Gonzales’ spin

AS ADVERTISED, D. Kyle Sampson’s testimony Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the questionable firings of eight U.S. attorneys was bad news for Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales. The nation’s chief law enforcement officer stands revealed as either an unreliable witness or a man who would rather deceive Congress than admit to his own wrongdoing.

Sampson, Gonzales’ former chief of staff, contradicted the attorney general’s statement on March 13 that he was “not involved in any discussion” of the firings. That might have caused more of a sensation had Gonzales not already amended his denial -- after e-mails revealed that he was present at a meeting at which the firings were discussed.

Gonzales’ new, “more precise” formulation is this: “I wasn’t involved in the deliberations as to whether a particular United States attorney should or should not be asked to resign.” But even that seems hard to square with Sampson’s testimony that Gonzales took part in discussions about the “strengths and weaknesses” of various prosecutors.

The attorney general’s evolving explanations undermine his claims that the dismissals were not politically motivated. Sampson insisted that no prosecutors were fired because of the public corruption prosecutions they were pursuing (or not pursuing). But he conceded that one of the dismissed attorneys, David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, was not targeted until October, around the time two Republican members of Congress were asking about his handling of a corruption investigation of Democrats.

Sampson’s testimony gives the impression of an office lacking strong leadership. The attorney general seems to subcontract important decisions to his underlings -- and not the sort of over-organized, detail-obsessed underlings who chief executives like to rely on. Sampson said that “there was really no documentation” of the plan for dismissing the U.S. attorneys other than “a chart and notes that I would dump into my lower right desk drawer.”

Congress and the Justice Department’s inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility will continue to investigate whether, and to what extent, corrupt motives played a part in these dismissals. Gonzales should forthrightly assist in those inquiries -- preferably as a private citizen.