any reason, or no reason at all, barring only illegal and improper reasons. When Gonzales became attorney general in 2005, he ordered a performance review of all U.S. Attorneys. On December 7, 2006, seven United States attorneys were notified by the United States Department of Justice that they were being dismissed, after the George W. Bush administration sought their resignation. One more, Bud Cummins, who had been informed of his dismissal in June 2006, announced his resignation on December 15, 2006, effective December 20, 2006, upon being notified of Tim Griffin's appointment as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. In the subsequent congressional hearings and press reports, it was disclosed that additional U.S. attorneys were controversially dismissed without explanation to the dismissee in 2005 and 2006, and that at least 26 U.S. attorneys were at various times considered for dismissal. Although U.S. attorneys can be dismissed at the discretion of the president, critics claimed that the dismissals were either motivated by desire to install attorneys more loyal to the Republican party ("loyal Bushies," in the words of Kyle Sampson, Gonzales's former chief of staff) or as retribution for actions or inactions damaging to the Republican party. At least six of the eight had received positive performance reviews at the Department of Justice. DOJ officials Will Moschella and Monica Goodling both testified under oath that EARS evaluations are office-wide reviews, they are not reviews of the U.S. Attorneys themselves. Gonzales testified under oath that EARS evaluations do not necessarily reflect on the U.S. Attorney. In other words, these reviews were not evaluations of the performance of the fired federal prosecutors. In a press conference given on March 13, Gonzales suggested that "incomplete information, was communicated or may have been communicated to the Congress" and he accepted full responsibility. Nonetheless, Gonzales avowed that his knowledge of the process to fire and select new US attorneys was limited to how the US attorneys may have been classified as "strong performers, not-as-strong performers, and weak performers." Gonzales also asserted that was all he knew of the process, saying that "[I] was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That's basically what I knew as the Attorney General." Department of Justice records released on March 23, however, appeared to contradict some of the Attorney General's assertions, indicating that on his Nov 27