Bush Quiet On Gonzales

President Bush is not rushing to the rescue of his old Texas friend, Alberto Gonzales, after the attorney general's one-time lieutenant undercut his old boss' account of the firings of eight federal prosecutors.

Asked about Gonzales during a closed-door meeting with House Republicans on Thursday, Mr. Bush did not defend his longtime friend or even complain about Gonzales' treatment by Congress and the media, according to one official who attended the session and demanded anonymity because it was private.

Instead, Mr. Bush tepidly repeated his public statement: The attorney general would have to go up to Capitol Hill and fix his problem, according to this official.

The president still has confidence in Gonzales, but the exit door is always unlocked, CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante reported.

Publicly, the White House backed away from defending Gonzales even before Sampson had finished testifying.

"I'm going to have to let the attorney general speak for himself," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

A Republican strategist close to the White House said that the gains Mr. Bush had made with Republicans by sticking with Gonzales have evaporated with this inconsistency, CBS News chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reported.

"It's hard to imagine that he (Gonzales) survives because there's so few Republicans that really want him to survive right now," Jim VandeHei, executive editor of Politico.com, told CBS' The Early Show.

On Thursday, Gonzales' former chief of staff said the attorney general was in the middle of things from the beginning.

"I don't think the attorney general's statement that he was not involved in any discussions of U.S. attorney removals was accurate," Sampson said at a Senate Judiciary Committee inquiry Thursday into whether the dismissals were politically motivated.

"I remember discussing with him this process of asking certain U.S. attorneys to resign," Sampson said.

Sampson also told the panel that the White House had a large role in the firings, with one-time presidential counsel Harriet Miers joining Gonzales in approving them. And under questioning from Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, Sampson said that looking back, he should not have advocated for the firing of one prosecutor in particular, New Mexico's David Iglesias.

The administration has maintained previously that the firings were appropriate because the prosecutors serve at the pleasure of the president.

One of the eight federal prosecutors ousted last year, Bud Cummins, told an audience at the University of Arkansas on Thursday that the Justice Department suffered from an "over-enamorization" with the White House.

Cummins, who was U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, acknowledged that he served the president, but said Gonzales was remiss for not placing a "firewall" between politics and the work of the Justice Department.

Sampson's account of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys over the past year lent weight to some of the most damaging Democratic criticism about the matter: That Gonzales was at the heart of the firings despite ever-changing Justice Department accounts of how they were planned; that some of the prosecutors were fired for political reasons; and that White House officials — including presidential counselor Karl Rove — played more than a limited role in the firings.

Afterward, one of the two Senate Republicans who are key to Gonzales' professional fate said he found Sampson credible and left the hearing with more questions about the attorney general and the firings than he had to begin with.

"He has many questions to answer," said Sen. Arlen Specter, the panel's ranking Republican. Sampson's conflicting account with Gonzales' pose "a real question as to whether he's acting in a competent way as attorney general."

Gonzales has said, repeatedly, that he was not closely involved in the firings and largely depended on Sampson to orchestrate them.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said that Gonzales has clarified his statements.

"His discussions with Mr. Sampson were focused on ensuring that appropriate people were aware of and involved in the process," Roehrkasse said. "He directed Mr. Sampson to lead the evaluation process, was kept aware of some conversations during the process, and that he approved the recommendations to seek the resignations of select U.S. attorneys."

Sampson resigned March 12. A day later, Gonzales said he "never saw documents. We never had a discussion about where things stood" in the firings.

Gonzales is not scheduled to appear publicly in Congress until April 17 in front of the same Senate committee. More and more Democrats and Republicans have called for him to step down, but Roehrkasse said the attorney general has no plans to resign.