Today’s NY Times

WASHINGTON, March 28 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales endured blunt criticism Tuesday from federal prosecutors who questioned the firings of eight United States attorneys, complained that the dismissals had undermined morale and expressed broader grievances about his leadership, according to people briefed on the discussion.

About a half-dozen United States attorneys voiced their concerns at a private meeting with Mr. Gonzales in Chicago.

Several of the prosecutors said the dismissals caused them to wonder about their own standing and distracted their employees, according to one person familiar with the discussions. Others asked Mr. Gonzales about the removal of Daniel C. Bogden, the former United States attorney in Nevada, a respected career prosecutor whose ouster has never been fully explained by the Justice Department.

[At the meeting in] Chicago, some prosecutors accused Mr. Gonzales’s subordinates of operating as if the prosecutors were an obstacle to be side-stepped instead of a resource to be tapped in developing departmental policy, one person said.

At least one prosecutor complained that United States attorneys had been excluded from deliberations that led to a change in policy on prosecuting corporate crime, a person familiar with the discussions said. He and others would speak only on condition of anonymity because the discussions were confidential.

The policy change at issue happened in December, when Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty rolled back a requirement that corporate defendants waive the confidentiality of their discussions with lawyers to obtain leniency. Justice Department officials said Wednesday that some prosecutors had been involved in those deliberations.

Oh boy, these are the guys who weren’t fired. Whether they are dead end loyal Bu$hies, or just honest prosecutors who aren’t in key voting districts, this sort of talking back would have been unheard of in the Bu$h malAdministration a year ago.

The descriptions of the meetings are credited to “a person familiar with the discussions.”

These meetings were apparently supposed to be secret, with information about them and the matters discussed to be announced by the White House, or by a functionary at the Department of Justice reading from a Karl Rove-produced script. Details revealed by a person or persons present at the various meetings might well indicate that this entire matter is acquiring a life of its own and is moving out of control of the White House. This possibility would of course make the various House and Senate investigations self-sustaining.

These investigations are part of the reason the Democrats won control of Congress last November. The revelations from these sensitive and confidential meetings might indicate that not only Democratic voters approve of the changes.