Someone in the White House turns the heat back on Gonzales

A rather significant story in the National Journal,

The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove's, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

But again, what often catches my eye is the sourcing.

Several of the e-mails that the Bush administration is withholding from Congress, as well as papers from the White House counsel's office describing other withheld documents, were made available to National Journal by a senior executive branch official, who said that the administration has inappropriately kept many of them from Congress.

So, what is a "senior executive branch official?" Is it a White House official they're trying to obscure? Whoever it is, they apparently had access to or a sympathetic conspirator in the White House Counsel's office, and that's a small office.

And, people in the White House still want Gonzales gone.

Two senior administration officials told National Journal they were frustrated with decisions by Gonzales not to release some of the documents held by the Justice Department. One of the officials charged that "Gonzales is doing this to save his own neck," at the expense of the administration. The same official said that senior aides to Gonzales have been refusing to turn over many relevant documents to Congress, and that the attorney general's top aides have been selectively leaking portions of them to the media to portray themselves in a favorable light.

I think the backstory may be more interesting than the headline.

Also: The House counsel is expected to file the paperwork for Monica Goodling's immunity on Friday.