Officials said Mr. Gonzales had faced direct criticism in most of the meetings with the prosecutors.

At a meeting in Denver, attended by about a dozen mainly Western prosecutors, Mr. Gonzales was told that the dismissals had cast a cloud over all the United States attorneys’ offices, not only over the prosecutors who were removed. But at that meeting, according to one official briefed on the discussion, prosecutors focused on steps to improve communications between the attorney general and United States attorneys.

The criticism from prosecutors in the Justice Department’s field offices comes as the uproar over the dismissals appears to also have eroded confidence in Mr. Gonzales at the agency’s headquarters, where top officials have been focused for weeks on little else.

Mr. Gonzales and Mr. McNulty, who are expected to testify before Congress in two weeks, are said by officials to have maintained a working relationship, but their staffs have feuded over who is to blame.

Some of Mr. Gonzales’ aides have blamed Mr. McNulty for inflaming the issue by testifying on Feb. 6 that one of the ousted prosecutors, H. E. Cummins III, was removed for no reason. Mr. McNulty’s aides have blamed Mr. Sampson and Monica Goodling, the liaison to the White House, for failing to disclose their conversations with the White House before the removals.

In Washington, one Republican lawmaker said he was less concerned with Mr. Gonzales’s personal situation than how it was affecting the day-to-day performance of the Justice Department.

“I can’t imagine a department being more demoralized with what’s going on there,” said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Specter said in an interview that Mr. Gonzales needed to demonstrate his candor about the dismissals and assure people about his competence to retain his post.