White House offers interview with Rove

The White House pushed back Tuesday against Democrats demanding answers on the firings of federal prosecutors, refusing to allow President Bush's top aides to testify publicly and under oath about their roles in the dismissals.

Bush gave his embattled attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, a boost during an early morning call to his longtime friend and planned to end the day with a public statement in support of him.

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

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.

"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.

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.

"We trust and believe that the accommodation we offer here, in addition to what the Department of Justice has provided, should satisfy the committee's interests," Fielding wrote in a letter to the House and Senate judiciary committees' Democratic chairmen and senior Republicans.

Republicans cast the offer as fair and virtually unprecedented. Democrats rejected it and vowed to start authorizing subpoenas as soon as Wednesday for the White House aides.

"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," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Even without oaths, the 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 personally gave Gonzales a boost during 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.

Bush was to counter those with a statement of support, the White House said. The president was also to talk about his position on the offer Fielding made to Congress.

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 his letter.

He said the 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."