SAN DIEGO - It's an odd twist that ousted San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam is the focal point of a growing controversy over the way the Bush administration fired her and seven of her colleagues.

The low-key litigator who made her name prosecuting health care fraud got the job in 2002 because she was seen as a safe choice following a protracted search for a top federal prosecutor in the nation's eighth-largest city.

Democrats investigating the firings have questioned whether Lam's dismissal was linked to her office's corruption prosecution of now-jailed former Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. That investigation has expanded to ensnare a former top CIA official, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who along with his best friend, defense contractor Brent Wilkes, faces fraud and conspiracy charges.

On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she had no conclusive evidence to prove any connection between the investigation and Lam's firing but is pushing for more information.

Feinstein is among a growing chorus of lawmakers taking the White House to task for the handling of the firings, which critics say were politically motivated. The White House says they were for failing to follow policy objectives. Some lawmakers, including several Republicans, have called for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to step down.

Lam, now a corporate attorney for San Diego-based wireless technology firm Qualcomm Inc., has not commented publicly about her dismissal. She declined to be interviewed for this story.

Lam became U.S. attorney after a drawn-out search to fill the top prosecutor's slot in San Diego. A political independent who had spent less than two years as a Democratic appointee to a state court judgeship, Lam won out over a crowded candidate field that included Jeffrey Taylor, a former Republican Senate committee counsel who now is the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

"She was a wonderful political appointee - she was a woman, she was Asian-American, she went to Stanford and Yale, clerked for a judge, she was a terrific lawyer and a mother and a wife," said Pete Nunez, a former San Diego U.S. attorney who hired Lam as an assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego in 1986. "She was a superwoman - what else would you want?"

A career prosecutor, the 47-year-old Lam took the post with plans to shift the caseload away from low-level immigration and drug violations - San Diego's signature cases - and focus on breaking up organized immigrant smuggling rings and pursuing white-collar offenses.

Lam, who in 2002 wrote a book on trying medical fraud cases, took the unusual step of personally prosecuting Tenet Healthcare Corp. on charges the company paid kickbacks to doctors for patient referrals. The case resulted in a mistrial, though Tenet later agreed to settle with the government.

Lam's goals put her at odds with her superiors in Washington.

"She won't just say, 'You got me. You're right, I've ignored national priorities and obvious local needs,"' associate attorney general Bill Mercer wrote in an e-mail last July criticizing Lam to his colleague Mike Elston, chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.

Lam met later in the summer with San Diego-area Republican U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, who had publicly criticized her for filing too few immigration cases.

In an e-mail to Justice Department attorney Rebecca Seidel, Lam said she defended her record to Issa by explaining that she had traded "low-end coyote cases" - a reference to immigrant smugglers - for more complicated prosecutions of smuggling ringleaders and violent criminals.

"Essentially I must make a choice - prosecute the coyotes who are smuggling but not endangering anyone, or the rapists and murderers who are coming back to rape and murder again," Lam wrote.

Shaun Martin, a law professor at the University of San Diego who keep tabs on the local legal scene, said no one should be surprised by how Lam did her job.

"She's very strong-willed, and she didn't change her mind," he said. "But Carol turned out to be exactly what everyone thought she'd turn out to be, which was very hardworking, very personally involved, and very willing to get dirty in the details of particular cases."

Biography

NAME: Carol Chien-Hua Lam

BIRTH DATE-AGE: June 26, 1959; 47

EDUCATION: Yale University; Stanford Law School

CAREER: Assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego, 1986-2000; San Diego Superior Court judge, 2000-02; U.S. attorney in San Diego, 2002-February 2007; legal counsel for San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc., February 2007-present

FAMILY: Married geophysicist Mark Burnett in 1986; four children.