US Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans have resigned from President Bush's Cabinet.
A leading candidate to replace, Mr Ashcroft is former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, who once ran the department under Mr Ashcroft and faithfully implemented his policies.
Others candidates were White House counsel Mr Alberto Gonzales, Mr Bush's election campaign chairman Mr Marc Racicot and former New York City Mayor Mr Rudolph Giuliani.
Mr Ashcroft, a devout Christian who once ordered two partially nude statues covered up at the Justice Department so he would no longer be photographed in front of them, began what is expected to be a gradual Cabinet reshuffle ahead of Mr Bush's second term on January 20th.
The Justice Department said Mr Ashcroft's resignation becomes effective when his successor is confirmed.
Mr Ashcroft, who missed nearly a month of work earlier this year because of pancreatitis and surgery to remove his gallbladder, had long been a target of criticism by civil liberties groups and some Democrats in Congress over the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies adopted after the September 11th, 2001, attacks.
Mr Ashcroft defended the policies as necessary to prevent another attack and strongly supported a sweeping anti-terror law, the Patriot Act, that gave the government the power to tap phones, track Internet usage and mobile phones and detain immigrants.
But in a major blow for Mr Ashcroft, on June 28th this year the US Supreme Court rejected the administration's position in a pair of rulings and said terror suspects could use the American judicial system to challenge their confinement.
A month before that, Mr Ashcroft warned at a news conference that al Qaeda planned in the next few months to attack the United States. The attack never occurred, and Mr Ashcroft was criticised for failing to give any details and for scaring people.
"The demands of justice are both rewarding and depleting," Mr Ashcroft said in a handwritten resignation letter to Mr Bush dated November 2nd, the day the president was re-elected. "I take great personal satisfaction in the record which has been developed. The safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."
Considered a possible replacement for Mr Evans was Mr Mercer Reynolds, who was finance chairman of Mr Bush's re-election campaign. "Mercer Reynolds is on the A-list for that job," said Mr Stephen Moore, a White House ally who is president of the Club for Growth.
Mr Evans was seen as proponent of controversial tariffs that Mr Bush imposed on steel imports early in his administration, and a proponent for removing them after the World Trade Organisation ruled they were illegal and the European Union threatened to retaliate.