Chinese language - Bush warns Dems to take offer in firings

WORLD / America

Bush warns Dems to take offer in firings

(AP)
Updated: 2007-03-21 07:28

U.S. President George W. Bush speaks about the firing of U.S. Attorneys
and allowing Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and former White House
counsel Harriet Miers to be interviewed by Congressional judiciary
committee members while in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in
Washington, March 20, 2007. [Reuters]

WASHINGTON - A defiant US President Bush warned Democrats Tuesday to
accept his offer to have top aides testify about the firings of federal
prosecutors only privately and not under oath or risk a constitutional
showdown from which he would not back down.

Democrats' response to his proposal was swift and firm: They said they
would start authorizing subpoenas as soon as Wednesday for the White
House aides.

"Testimony should be on the record and under oath. That's the formula for
true accountability," said Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee.

Bush, in a late-afternoon statement at the White House, said, "We will
not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public
servants. ... I have proposed a reasonable way to avoid an impasse."

He added that federal prosecutors work for him and it is natural to
consider replacing them. "There is no indication that anybody did
anything improper," the president said.

Bush gave his embattled attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, a boost
during an early morning call and ended the day with a public statement
repeating it. "He's got support with me," Bush said.

The Senate, meanwhile, voted to strip Gonzales of his authority to fill
U.S. attorney vacancies without Senate confirmation. Democrats contend
the Justice Department and White House purged eight federal prosecutors,
some of whom were leading political corruption investigations, after a
change in the Patriot Act gave Gonzales the new authority.

Several Democrats, including presidential hopefuls Hillary Rodham
Clinton, Barrack Obama, Joe Biden and John Edwards, have called for
Gonzales' ouster or resignation. So have a handful of Republican
lawmakers.

"What happened in this case sends a signal really through intimidation by
purge: 'Don't quarrel with us any longer,'" said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse,
D-R.I., a former U.S. attorney who spent much of Monday evening paging
through 3,000 documents released by the Justice Department.

Bush said his White House counsel, Fred Fielding, told lawmakers they
could interview presidential counselor Karl Rove, former White House
Counsel Harriet Miers and their deputies �� but only on the president's
terms: in private, "without the need for an oath" and without a
transcript.

The president cast the offer as virtually unprecedented and a reasonable
way for Congress to get all the information it needs about the matter.

"If the Democrats truly do want to move forward and find the right
information, they ought to accept what I proposed," Bush said. "If
scoring political points is the desire, then the rejection of this
reasonable proposal will really be evident for the American people to
see."

Bush said he would aggressively fight in court any attempt to subpoena
White House aides.

"If the staff of a president operated in constant fear of being hauled
before various committees to discuss internal deliberations, the
president would not receive candid advice and the American people would
be ill-served," he said. "I'm sorry the situation has gotten to where
it's got, but that's Washington, D.C., for you. You know there's a lot of
politics in this town."

Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is leading the Senate probe into the firings,
spoke dismissively of the deal offered by the White House:

"It's sort of giving us the opportunity to talk to them, but not giving
us the opportunity to get to the bottom of what really happened here."

Even without oaths, Bush aides would be legally required to tell the
truth to Congress. But without a transcript of their comments, "it would
be almost meaningless to say that they would be under some kind of legal
sanction," Schumer complained.

Fielding's meeting on Capitol Hill came a few hours after Bush spoke with
Gonzales in an early morning phone call �� their first conversation since
the president had acknowledged mistakes by his longtime friend and
lawmakers of both parties had called for Gonzales' ouster.

The White House offered to arrange interviews with Rove, Miers, deputy
White House counsel William Kelley and J. Scott Jennings, a deputy to
White House political director Sara Taylor, who works for Rove.

"Such interviews would be private and conducted without the need for an
oath, transcript, subsequent testimony or the subsequent issuance of
subpoenas," Fielding said in a letter to the Senate and House Judiciary
committees and their ranking Republicans.

He said documents released by the Justice Department "do not reflect that
any U.S. attorney was replaced to interfere with a pending or future
criminal investigation or for any other improper reason."

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