A special prosecutor who was appointed to determine if any crimes were committed within the Justice Department will focus on former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other Bush administration officials.

But U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan is not expected to be a target of that investigation. A Justice Department report issued this week did not find any wrongdoing by Ms. Buchanan in the national scandal that involved the firings of nine top prosecutors by the Bush administration.

"It seems to me in the waning days of the Bush administration there's going to be little left in reference to her," said University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias.

Instead, he said, Acting U.S. Attorney Nora Dannehy of the District of Connecticut will likely focus on the "bigger fish."

"That seems to me to take precedence over any particular U.S. attorney."

In addition to Mr. Gonzales, the investigation is expected to focus on a number of the key players in the firings: Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff for Mr. Gonzales, and former White House liaison Monica Goodling.

Ms. Buchanan, who served as the director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys from May 2004 to June 2005, was mentioned several times in the 392-page report issued Monday, but nowhere was she criticized for her actions.

"I think the people of Pittsburgh can be happy they have a superior attorney working on their behalf," said Ms. Buchanan's personal attorney, Roscoe Howard.

Ms. Buchanan, who was appointed in September 2001, will continue to work in the "honest, straightforward and nonpartisan" way that she always has, he continued.

"She had a very peripheral role," he said. "They tried to rope her in to a more prominent role. It's a shame that this is the way this went. She is a public servant, and she'll do the best that she can."

Ms. Buchanan's roles in the firings, which occurred in 2006 after she'd left the executive office, were limited.

She did talk with Mr. Sampson about some of the prosecutors who were ultimately fired, including Carol Lam, U.S. attorney in the Southern District of California, who was seen as not prosecuting enough immigration and Project Safe Neighborhoods cases.

But the most involvement Ms. Buchanan seemed to have in the firings, according to the report, was in meeting with former U.S. Attorney Kevin V. Ryan of the Northern District of California.

She met with Mr. Ryan in March 2005 about morale issues in his office. Media reports at the time said several top prosecutors had left, and the Justice Department received a letter from the chief judge in the district complaining about how Mr. Ryan ran the office.

Ms. Buchanan, who testified for six hours before congressional investigators in June 2007, reported that she told Mr. Sampson that she viewed Mr. Ryan unfavorably.

He was asked to resign in January 2006 by Ms. Buchanan's replacement in the executive office, Michael Battle.

Ms. Buchanan issued a brief statement on the Justice Department report, saying: "The report issued by the Office of the Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility affirms that I had no role in the removal of nine United States Attorneys."

Though Ms. Buchanan has been cleared in the firings scandal, it is unknown if the House Judiciary Committee will continue its investigation into whether the prosecution of former Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril H. Wecht was politically motivated.

Two House subcommittees heard testimony last year from former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, a Republican on Dr. Wecht's defense team, who said that the charges against his client did not rise to the level of a federal corruption case.

Ms. Buchanan has vehemently denied those allegations, saying that she does not make decisions to prosecute based on political affiliation.

She often has been criticized because her office has brought a number of high-profile cases against Democrats during her tenure, but rarely targeted members of her own party.