Senators seek more documents on the firings of U.S. attorneys

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, indicating they think there is more to learn about the firings of eight federal prosecutors last year, asked Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales on Monday to turn over additional documents on the terminations and threatened to issue subpoenas if the materials were not forthcoming.

Specifically, the four senators want the internal rankings that the Justice Department made of all 93 U.S. attorneys over the years, as well as employment charts that Monica M. Goodling, a top aide to Gonzales, provided to Justice officials as they decided which prosecutors to fire.

The senators have also asked for the department’s ratings of all 93 prosecutors in December, when seven of the eight were fired, including explanations why officials decided that certain prosecutors “might be on his or her way out” and why others were allowed to remain.

Three Democrats on the committee -- Chairman Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, Dianne Feinstein of California and Charles E. Schumer of New York -- and the panel’s top Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, asked that the documents be turned over by Wednesday so committee investigators could review them before Gonzales’ scheduled testimony next Tuesday.

“We hope subpoenas will not be necessary to compel cooperation with the committee’s investigation,” the senators said in their letter to Gonzales.

The Justice Department had no immediate response.

The department has turned over thousands of pages of documents, including e-mails, to the Senate panel and the House Judiciary Committee. Many of those documents suggest that Gonzales was deeply involved in the firings, despite his public assertions that he was not.

In addition, D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned as Gonzales’ chief of staff the day before the first e-mails were released, has testified before the Senate panel about his role in helping to orchestrate the firings.

Sampson called the department’s response to congressional questions about the dismissals “badly mishandled” and “an ugly, undignified spectacle.”

E-mails show that Goodling, as the Justice Department’s liaison to the White House, played a central role in the firings.

She resigned Friday and has refused to cooperate with Senate and House investigators, saying that she would invoke her 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination if she were called to testify.

Many Democrats are calling on Gonzales to step down. Several key Republicans have expressed their unhappiness with how Gonzales and the Bush administration have handled the matter.

In the letter, the four senators said they thought the Justice Department was holding back important material.

“Given that this was a process that extended over more than two years and involved staff from both the Department of Justice and the White House, and involved consideration of a number of U.S. attorneys,” they wrote, “there would seem to be other documents that would comment upon the reasons some U.S. attorneys were chosen for removal and others were not.”

They cited the case of Kevin Ryan of San Francisco, one of the eight fired U.S. attorneys, saying that media accounts indicated he had received “multiple evaluations” before his dismissal.

“Documents reflecting those multiple evaluations and significant discussions have not been produced to date,” the senators wrote. “This raises a question about whether we have seen all similar documents about others selected for replacement or left in place.”

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richard.serrano@latimes.com