Stop the stonewalling.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The White House, not Congress, bears primary responsibility for the looming constitutional confrontation over the firings of eight federal prosecutors.

President Bush could have - and should have - avoided this showdown by ordering his political adviser, Karl Rove, and other top aides to testify publicly and under oath before Congress about their roles in the firings.

Instead, the White House has adopted a siege mentality, insisting that the firings were legitimate despite mounting evidence to the contrary and setting impossibly restrictive conditions on aides' testimony and the disclosure of key documents.

On Tuesday, Bush offered to allow Congress to conduct private interviews - without official records, transcripts or follow-up sessions - with Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and two other officials. This alone is grounds for rejection by Congress and for the prompt issuance of subpoenas. As the president himself has observed, the American people "need to hear the truth" about the firings.

The White House also refused to give Congress access to e-mail messages and other communications about the dismissals exchanged by White House officials. That's another untenable restriction on lawmakers who need to determine whether the decisions to fire the prosecutors were made by the White House or the Justice Department.

Bush has accused Congress of trying to conduct partisan "show trials" of the president's top aides under "the klieg lights" on Capitol Hill.

That's an interesting choice of words from an administration that showed little reticence about public- ly trashing the reputations of the ousted prosecutors, initially charging that they were fired for "perfor- mance-related issues," even though most had received stellar job evalu- ations.

On Wednesday, a House Judiciary subcommittee approved subpoenas for Rove and other senior White House officials; the Senate Judiciary Committee already has approved subpoenas for several Justice officials. While the move appears intended to give Congress leverage in negotiations with the White House, lawmakers shouldn't hesitate to issue the subpoenas if Bush continues to refuse to allow his aides to testify publicly and under oath, and to hand over all pertinent documents.

The White House defends its stonewalling by insisting that it must protect executive privilege. It's a flimsy argument, one that ignores the numerous precedents, including many in the Clinton administration, in which top presidential aides testified before Congress.

President Bush continues to defend the firings and to stand by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Yet disturbing evidence suggests the White House played a pivotal and crassly political role - and that some of the firings may have been motivated by a desire to disrupt prosecutions and to punish prosecutors who balked at using their offices for political purposes.

Bush should remove the unacceptable conditions he has placed on testimony by his aides and access to White House documents. If the White House and Justice Departments did nothing wrong, they have nothing to fear from disclosing the truth. Even under the "klieg lights" of Capitol Hill.