Caught in a lie.

Byline: The Register-Guard

When the nation's chief law enforcement officer is caught lying to Congress and the American people, he should be fired for unethical behavior. And fired sooner rather than later.

Despite repeated denials, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was deeply involved in discussions that led to the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. His own former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, testified to that effect last Thursday before Congress.

This is no misunderstanding. No matter of semantics. Not "business as usual" inside the Beltway. It's a flat-out, bald-faced lie, one that requires Gonzales' immediate departure and the appointment of a new attorney general who can begin restoring credibility to a severely damaged Justice Department.

Yet amazingly, President Bush continues to express full confidence in Gonzales. The White House, which Sampson confirmed played a pivotal role in the firings, appears content to leave a compromised attorney general in charge of an equally compromised Justice Department, at least until Gonzales' scheduled April 17 testimony before Congress.

That's too long to wait. If Gonzales believes he can explain his actions and multiple misrepresentations, the Senate Judiciary Committee would surely clear its agenda and make the attorney general the first item of business when Congress returns from Easter recess.

Better yet, Bush should simply tell Gonzales and other top Justice Department officials to clean out their desks in the wake of Sampson's devastating testimony before the Judiciary Committee.

Gonzales has said he never participated in deciding which prosecutors would be fired and was never even briefed on the process. Yet Sampson informed lawmakers that the attorney general was "aware of this process from the beginning," and that the two regularly met to discuss it. When Justice officials met Nov. 27 to make the final decision on the firings that occurred just 10 days later, Gonzales was at the table, Sampson said.

Sampson, like Gonzales, insists that none of the firings were improper. Yet he was unable to explain why one of the fired attorneys, David Iglesias of New Mexico, was not even considered for dismissal until last October, when two Republican members of Congress inquired about his handling of a public corruption investigation of state Democrats. Nor did Sampson explain why many of the fired prosecutors - including those in Arizona, Arkansas and Nevada - were conducting investigations of high-ranking Republicans at the time they were fired.

In his testimony, Sampson rightly noted that prosecutors are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president. But Sampson, like his boss, goes an untenable step further by arguing there is no real distinction between removing a prosecutor for political or performance reasons.

But there's a reason why mid-term purges of prosecutors are rare, if not unprecedented. Prosecutors take an oath to uphold the Constitution and the nation's laws, not to submit to the political whims of a president. Prosecutors have extraordinary power to change lives, careers and reputations, and that power must be wielded without political considerations. Contrary to the Bush administration, there is no such thing as partisan justice.

More importantly, the attorney general has lied about the firings to Congress and the American people. He no longer deserves his title.