President Turns to an Insider to Negotiate on Dismissals

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/washington/16fielding.html?ex=1331697600&en=4679f6476a9ff12d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

President Turns to an Insider to Negotiate on Dismissals

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: March 16, 2007

WASHINGTON, March 15 — It was hardly a social call when Fred F. Fielding, the new White House counsel, turned up Wednesday afternoon on Capitol Hill.

He had come to negotiate with Democrats, who are investigating whether politics played a role in the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors and demanding testimony from Karl Rove and other top aides to President Bush. But Mr. Fielding’s real task is even bigger and more delicate: to serve as the point man for the White House as it decides the future of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, a longtime Texas friend and confidant of Mr. Bush.

In bringing Mr. Fielding back to the West Wing this year, Mr. Bush turned to the kind of consummate Washington insider he disdained when he first came to town, a Republican who remained prominent in the capital as presidents of both parties have come and gone.

Now, occupying a job he held under Ronald Reagan more than 20 years ago, Mr. Fielding, 67, is the White House front man in a high-stakes showdown with the new Democratic majority on Capitol Hill even as he scrambles behind the scenes to determine what his new colleagues knew and when.

Soft-spoken and slightly rumpled, he was polite but did not reveal much on Wednesday, lawmakers said. He stayed 20 minutes, just long enough to hear Democrats make their case that Mr. Bush should not assert executive privilege to keep his aides from talking. He left without a hint of what he might do, and said he would report back to them on Friday.

“He was not chatty,” said Representative Linda T. Sánchez, the California Democrat whose subcommittee is running the House inquiry. “He said, You have to understand that I have certain constraints that I am working under, and there are some things I need to work out.”

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