stood." Sampson is to appear under oath Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the matter. Leading Democrats continue to suspect that the White House removed the prosecutors for partisan reasons, while allies of President George W. Bush say the prosecutors serve at the pleasure of the president, and the president has the authority to dismiss them.