Obama administration officials are engaged in talks that may result in White House Counsel Gregory Craig’s resignation, the Wall Street Journal reported early Tuesday.

The Journal reported that Craig has had “a rocky tenure” over some national security issues that have become “political liabilities” for President Obama.

“These include the closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the release of Bush administration-era national-security documents, and efforts to find legal ways to indefinitely hold some detainees who can’t be put on trial,” the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.

In January, Obama signed an executive order to close Guantanamo by early 2010, but a proposal to move some of the detainees to maximum security prisons in the U.S. and try them in federal courts received zero support from Democrats, Republicans and the public.

According to the Journal:

Mr. Craig has come under criticism from inside the administration and in Congress for a perceived failure to manage the political issues that have originated from Mr. Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo, according to officials in the administration and in Congress. This criticism has drawn focus away from president’s priorities, such as health care and energy.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina denied the claims. In a statement to the Journal, Messina said:

We’ve addressed these rumors before. They are nothing more than typical Washington parlor games. It’s disappointing that while we are focused on reviving the economy and fighting two wars, others spend their time pointing fingers in an attempt to promote their own status.

The Journal report would appear to suggest that Craig may have fallen out of favor with some administration officials because he backed public disclosure on documents related to the Bush administration’s use of torture against alleged terrorist detainees and his advice to the president on those matters and issues related to Guantanamo lead to vicious attacks against the president by Republicans.

For example, the Journal said some of the “difficulties” Craig has faced revolve around Obama’s reversal in May not to release photographs depicting U.S. soldiers abusing and torturing detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, the Journal did not elaborate on what the “difficulties” entailed.

Obama had previously said he would release the photographs in question in accordance with a federal court order. But he shifted his stance weeks later claiming that his decision stemmed from his personal review of the photos and his concern that their release would endanger American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, Obama’s reversal also came after several weeks of mounting attacks against him as weak on national security.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has since told Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman that the photographs would “never see the light of day” and Obama would sign an executive order if need be to block the images from being released. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Bush administration to gain access to the photographs and a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the ACLU. The matter is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Weeks earlier, Craig reportedly advised Obama on plans to release Justice Department legal opinions drafted during Bush’s first term in office that gave Bush the legal authority to spy on American citizens and the CIA the green light to torture “high-level” alleged terrorist detainees.

But national-security officials complained that they weren’t consulted about those plans and “weeks of debate inside the administration” ensued, the Journal reported.

The Justice Department memoranda was released in April.

But the White House went into damage control mode immediately thereafter as Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz Cheney, publicly accused Obama of inviting a terrorist attack on U.S. soil as a result of his decision.

Around the same time, the Journal reported:

…The administration was running into trouble with plans to move to northern Virginia at least some Chinese Muslim Uighurs who remain detained at Guantanamo despite being cleared for release. The furor over the possible release of former suspects in the U.S. led Congress to overwhelmingly pass new restrictions, including barring spending to close the Guantanamo prison.

Last month, Newsweek reported (h/t Marcy Wheeler) that tensions between Justice Department officials and Craig’s office reached a boiling point just a few weeks after Obama was sworn into office.

The first detonation occurred in only the third week of the administration, soon after a Justice lawyer walked into a courtroom in California and argued that a lawsuit, brought by a British detainee who was alleging torture, should have been thrown out on national-security grounds. By invoking the “state secrets” privilege, the lawyer was reaffirming a position staked out by the Bush administration. The move provoked an uproar among liberals and human-rights groups. It also infuriated Obama, who learned about it from the front page of The New York Times. “This is not the way I like to make decisions,” he icily told aides, according to two administration officials, who declined to be identified discussing the president’s private reactions. White House officials were livid and accused the Justice Department of sandbagging the president. Justice officials countered that they’d notified the White House counsel’s office about the position they had planned to take.

Newsweek said the friction only became worse and “came to a head in June.”

By then, Congress was in full revolt over the prospect of Gitmo detainees being transferred to the United States, and the Senate had already voted to block funding to shut down Guantánamo. On the afternoon of June 3, a White House official called Holder’s office to let him know that a compromise had been reached with Senate Democrats. The deal had been cut without input from Justice, according to three department officials who did not want to be identified discussing internal matters, and it imposed onerous restrictions that would make it harder to move detainees from Cuba to the United States.

Craig was also instrumental in working closely with Karl Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and his staff that resulted in Bush’s former political adviser, Karl Rove, testifying before the panel behind closed doors about the firings of nine federal prosecutors in 2006 and the apparent political prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. Craig also arranged a similar deal for former White House Counsel Harriet Miers.

By urging Rove and the Judiciary Committee to reach a settlement, Obama’s Justice Department lawyers avoided going to federal court and taking a position on Bush’s broad claims of executive privilege, which the former president said extended beyond his presidency.

“The President is very sympathetic to those who want to find out what happened,” Craig said in early March just as a deal to secure Rove and Miers’ testimony was reached. “But he is also mindful as President of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency. So, for that reason, he is urging both sides of this to settle.”

The Public Record reported the details of the unusual arrangement in February.