Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said releasing the documents was a "virtually unprecedented step."

"The attorney general wants the Congress and the American people to understand both the reasons for the department's decisions and its efforts to inform Congress about this matter," she said. "Because the American public must have confidence that . . . the Justice Department is being transparent and forthcoming with the Congress."

Many of the e-mails lay out the department's purported reasons for asking the prosecutors to step aside - lack of immigration prosecutions in San Diego, conflicts over a capital murder case in Arizona and others.

The e-mails provide little new detail about the planning that went into the firing of the eight federal prosecutors, but do shed light on the Justice Department's sometimes harried response to demands from Congress.

In a Feb. 7 e-mail, a Justice Department spokesman noted that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was "extremely upset" about the explanations for the firings that Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty provided to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Gonzales' former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, a Utah native, advocated sending McNulty. "We need to be serious and hit back hard," Sampson said.

Sampson crafted an outline for McNulty's testimony that laid out the department's legal rationale for replacing the prosecutors.

In one e-mail, White House Counsel Harriet Miers contemplates whether "The Boss" needed to be notified of the planned firings, but says it would be difficult to do since he was traveling.

Sampson drafted a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last month responding to inquiries about the U.S. attorney firings, stating that "the department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint" Tim Griffin as the new U.S. attorney in Arkansas.

But its content seems to contradict a December 2006 e-mail Sampson sent that noted the Griffin appointment was "important to Harriet, Karl, etc."

Scolinos reiterated the Justice Department's assertion that it "did not remove the U.S. attorneys for improper reasons, such as to prevent or retaliate for a particular prosecution in a public corruption matter."

Five of the seven U.S. attorneys dismissed in December were involved in corruption investigations. Democrats have questioned whether the firings were conducted to influence the outcomes of the inquiries.

The Senate is expected to vote today on a provision added to the Patriot Act that allows the attorney general to fill vacant U.S. attorney positions without Senate approval. It was added to the act at the department's request by Brett Tolman, then a Judiciary Committee staffer and now U.S. attorney in Utah.

Asked Monday whether Gonzales would serve for the remainder of the Bush administration, White House spokesman Tony Snow said: "We hope so. He has the confidence of the president. But . . . nobody is prophetic enough to know what the next 21 months hold."