For Gonzales, More Records, and Questions

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/washington/25attorneys.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

For Gonzales, More Records, and Questions


By ERIC LIPTON and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: March 25, 2007

WASHINGTON, March 24 — An accumulating body of evidence is at odds with the statements of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that he played little role in the deliberations over the dismissal of eight United States attorneys.

Mr. Gonzales has said he did not take part in any discussions of the dismissal effort, and left the planning and execution of the removals up to D. Kyle Sampson, his former chief of staff.

But e-mail messages and other documents released by the Justice Department in recent days suggest that Mr. Gonzales was told of the dismissal plan on at least two occasions, in 2005 when the plan was first devised and again in late 2006 shortly before the firings were carried out.

The conflicts between the documentary record and Mr. Gonzales’s version of events have contributed to an erosion of support for him in Congress, where lawmakers from both parties have called for him to step down. They have also fed suspicions by some Democrats that the ousters, from the start, may have been orchestrated by the White House, and most particularly, by Karl Rove, the White House political adviser.

The disparities are giving Democrats in Congress a rationale to transform what started as an inquiry focused on the ouster plan itself into a much broader and perhaps even more damaging look at misleading, or at least inaccurate, statements by the key Bush administration figures involved in the effort.

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