WASHINGTON - A Senate Republican offered President Bush a compromise Thursday in the standoff over the dismissals of federal prosecutors, suggesting that select lawmakers question Karl Rove and other administration officials in public, but not under oath.
White House counsel Fred Fielding promised to convey the offer to Bush, said Sen. Arlen Specter, who took the first step toward brokering a deal a few hours after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved but did not issue subpoenas for Rove and others.
Specter's plan would grant one of Bush's key demands - that the officials named in the subpoena authorization testify without being sworn. But the proposal dismisses other White House conditions by suggesting that Rove and the others testify in public.
"Mr. Fielding did not accept or reject it," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
Presidential press secretary Tony Snow again cast the administration's offer to allow Rove and the others to talk to lawmakers in private as the best deal Democrats are going to get. "We opened with a compromise," he told reporters.
Democrats also did not budge from their insistence that Rove be questioned publicly and under oath.
"I've had a lot of those unstructured briefings and found that I was given, in many instances, not the whole truth, nothing near the whole truth," said the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
His committee, by voice vote Thursday, gave Leahy authority to issue subpoenas for Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and her deputy, William Kelley. The House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., was given that same authority a day earlier.
But neither chairman appeared in a rush to issue the subpoenas to White House officials and provoke a showdown.
In letters Thursday, Senate and House Democrats rejected Fielding's offer to let Rove and other officials talk about their roles in the firings, but only on Bush's terms: in private, off the record and not under oath.
"I have never heard the Senate take an ultimatum like that," Leahy said.
"I know he's the decider for the White House," Leahy added, referring to Bush. "But he's not the decider for the United States Senate."
Nonetheless, the offer stands, Perino said.
"Unfortunately, these letters show they aren't as interested in ascertaining the facts than going on a political fishing expedition," she said.
Specter, the Senate committee's former chairman, insisted room for compromise remains.
"Rejections in a news conference don't count," said Specter, R-Pa. "Rejections eyeball to eyeball count."
He suggested the committees could grant the president's demand that his aides not be required to take an oath, but persuade the White House to allow public proceedings with perhaps 16 House and Senate Judiciary Committee members asking questions.
Taking an oath was not necessary, Specter said, because congressional witnesses are required by law to tell the truth.
Specter also said the situation might benefit from time. "The dust has to settle first," Specter said.
On that, Snow agreed: "We're going to let this thing simmer a little bit and let people reflect on it."
The developments came as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, struggling to save his job from increasing calls for his resignation over the firings, promised to cooperate with Congress.
"I'm not going to resign," Gonzales told reporters after an event in St. Louis, the first of a series of meetings with federal prosecutors in coming days in an apparent attempt to patch up relations tattered by the scandal.
"No United States attorney was fired for improper reasons," Gonzales said.
Rep. Paul Gillmor, R-Ohio, said Gonzales has become a "lightning rod" for criticism, joining a growing number of GOP lawmakers who want Gonzales out. "It would be better for the president and the department if the attorney general were to step down," Gillmor said.
Members of both parties want to know why the Justice Department fired eight well-regarded U.S. attorneys over the winter; whether politicians pressured the prosecutors to rush corruption cases; and whether the firings were punishments for the prosecutors' balking at Bush administration priorities.
Lawmakers also want answers on whether the firings were to make way for more loyal Bush allies, as the White House has acknowledged doing in Arkansas.
Gonzales has said that he intends to submit every replacement appointee to the confirmation process. But an e-mail from his then-top aide suggests the intent was to use delays that would let the replacement prosecutors serve without Senate approval through the rest of Bush's term.
The White House reaffirmed on Thursday there is nothing to show that Bush was aware of the plan for replacing the eight federal prosecutors.
The question arose because Miers wrote in an e-mail from Nov. 15, 2006, that she was unsure whether the plan would require "the boss's attention. If it does, he just left last night so would not be able to accomplish that for some time."
Bush was out of the country for much of the next three weeks and a White House e-mail saying "we're a go for the US Atty plan" was sent to Gonzales' former top aide, Kyle Sampson, four days after the president returned.
Perino said Bush did not see a list of the U.S. attorneys to be fired, nor did he add or subtract any names from it. There is "no indication that it was run by the president or that the president had to OK it," she said.
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Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.
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