WASHINGTON — A former high-ranking Justice Department official offered praise Thursday for most of the U.S. attorneys who were fired last year, saying he considered some of them to be among the department's most able prosecutors.
James B. Comey, who served as deputy attorney general from 2003 until 2005, often contradicted the White House and the Justice Department, which have said the eight U.S. attorneys were fired for performance reasons.
Comey told a House Judiciary subcommittee that six of the former prosecutors had been doing a good job, and that only one was among those he considered to be weak performers.
Comey, a senior vice president and general counsel at Lockheed Martin Corp., said that he had had "very positive encounters" with the prosecutors and that the official explanations given for the firings were not consistent with his experience -- though, he noted, he left about two years ago.
The testimony of the career prosecutor and onetime Republican political appointee was among the most devastating for the White House and Justice Department, and appeared to complicate efforts by the administration to defuse a controversy that has threatened the two-year tenure of Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales.
Comey's comments added fuel to suspicions among Democrats, who are investigating whether the firings were orchestrated for partisan reasons such as managing corruption investigations to benefit Republicans.
"James Comey is a respected prosecutor who served the American people well as a U.S. attorney as well as deputy attorney general," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.). "Today, we further confirmed that the department's stated reasons for firing the six U.S. attorneys who testified before this committee had little or no basis in fact."
Comey testified that he had no information to suggest the firings were meant to disrupt pending corruption investigations. As deputy attorney general he was responsible for supervising U.S. attorneys across the country, but he said he was never informed that a plan was in place to fire several prosecutors.
The current deputy attorney general, Paul J. McNulty, has testified that he was largely out of the loop in the two-year process that led to the firings. He said he did not know about the terminations until two months before they took place.
