Snip:
As the former senior counselor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and principal liaison between Gonzales and the White House, Goodling is a key witness to the role of Bush and his top political aide, Karl Rove, in the politically motivated purge.
Seven of the prosecutors were fired last December 8, while the eighth was discharged a few months earlier. The firings had a clear political motivation: nearly all the US attorneys were under fire within the Bush administration and from congressional Republicans because they had either prosecuted high-level Republicans on corruption charges or declined to bring bogus vote fraud cases against Democrats in states that were closely contested politically.
Until now, Goodling, who resigned her position March 29, had refused to testify about the circumstances of the firings, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. It is almost unprecedented for a top official of the chief law enforcement department of the federal government to invoke the Fifth Amendment, an action that suggests that the dismissal of the US attorneys could involve crimes, such as obstruction of justice.
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