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Five of the U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration in 2006 told law students at Arizona State University that there's no place for politics in the courtroom.

The former prosecutors, among nine fired at the time, were asked to talk to the students about the role of prosecutors and the ethical considerations they face. They appeared to agree that politics were behind the firings.

"It was an unprecedented period of turmoil," said Carol Lam, talking about the political mood in the Justice Department. Lam, deputy general counsel for Qualcomm in San Diego, formerly was the U.S. attorney for Southern California.

Typically, U.S. attorneys are nominated by the president and approved by the Senate. However, small changes in the Patriot Act allowed the Justice Department to put in replacements without getting congressional approval.

The attorneys said they suspected that their firings were prompted by a range of political pressures over such things as voter-fraud cases. The Bush administration denied the firings were motivated by politics.

Bud Cummins, a consultant who formerly was the U.S. attorney for eastern Arkansas, said that politics were a reality of the job. He said everyone on the panel had a political background or they would not have been appointed.

"What's important to understand is that once you get this job, you have to hang politics at the door," he said.

Cummins didn't see the firings as a grand conspiracy executed by some "Wizard of Oz" in the White House. He views it as a series of bad decisions.

John McKay, a professor at the Seattle University School of Law and former U.S. attorney for western Washington, said he didn't understand what was going on when a boss told him the office was "going in another direction" since he had just received a good evaluation.

David Iglesias, a military prosecutor and former U.S. attorney for New Mexico, said that when he took the federal prosecutor's job, he stopped participating in activities like fundraisers or contributing to political candidates to avoid the appearance of favoritism. He said the effort to politicize the Justice Department failed.

"I hope it doesn't go down that road again," he said.

Paul Charlton, a shareholder in Phoenix law firm of Gallagher & Kennedy, formerly was Arizona's U.S. attorney. He said he resisted the push from above to seek a death penalty in a drug-case death where the evidence for such a penalty was not strong enough.

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