Ex-aide: Gonzales approved prosecutors' firings

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was briefed regularly over two years on the firings of federal prosecutors, his former top aide said today, disputing Gonzales' claims he was not closely involved with the dismissals.

The testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by Kyle Sampson, the attorney general's former chief of staff, newly undercut Gonzales' already shaky credibility.

Gonzales and former White House counsel Harriet Miers made the final decision on whether to fire the U.S. attorneys last year, Sampson said.

"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 told the committee as it inquired 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's testimony for the first time put Gonzales at the heart of the firings amid ever-changing Justice Department accounts of how they were planned.

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Now, because I haven't been following this latest White House scandal as closely as I could I might be wrong on this, but I got the impression that AG Gonzales didn't deny involvement at simply a few press conferences; rather, he denied before Congress that he had anything to do with these US attorney firings while under oath. Like I said, I may be wrong, but if I'm right that's perjury. You know, perjury, the crime that Republicans in the House thought was bad enough to warrant impeaching President Clinton. Only this time, it's not about blowjobs. It's about political interference in the judicial process.

Why the hell is old "Waterboard" Gonzales still in office?

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