Bush vows fight as subpoenas authorized

WASHINGTON -- The brinksmanship between the White House and Congress over the firing of several US attorneys heightened yesterday, with a House committee authorizing the use of subpoenas to compel the testimony of President Bush's advisers, including top aide Karl Rove, and the White House vowing to fight such demands as long as necessary.

The House Judiciary Committee, hoping to prod the White House into allowing the advisers to testify under oath, stopped short of issuing the subpoenas. But Democrats warned they would be issued if the White House refuses to budge -- a move that could lead to a constitutional deadlock that the federal courts would settle. The Senate Judiciary Committee is slated to authorize use of subpoenas today.

But the White House showed no sign of retreat, threatening to withdraw Bush's offer to allow interviews of Rove and others behind closed doors, off the record and with no sworn testimony. "If they issue subpoenas, the offer's withdrawn," White House spokesman Tony Snow said yesterday.

Democrats mocked the White House for what some lawmakers called an "insulting" offer.

"We could meet at the local pub to have that kind of a gathering," said House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat. "It'd be a great conversation, but in my judgment, it would not advance us toward uncovering the simple truth in this matter."

Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat and Senate Judiciary Committee member, dismissed Bush's initial offer with an allusion to a movie about the Mafia. "To paraphrase 'The Godfather,' they've made us an offer we can't accept," he said on CNN.

Though he acknowledged other presidents allowed aides to testify before Congress, Bush declared he would take the matter to the Supreme Court to protect his executive privilege. Democrats, citing their oversight authority, countered that the Constitution gives them the right to order the aides to testify.

Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond legal analyst, said yesterday that it is unclear whether the Supreme Court would side with Congress or the White House -- an uncertainty that would probably compel both sides to work out a deal, sharp rhetoric notwithstanding.

"As a practical matter, my sense is this is not going into litigation," Tobias said. "The Congress doesn't want that because the president will be out of office before it gets to the Supreme Court," he said, adding that the issue could divide the justices in a vote that could go either way.

But the stakes in the confrontation would go even higher if any documents surface that convincingly show that the White House ordered the Justice Department to fire the attorneys to keep them from prosecuting Republicans.

The dismissals have become a critical issue for Congress and the White House in the past several months. Internal Justice Department e-mails and documents recently made public indicate that top aides to Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales discussed sacking the federal prosecutors in order to replace them with ones whose political views matched those of the White House.

One of the fired US attorneys, David Iglesias of New Mexico, has characterized his firing as a "political hit" because the GOP leadership was unhappy that he didn't prosecute Democrats in a voter fraud case. Another dismissed prosecutor in Arkansas -- the former home state of Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, a Democratic presidential candidate -- was replaced by Tim Griffin, a former aide to Rove, Bush's political guru and a top Republican strategist.

Bush has said, however, that he saw nothing wrong with the firings and has rebuffed growing calls for Gonzales's resignation.

Yesterday's vote authorized Conyers to issue several subpoenas at his discretion, but Conyers told his colleagues he would act only if the White House refuses to change its offer. "Trust me, committee, we are not going to move in a reckless or angry or temperamental way at all," he said.

Representative William Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat and Judiciary Committee member, said that the vote gives Congress some leverage against the White House to get full and honest testimony from Bush's aides. "Clearly, to insist that these interviews be conducted privately, not under oath and with no transcript, I would suggest borders on insulting to this committee and to this Congress," Delahunt said.

But Republicans accused Democrats of political gamesmanship for trying to haul Rove, Gonzales, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, and other top officials before Congress and news cameras.

"The only purpose of subpoenas issued to the White House now is to fan the flames of -- and photo-ops of -- partisan controversy for partisan gain, tactics that impede the discovery of truth and hamper the public's ability to obtain the truth," said Representative Chris Cannon, a Utah Republican. "We do not need show subpoenas in what to this point has been a show trial."

Presidents have claimed executive privilege in various ways to keep top aides away from Congress and courtroom witness stands, and to keep internal White House communications private. Perhaps most famously, the Supreme Court in 1974 rejected President Richard Nixon's executive-privilege argument to keep from having to hand over the Watergate tapes to a federal grand jury.

In 1998, President Bill Clinton used the same logic to block two top advisers from testifying before a grand jury in the Monica Lewinsky affair, but Clinton dropped the argument after a federal judge denied it. Clinton avoided similar showdowns with Congress 47 times during his eight years in office by allowing top administration officials to testify, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The president cited the privilege numerous times to keep documents private and keep officials from appearing before Congress, with one notable exception: He allowed then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify before the 9/11 Commission. Still, he declared that the decision would not set a precedent.

The showdown between Congress and the White House underscored congressional Democrats' deep frustration with the Bush White House over executive power and oversight. Stymied by their minority status on Capitol Hill during the first six years of Bush's presidency, Democrats had virtually no authority to launch official inquiries into matters ranging from no-bid government contracting in Iraq to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

But armed with the subpoena power that came with their new majorities in both the House and Senate, Democrats have begun a slew of investigations and hearings they said will hold the Bush administration accountable for the first time since the president took office. Since Democrats took control of Congress in January, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reforms has begun inquiries into Iraq reconstruction, alleged political pressure on government climate-change scientists, and pharmaceutical pricing.

Meanwhile, New Hampshire Democrats yesterday asked Congress to investigate whether the Justice Department impeded an investigation into a Republican effort to jam Democratic phone banks during the 2002 Senate election in that state.

Susan Milligan of the Globe's Washington bureau contributed to this report.