Sixty-two pages of e-mails released Tuesday lay out how Sampson, who resigned Monday night, led an effort over nearly two years to identify U.S. attorneys who could be targeted for replacement by the Bush administration.

Gonzales said Tuesday that "mistakes were made here," but insisted he was not apprised of the purge orchestrated by his top staffer and defended it as the right decision. Gonzales said he was dismayed that Sampson did not share all of the information on the firings to those who testified before Congress, causing them to deliver incomplete information.

Democrats scoffed at Gonzales' assertion that he was out of the loop. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called it a "sorry excuse" and renewed a call for the attorney general's resignation and for subpoenas for Sampson, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.

''The buck stops with the attorney general and it defies belief that his chief of staff was making all these major decisions without his knowledge,'' Schumer said on the Senate floor.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said senators plan to look into how language ended up in the Patriot Act that allowed the attorney general to replace the federal prosecutors, questioning whether it was part of a premeditated plan by the Justice Department.

The provision was added to the Patriot Act renewal while staffers were working out differences in the versions of the bills that had passed the House and the Senate.

Brett Tolman, now the U.S. attorney for Utah, was then Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter's staffer handling the issue and added it at the request of the Justice Department, Specter said at a hearing last month.

"Some say it was put in for national security reasons. That no longer washes," said Feinstein, one of the first senators to voice concerns about the firings.

Tolman, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment Tuesday.

Five of the prosecutors who were replaced were involved in corruption investigations. One, David Iglesias of New Mexico, said he felt pressured to expedite an investigation into a Democrat.

The e-mails, released Tuesday by the House Judiciary Committee, show that Sampson and the White House began in early 2005, piecing together a list of U.S. Attorneys who could be forced out, either because they had poor performance or had "chafed against administration initiatives."

Sampson advocated using the new authority in the Patriot Act, believing it would allow the department to "give far less deference to home-state Senators and thereby get (1) our preferred person appointed and (2) do it far faster and more efficiently, at less cost to the White House."

The list went through several iterations, culminating in a detailed memo days before the dismissals that included plans to notify various senators and a battle plan for dealing with the political blowback.

In another e-mail, Sampson notes that he beat back a "much broader - like across the board - plan" to replace U.S. attorneys that started in the White House counsel's office after the 2004 election.

Gonzales said Tuesday that plan would have been too disruptive and it "was immediately rejected by me."

Sampson was born in Cedar City, graduated from Brigham Young University and earned a law degree at the University of Chicago. One of his professors there, Michael McConnell, served as a mentor, and McConnell was later appointed to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by President Bush.

Sampson worked for Sen. Orrin Hatch on the Senate Judiciary Committee. After the election, Sampson drew on a friendship he had built in law school with Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of the vice president, to land a job making personnel decisions in the early days of the Bush administration.

He was promoted to assistant White House counsel, then moved to the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft and became Gonzales' chief of staff in 2005.

Early last year, he was one of two contenders to replace retiring U.S. Attorney for Utah Paul Warner. He had the backing of Gonzales, but Utah's senators and several others threw their support behind Tolman, who was selected for the spot.