This article originally provided by Yahoo

May 23, 2007

Goodling: Deputy knew more about firings

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press

Alberto Gonzales' deputy knew more about the firings of U.S. attorneys than he let on to congressional investigators, Gonzales' former White House liaison said Wednesday in an extraordinary House hearing. She also said she herself had crossed legal lines.

Testifying under court-approved immunity, 33-year-old Monica Goodling acknowledged that she had given too much consideration to whether candidates for jobs as career prosecutors were Republicans or Democrats.

"You crossed the line on civil service laws, is that right?" asked Rep. Bobby Scott (news, bio, voting record), D-Va.

"I believe I crossed the lines," Goodling replied. "But I didn't mean to."

Goodling, 33, testified at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee in a room packed with so many photographers that panel chairman John Conyers (news, bio, voting record) spent several minutes shooing them away from her witness table.

She said she had limited involvement in the firings and offered the panel's Democrats nothing new in their probe of whether President Bush's top political and legal aides chose which prosecutors to dismiss.

Goodling said she never talked to Karl Rove, Bush's political adviser, nor Harriet Miers, then the president's White House counsel, about the firings. She said Gonzales' former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, drew up the list of those to be dismissed but she didn't know how names got on it.

She testified that Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, the department's highest official after Gonzales, knew more than he admitted to congressional investigators about the extent of White House involvement in the firings of eight federal prosecutors. She said McNulty falsely accused her of withholding key details before he spoke to investigators.

McNulty's explanation about the dismissals during his Feb. 6 Senate testimony, "was incomplete or inaccurate in a number of respects," Goodling said. "I believe the deputy was not fully candid."

McNulty retorted in a statement that his own testimony had been truthful "based on "what I knew at that time."

"Ms. Goodling's characterization of my testimony is wrong and not supported by the extensive record of documents and testimony already provided to Congress," he said.

McNulty had told investigators that while he was aware of complaints about specific prosecutors, he did not become aware of a plan by his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, to fire multiple U.S. attorneys until October last year.

Gonzales' resignation is being demanded by Democrats and some Republicans in part over the firings. Bush is standing by his longtime friend, but Democrats have pressed ahead with their probe, contending the firings may have been an attempt to exploit a loophole in the Patriot Act to install GOP loyalists as prosecutors without Senate confirmation.

Gonzales has denied that. But the furor has been costly nonetheless — Goodling and Sampson, have resigned over it. McNulty, too, is leaving later this year. And many lawmakers who have not directly demanded Gonzales' resignation say he has lost their confidence.

After resigning, Goodling refused to testify, citing her constitutional right against self-incrimination. She then disappeared from public view, surfacing only Wednesday at the hearing.

Conyers won court approval to have her testify under a grant of immunity from prosecution. Upon her receiving the grant at the start of the hearing and being sworn in, her lawyer, John Dowd, handed thousands of documents over to the committee.

It is known that Goodling attended numerous meetings over a year's time about the plans to fire the U.S. attorneys and exchanged e-mails with the White House and at least one of the prosecutors before the dismissals were ordered. A former colleague, Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis, told congressional investigators this month that Goodling broke down in his office March 8 as majority Democrats in Congress prepared to call Justice Department officials to testify amid the emerging controversy.

Goodling said Wednesday she played a limited role in the firings and regretted the way they were carried out. She also disputed public descriptions of her as a controlling manager prone to emotional outbursts.

"The person I read about on the Internet and in the newspaper is not me," she said.

Goodling particularly took aim at McNulty, who told senators during the hearing Feb. 6 that the decision to fire the U.S. attorneys in December was made solely by the Justice Department.

He and another top Justice official, William Moschella, say Goodling and Sampson withheld crucial information from them as they prepared their congressional testimony.

"The allegation is false," she told the panel. "I didn't withhold information from the deputy."

Several lawmakers criticized Goodling's lack of experience for someone with decisionmaking power over some of the department's hiring and firing. And Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., asked about her faith and her choice of law schools, Regent University.

"The mission of the law school you attended, Regent, is to bring to bear upon legal education and the legal profession the will of almighty God, our creator," Cohen said. "What is the will of almighty God, our creator, on the legal profession?"

Republicans groaned in protest. Goodling said she could not answer the question. She said she did not consider the religion of applicants for jobs at Justice.

But she acknowledged considering the political affiliation of candidates to be career prosecutors, a violation of law.

"I regret those mistakes," Goodling told the panel.