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(Photo: AP Photo/Kevin Glackmeyer)
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A 2005 e-mail exchange suggests Rove may have had a hand in the process that resulted in the firing of eight federal prosecutors.
A one-page document, released March 15, 2007, also indicates Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his chief aide were considering dismissing as many as 20 percent of the U.S. attorneys.
The e-mails released by the Justice Department appear to contradict the administration's assertion that Bush's staff had only limited involvement in the firings of the U.S. attorneys, which Democrats have suggested were a politically motivated purge.
The White House said the e-mails don't undercut their account of Rove's involvement in the matter. Rove has a "vague recollection" that the idea to fire all 93 U.S. attorneys at the start of Bush's second term came from then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers, deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.
"He thought it was a bad idea and would be unwise," Perino said.
In the e-mails, Gonzales' top aide, Kyle Sampson, says that an across-the-board housecleaning "would certainly send ripples through the U.S. attorney community if we told folks they got one term only." But it concludes that "if Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, then so do I."
Rove said the controversy was being fueled by "superheated political rhetoric," adding that there was no similar uproar when President Clinton dismissed all 93 U.S. attorneys at the beginning of his first term.
"We're at a point where people want to play politics with it. That's fine," Rove said in an address at Troy University in Alabama.
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