SAN DIEGO -- The unexpected, forced resignation of U.S. Attorney Carol Lam in San Diego and eight other U.S. attorneys nationwide ignited a political firestorm in 2007 that swept through Washington, D.C., as high-ranking congressional Democrats accused the Bush administration of politicizing justice.

An ensuing congressional investigation of the motives behind the U.S. attorney firings ultimately led to an exodus of several high-level Justice Department officials, including the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales himself, and a still-looming constitutional showdown between the White House and Congress.

To what degree, if any, politics influenced the decisions to remove Lam and the others is a topic that continues to divide political leaders generally along party lines.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, said in a written statement that "there are still many unanswered questions" about the firings. A spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, called the congressional investigation a "political wild goose chase" that has found "no wrongdoing."

Democrats cite Cunningham case

Some congressional Democrats have invoked the successful prosecution of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Escondido, on bribery charges as a possible reason for Lam being forced from office, but Justice Department officials and some congressional Republicans have denied that charge.

Just over a year after Cunningham pleaded guilty to bribery and other charges, Lam received the call from the Justice Department telling her to resign. As word of the move became public in January 2007, some former U.S. attorneys and others in the San Diego legal community said they were stunned.

U.S. attorneys are presidential appointees, confirmed by the Senate, who can be replaced at any time for any reason, but they traditionally are allowed to retain their positions as long as the president who appointed them remains in office, former U.S. attorneys in San Diego have said.

Two days before her last day in office in February, Lam announced indictments of three other men, including a former top official at the Central Intelligence Agency, on charges related to the Cunningham case.

Two high-ranking Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have referred specifically to the Cunningham case and Lam's "aggressive pursuit of Republican corruption cases" as a possible reason for her dismissal.

Republican members of the committee, including Issa, have argued, however, that the suggestion that the Cunningham case was involved in Lam's resignation was weak and that problems with her prosecuting too few immigration cases justified her dismissal.

FBI official says politics involved

Allegations that politics influenced the decision to oust Lam gained the support of a top federal law enforcement official early in 2007.

Dan Dzwilewski, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's San Diego office at the time, was reported to have said he thought Lam's continued employment was crucial to the success of ongoing investigations and that he "guaranteed" politics was involved in her dismissal.

Dzwilewski, who has since left the FBI, did not respond to requests for an interview for this article.

On May 11, 2006, Kyle Sampson, one of the Justice Department officials who resigned amid the controversy surrounding the U.S. attorney firings, sent an e-mail to an official at the White House counsel's office referring to "the real problem" that led him to decide Lam should be replaced.

One day earlier, May 10, 2006, Lam had notified the Justice Department that she was going to issue search warrants in an investigation stemming from the Cunningham bribery conviction.

On the morning of the day that Sampson sent his e-mail, the Los Angeles Times also had reported that the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles had opened an investigation into Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, that was connected to the Cunningham case.

Sampson testified at a congressional hearing about the firings that the "real problem" he was referring to was Lam's prosecution of immigration cases, which Justice Department officials and congressional Republicans have criticized as too infrequent.

In testimony to Congress in March, Lam declined to "surmise" whether her forced resignation had anything to do with the Cunningham investigation and said that she had no evidence that her office's prosecution of Cunningham had anything to do with her being asked to leave.

During a recent telephone interview, Lam declined to comment on any ongoing cases.

With Lam's former No. 3 person now serving as U.S. attorney in San Diego, the prosecutions of defendants linked to Cunningham have continued, resulting in one conviction so far - that of Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes - and other trials for Wilkes and two other men still pending.

GOP: Border the cause

As committees led by Democrats continue looking into the motives for the firings of Lam and the others, Issa and other Republicans have pointed to the hot-button issue of illegal immigration as the real and justified basis for Lam's departure.

Lam wrote to the House Judiciary Committee that she reassessed the types of cases the U.S. attorney's office was prosecuting and found that larger, smuggling investigations were being neglected "to meet the demands of handling numerous, smaller reactive cases."

Lam wrote that a Justice Department official's comments that her numbers in immigration cases "didn't stack up" reflected an "unfortunate emphasis on mere statistics" instead of the quality of the prosecutions.

Issa's spokesman, Frederick Hill, said in an e-mail that Issa "did not accept that there was a simple choice between prosecuting either high-level criminals or the foot soldiers of the cartels." Issa was concerned about "increasingly rigid and inflexible" policies in the U.S. attorney's office that he believed hampered enforcement efforts and created "safe harbors" for repeat illegal immigrant smugglers, Hill said.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Kelly said an upward trend in prosecutions of immigration-related offenses began before Lam left office and has continued under her successor, Karen Hewitt.

The increases cannot be attributed to any one cause, Kelly said.

Congress, White House at odds

Whether Lam's departure was motivated by politics or immigration, the congressional investigation of the decision to fire her and the other U.S. attorneys has moved forward toward a constitutional battle with the White House over what information officials must disclose to Congress.

Judiciary committees have asked for votes in the full House and Senate on resolutions to have current and former White House officials declared in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with subpoenas issued as part of the investigation.

The White House has invoked the doctrine of executive privilege to justify not having some officials testify or provide documents to the committee.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote in November that the privilege claim was surprising because "of the significant and uncontroverted evidence that the President had no involvement in these firings."

In the past, disputes of this nature have been resolved before Congress approved a contempt citation. The last time Congress sought to prosecute an official for contempt was 1983, when an Environmental Protection Agency official was acquitted in court of the contempt charge, but was convicted in a separate trial of perjury.

A year removed from the controversial ouster that propelled her to the national spotlight, Lam said recently that she had "absolutely no regrets" about her time as U.S. attorney.

"When you're the U.S. attorney, you have to make calls as you see them, and I did," Lam said.

Contact staff writer Scott Marshall at (760) 631-6623 or smarshall@nctimes.com.