WASHINGTON — A former Justice Department official at the center of the uproar over prosecutor firings told House investigators yesterday that Attorney General Gonzales tried to review his story of the dismissals with her at a time when lawmakers were homing in on conflicting accounts.

“It made me a little uncomfortable,” Monica Goodling, Mr. Gonzales’s former White House liaison, said of her conversation with the attorney general just before she took a leave of absence in March. “I just did not know if it was appropriate for us to both be discussing our recollections of what had happened.”

In a daylong appearance before the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee, Ms. Goodling, 33, also acknowledged crossing a legal line herself by considering the party affiliations of candidates for career prosecutor jobs, a violation of law.

And she said Mr. Gonzales’s no. 2, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty knew more than he let on when he misled Congress about how extensively the White House was involved in deciding which prosecutors to fire. Mr. McNulty strongly denied it.

Ms. Goodling’s dramatic story about her final conversation with Mr. Gonzales brought questions from panel members about whether he had tried to align her story with his and whether he was not truthful in his own congressional testimony.

Mr. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that he did not know the answers to some questions about the firings because he was steering clear of aides — such as Ms. Goodling — who were likely to be questioned.

“I haven’t talked to witnesses because of the fact that I haven’t wanted to interfere with this investigation and department investigations,” Mr. Gonzales told the panel.

Ms. Goodling said for the first time yesterday that Mr. Gonzales did review the story of the firings with her at an impromptu meeting she requested in his office a few days before she took a leave of absence. “I was somewhat paralyzed. I was distraught, and I felt like I wanted to make a transfer,” Ms. Goodling recalled during a packed hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Gonzales, she said, indicated he would think about Ms. Goodling’s request.

“He then proceeded to say, ‘Let me tell you what I can remember,’ and he laid out for me his general recollection … of some of the process” of the firings, Ms. Goodling added. When Mr. Gonzales finished, “he asked me if I had any reaction to his iteration.”

Ms. Goodling said the conversation made her uncomfortable because she was aware that she, Mr. Gonzales, and others would be called by Congress to testify.

“Was the attorney general trying to shake your recollection?” Rep. Artur Davis, a Democrat of Alabama, said.

Ms. Goodling paused.

“I just did not know if it was a conversation we should be having and so I just didn’t say anything,” she replied.

Democrats pounced.

“It certainly has the flavor of trying to get their stories straight,” Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat of California, a member of the committee, said.

Earlier yesterday, Ms. Goodling acknowledged that she had given too much consideration to whether candidates for jobs as career prosecutors were Republicans or Democrats.

“You crossed the line on civil service laws, is that right?” Rep. Bobby Scott, a Democrat of Virginia, asked.

“I believe I crossed the lines,” Ms. Goodling replied. “But I didn’t mean to.”

She said she had limited involvement in the firings and offered the panel’s Democrats nothing new in their probe of whether President Bush’s top political and legal aides chose which prosecutors to dismiss. Ms. Goodling said she never talked to Mr. Bush’s political adviser, Karl Rove, nor the then White House counsel, Harriet Miers, about the firings. She said Mr. Gonzales’s former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, drew up the list of those to be dismissed but she didn’t know how names got on it.

She testified that Mr. McNulty, the department’s highest official after Mr. Gonzales, knew more than he admitted to congressional investigators about the extent of White House involvement in the firings of eight federal prosecutors. She said Mr. McNulty falsely accused her of withholding key details before he spoke to investigators.

Mr. McNulty ‘s explanation about the dismissals during his February 6 Senate testimony “was incomplete or inaccurate in a number of respects,” Ms. Goodling said. “I believe the deputy was not fully candid.”

Mr. McNulty told senators during the hearing February 6 that the decision to fire the U.S. attorneys in December was made solely by the Justice Department.

He and another top Justice official, William Moschella, say Ms. Goodling and Mr. Sampson withheld crucial information from them as they prepared their congressional testimony.

“The allegation is false,” she told the panel. “I didn’t withhold information from the deputy.”

Mr. McNulty retorted in a statement that his own testimony had been truthful “based on “what I knew at that time.”

“Ms. Goodling’s characterization of my testimony is wrong and not supported by the extensive record of documents and testimony already provided to Congress,” he said.