The US Justice Department weighed political activism and membership in a conservative law group in evaluating the nation's federal prosecutors, documents released about the investigations of fired US attorneys show.
The political credentials were listed on a chart of 124 US attorneys nominated since 2001, a document that could bolster Democrats' claims that the traditionally independent Justice Department has become more partisan during the Bush administration.
The chart was included in documents released on Friday by the department to congressional panels investigating whether the firings last year of the US attorneys were politically motivated, an inquiry that has Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fighting for his job.
"This is the chart that the AG [Alberto Gonzales] requested," Monica Goodling, Justice's former liaison to the White House, wrote in a Feb. 12 e-mail to two other senior department officials. "I'll show it to him on the plane tomorrow, if he's interested."
Goodling resigned last week, refusing to testify to Congress about her role in the firings and citing her constitutional protection against incriminating herself.
The 2,394 pages of e-mails, schedules and memos released on Friday included hand-scribbled pages of notes of reasons why some of the eight were ousted, which Justice officials confirmed were written by Goodling.
Under David Iglesias' name, Goodling wrote: "Domenici says he doesn't move cases."
The reference was to Senator Pete Domenici, the six-term Republican from New Mexico accused of pressuring the prosecutor on a political corruption investigation. That allegation has been one of the factors driving Democrats' claims that the firings were politically motivated.
The documents also included indications that senior department officials had replacements in mind for the outgoing prosecutors nearly a year before the ousters, seemingly contradicting testimony last month by Gonzales' former top aide.
The new batch of documents, which added to more than 3,400 previously released, came amid questions about missing White House e-mails, including some from presidential counselor Karl Rove and other administration officials. The Democratic-controlled Congress is seeking those e-mails as evidence for its inquiry into the firings.
Private attorney Robert Luskin denied that Rove intentionally deleted his own e-mails from a Republican-sponsored computer system. He said President George W. Bush's political adviser believed the communications were being preserved in accordance with the law.
Democrats are questioning whether any White House officials purposely sent e-mails about official business on the Republican National Committee server, then deleted them, in violation of the law, to avoid scrutiny.
White House officials said the administration is making an aggressive effort to recover anything that was lost.
"We have no indication that there was improper intent when using these RNC e-mails," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
The new documents also show Justice efforts to tamp down the controversy by meeting with congressional aides they considered potentially sympathetic to their viewpoint. They included a member of the staff of Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, who has been one of Gonzales' most vocal critics. Additionally, the documents include correspondence from some prosecutors complaining about being ensnared in the political storm.
The chart underscores the weight that conservative credentials carried with the Justice Department.
The three-page spreadsheet notes the "political experience" of each prosecutor, which was defined as work at the Justice Department's headquarters in Washington, at the Congress, for state or local officials, and on campaigns or for political parties.
Several of the 124 prosecutors on the list also were members of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. The group was founded by conservative law students and now claims 35,000 members, including prominent members of the Bush administration, the judiciary and Congress.
How the information was used by the administration is not clear.
One of the eight attorneys fired in December -- Kevin Ryan, a prosecutor in California -- was a Federalist Society member.
Two others, David Iglesias, New Mexico, and Bud Cummins, Arkansas, held Republican Party posts or ran for office before being tapped as US attorneys, the chart shows.
The documents reveal a new contradiction in officials' accounting of the firings, indicating that replacements for those dismissed were chosen by Justice officials nearly a year beforehand.
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