WASHINGTON (AP) – Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and President Bush’s former counsel approved the firings of eight federal prosecutors, Gonzales’ one-time chief of staff told the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday.

“I and others made staff recommendations but they were approved and signed off on by the principals,” Kyle Sampson said, referring to Mr. Gonzales and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers.

Responding to questions from Senator Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, Mr. Sampson rejected the notion that the dismissals were ordered by young or inexperienced Justice Department officials. Mr. Gonzales and Ms. Miers were deeply involved for two years in discussions about which prosecutors to fire, according to Mr. Sampson’s testimony and e-mails released by the Justice Department.

Sampson sat alone at the witness table, hands folded, as he fielded sharp questions from Democrats on the committee. His appearance was the latest act in a political drama that has shaken the Bush administration and imperiled Gonzales’ tenure at the Justice Department.

Earlier, Mr. Sampson said that Mr. Gonzales had wrongly said he was not involved in discussions about the firings of the prosecutors.

Asked whether Mr. Gonzales’ statement was false, Mr. Sampson replied, “I don’t think it’s accurate if the statement implies that I intended to mislead the Congress.”

Mr. Sampson also testified the prosecutors were fired last year because they did not sufficiently support President Bush’s priorities, defending a standard that Democrats called “highly improper.”

“The distinction between ‘political’ and ‘performance-related’ reasons for removing a United States attorney is, in my view, largely artificial,” Mr. Sampson said.

“Some were asked to resign because they were not carrying out the president’s and the attorney general’s priorities,” he said. “In some sense that may be described as political by some people.”

He denied that any prosecutor was fired for pursuing corruption cases that might hurt the administration. “To my knowledge, nothing of the sort occurred here,” Mr. Sampson told the committee.

Mr. Gonzales planned to meet with prosecutors from the mid-Atlantic region at Justice Department headquarters Thursday. It’s part of a nationwide series of meetings to discuss the issue.

The Judiciary Committee’s senior Republican, Senator Specter of Pennsylvania, scolded Mr. Sampson for causing an uproar that has distracted the Justice Department.

“It is generally acknowledged that the Department of Justice is in a state of disrepair, perhaps even dysfunction, because of what has happened,” Mr. Specter said. The remaining top prosecutors are skittish, he said, “not knowing when the other shoe may drop.”

Democrats rejected the concept of mixing politics with federal law enforcement. They accused the Bush administration of cronyism and trying to circumvent the Senate confirmation process by installing favored GOP allies in plum jobs as Federal prosecutors

“We have a situation that’s highly improper. It corrodes the public’s trust in our system of Justice,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Senator Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. “It’s wrong.”

Mr. Sampson, who quit earlier this month amid the furor, disputed Democratic charges that the firings were a purge by intimidation and a warning to the remaining prosecutors to fall in line.

Senator Cornyn, Republican of Texas, offered Mr. Sampson some support, saying he had seen no evidence that the dismissals were “designed to impede or actually did impede a criminal investigation or prosecution.”

Mr. Sampson testified that federal prosecutors serve at the president’s pleasure and are judged in large part on whether they pursue or resist administration policy.

“I came here today because this episode has been personally devastating to me and my family,” Mr. Sampson told the panel, saying he wanted to share what he knew with Congress and put the issue behind him.

The Justice Department admitted Wednesday that it gave senators inaccurate information about the firings and presidential political adviser Karl Rove’s role in trying to secure a prosecutor’s post in Arkansas for one of his former aides, Tim Griffin.

Justice officials acknowledged that a Feb. 23 letter to four Democratic senators erred in asserting that the department was not aware of any role Mr. Rove played in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin to replace prosecutor Bud Cummins in Little Rock, Ark.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling said that certain statements in last month’s letter to Democratic lawmakers appeared to be “contradicted by department documents included in our production.”

That admission, only hours before Sampson’s testimony, took some of the sting out of Democrats’ key pieces of evidence that the administration had misled Congress.

Still, Mr. Sampson provided plenty of fodder. He acknowledged planning the firings as much as two years ago with the considered, collective judgment of a number of senior Justice Department officials.

The Feb. 23 letter, which was written by Mr. Sampson but signed by Hertling, emphatically stated that “the department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin.” It also said that “the Department of Justice is not aware of anyone lobbying, either inside or outside of the administration, for Mr. Griffin’s appointment.”

Those assertions are contradicted by e-mails from Mr. Sampson to a White House aide, saying that getting Mr. Griffin appointed “was important to Harriet, Karl, etc.” Former White House Counsel Harriet Miers was among the first people to suggest Mr. Griffin as a replacement for Mr. Cummins.

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Associated Press Writers Lara Jakes Jordan and Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.