SEATTLE (AP) - A top Justice Department official tried to win the silence of fired Seattle U.S. Attorney John McKay during a "sinister" phone call in January, McKay said in response to written questions from the House Judiciary Committee.

McKay's answers - along with those of other U.S. attorneys fired during a controversial purge last December - were posted on the committee's Web site Wednesday to supplement their testimony in March.

McKay and six other prosecutors were ordered to resign Dec. 7; he announced the following week that he would be resigning to pursue other opportunities, but kept mum that he had been fired.

In response to a question asking him to enumerate conversations with Justice officials after he was ordered to resign, McKay said he received a call from Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, on Jan. 17 - nine days before McKay was to step down.

"Mr. Elston proceeded to make a number of statements using a familiar tone which I did not appreciate in light of the circumstances, and related that 'no one could believe that they had not seen any incendiary comments from John McKay,"' McKay wrote.

Elston went on to mention that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be testifying, but that "OPA" - the White House's Office of Political Affairs - had told the Justice Department not to say anything beyond general statements about the resignations.

"I greatly resented what I felt Mr. Elston was trying to do: buy my silence by promising that the attorney general would not demean me in his Senate testimony," McKay wrote. "I clearly and slowly told Mr. Elston that his description of what the attorney general would be saying would have NOTHING to do with what I said or didn't say publicly. I told him that my silence thus far was because I believed it was my duty to resign quietly because I served at the pleasure of the president, and that I did not want to reflect poorly on him or the Department of Justice. ...

"My handwritten and dated notes of this call reflect that I believed Mr. Elston's tone was sinister and that he was prepared to threaten me further if he concluded I did not intend to continue to remain silent about my dismissal."

Elston's attorney, Bob Driscoll, said, "There certainly was no intention to threaten anybody." But two other fired U.S. attorneys wrote to the committee that they received calls from Elston admonishing them to keep quiet, and a fourth, Bud Cummins in Little Rock, Ark., made a similar accusation in an e-mail released in March.

Three weeks after the call, McKay confirmed to The Associated Press that he had been ordered to resign, and said he had been given no reason for his termination, which came several months after McKay received a glowing Justice Department evaluation.