The two senior congressional aides spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the document in question hasn't been made public and because the Justice Department has allowed investigators to read it but not to photocopy it. One of the aides, who also was familiar with Sampson's closed-door testimony to investigators earlier this month, said that Sampson couldn't recall specifics but said he'd been told that senior Justice officials had concerns about Heffelfinger.

The Justice Department Thursday declined to confirm or deny the report.

Heffelfinger's case interests congressional investigators because he worked in one of the states that White House political adviser Karl Rove identified as an election battleground, and because he was replaced by a 34-year-old Bush administration loyalist who'd been a member of Gonzales' inner circle.

He left before he could be fired and his replacement is so hated the department heads all took pay cuts so they wouldn't have to deal with her. Yep, that sounds about right for these guys.