In a fresh blow to US President George W. Bush's administration, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued subpoenas on Thursday to force Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, to testify in the committee's investigation of the firings of federal prosecutors.
However, the White House is standing behind beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales after the head of the FBI contradicted Gonzales' sworn testimony and Senate Democrats asked for a perjury investigation.
"It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements," four committee Democrats wrote in a letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement requesting a special counsel to investigate.
The Senate majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, was blunter: "I'm convinced that he's not telling the truth."
The White House, however, defiantly stuck by Gonzales on the perjury matter and denied that FBI Director Robert Mueller contradicted Gonzales' sworn testimony about internal administration dissent over the president's secretive wiretapping program.
Gonzales, an old Bush friend from Texas, repeatedly and emphatically told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week that the program was not at issue during a dramatic hospital bedside visit with ailing attorney general John Ashcroft in 2004.
Mueller, before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, said on Thursday it was.
The developments marked a troubling turn for Gonzales as well as the administration, which has been on the political defensive since congressional Democrats opened an investigation seven months ago into the firings of several US attorneys.
That probe revealed information that Democrats have sought to weave into a pattern of improper political influence over prosecutions, of stonewalling and of deceit in sworn testimony before Congress.
Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said Gonzales and Mueller can make only limited comments in public about the classified program.
"The FBI director didn't contradict the testimony," Snow said. "It is inappropriate and unfair to ask people to testify in public settings about highly classified programs."
"The president, meanwhile, maintains full confidence in the attorney general," he said.
Democrats also insisted the White House had encouraged top aides to flout congressional subpoenas in the prosecutor firings inquiry.
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy subpoenaed Rove, Bush's top political adviser, to provide testimony and documents related to the firings by Aug. 2. Also subpoenaed is a White House political aide, J. Scott Jennings. The Department of Justice included both men on e-mails about the firings and the administration's response to the congressional investigation.
White House Counsel Fred Fielding has said consistently that top presidential aides, present and past, are immune from subpoenas. He has declared the documents sought off-limits under executive privilege.
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