WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush said Wednesday he was troubled by the Justice Department's misleading explanations to Congress of why it fired eight U.S. attorneys, and said he expected his attorney general to fix the problem. Bush said he stood by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales amid calls for Gonzales' ouster.
"Mistakes were made. And I'm frankly not happy about them," Bush told reporters at a news conference in Mexico, where he was wrapping up a weeklong trip to Latin America.
"Any time anybody goes up to Capitol Hill, they've got to make sure they fully understand the facts and how they characterize the issue to members of Congress," Bush said.
"And the fact that both Republicans and Democrats feel like that there was not straightforward communication troubles me and it troubles the attorney general. So he took action, and he needs to continue to take action."
Bush's chief lawyer, meanwhile, sought to protect presidential aides as Democrats demanded their testimony.
Sen. Charles Schumer told reporters after a meeting with White House counsel Fred Fielding that the White House would respond by Friday about whether political adviser Karl Rove, former counsel Harriet Miers and her deputy, William Kelley would testify and under what conditions.
"He said it was his goal to get us both the documents and the witnesses that we seek to question," Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. "He said his intention was not to stonewall."
The president said the prosecutors' firings were "entirely appropriate" and noted that U.S attorneys serve at his pleasure. "Past administrations have removed U.S. attorneys. It's their right to do so," Bush said.
Critics have said the firings appeared to be politically motivated. Some of the prosecutors who were dismissed in a Dec. 7 purge said they felt pressure by Republican lawmakers to investigate more Democrats in the months leading up to November elections.
Bush said he did receive complaints about U.S. attorneys. He recalled a congressional visit when senators "were talking about U.S. attorneys." He said he did not remember any specific names of prosecutors mentioned.
"But I never brought up a specific case or gave him specific instructions," Bush said, referring to Gonzales. "What Al did and what the Justice Department did was appropriate. ... What was mishandled was the explanation of the cases to the Congress."
Gonzales was expected to discuss the firings with lawmakers later in the week. Those meetings were not expected to be public, a Justice Department spokesman said.
For nearly two months, Democrats have accused the department of playing politics with the prosecutors' jobs. Top department officials, including Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, have maintained in congressional testimony the dismissals were based on the prosecutors' performance, not politics.
The fired prosecutors headed the U.S. attorneys' offices in Albuquerque, N.M.; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Las Vegas; Little Rock, Ark.; Phoenix; San Diego; San Francisco; and Seattle.
But e-mails released between Miers and Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' then-top aide, showed a two-year campaign between the White House and the department to fire prosecutors. The correspondence also included e-mails from J. Scott Jennings, the White House deputy political director, who used an e-mail address registered to the Republican National Committee.
Appearing Wednesday on NBC's Today show, Gonzales said he had a "general knowledge" of Sampson's conversations with Miers about the prosecutors. But, he said, "I was obviously not aware of all communications."
"We are going to work with Congress to make sure they know what happened," Gonzales said. "We want to ensure that they have a complete and accurate picture of what happened here."
Several Democrats have called for Gonzales' resignation, among them presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards.
"The buck should stop somewhere," Clinton said in an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, which was broadcast Wednesday. She added that Bush "needs to be very forthcoming - what did he say, what did he know, what did he do?" and that Rove also "owes the Congress and the country an explanation" about his role.
Gonzales accepted Sampson's resignation this week; Miers had left the administration this year.
It was the second time in as many weeks that Gonzales came under withering criticism on Capitol Hill.
Last week, the attorney general and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller admitted that the FBI had improperly, and at times illegally, used the USA Patriot Act to secretly pry out personal information about Americans in terrorism investigations.
Gonzales, himself a former White House counsel, has been friends with Bush for years, going back to when he served as Bush's secretary of state in Texas. n
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