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Battle Over Bolton Nomination as U.N. Ambassador Continues as New Allegations Arise on his Conduct
Even as Republican Party leaders continued to boost Undersecretary of State John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, one Republican senator said Sunday the nominee’s success is by no means assured (see GSN, April 22). Bolton’s nomination is “too close to call,” Senator Arlen Specter (Pa.) said on CNN’s Late Edition. His statement came as another Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee expressed support for the delay on a vote on Bolton’s nomination, the New York Times reported. A spokeswoman for Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she could not say how Murkowski was prepared to vote on the matter. Murkowski had backed Bolton, but believes the committee “did the right thing delaying the vote on Bolton in light of the recent information presented to the committee,” the spokeswoman said, according to Reuters. Republican committee members George Voinovich (Ohio), Lincoln Chafee (R.I.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.) have also expressed concerns about Bolton. However, Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell said Sunday on CBS News’ Face the Nation that he believes the GOP-controlled panel will send the nomination to the full Senate for consideration. The committee is set to end its investigation on May 6 and vote on May 12, according to the Times. Republicans and Democrats used the weekend news shows to support or excoriate Bolton, who has faced increasing allegations of abusive behavior and efforts to tilt intelligence to support his beliefs. Democrats oppose Bolton “because he’s a tough guy who supports the president’s policy,” Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), said on ABC News’ This Week. The question is “not whether he’s a nice guy or not,” argued Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) also on This Week. “This is about whether or not you try to alter intelligence data, alter what intelligence days says, or intimidate experts in the intelligence community to say something different than you want said,” said Biden, ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. Democratic Senators Christopher Dodd (Conn.) and John Rockefeller (W.Va.) are seeking access for the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees to examine unedited classified National Security Agency transcripts of 10 communications involving U.S. officials previously obtained by Bolton, the Times reported. The Foreign Relations Committee needs to know “whether [Bolton’s] requests for the names of U.S. officials were solely for appropriate policy purposes,” Dodd said in a letter sent Friday to acting NSA Director William Black (Douglas Jehl, New York Times, April 25). Dodd on Sunday called for Bolton to remove himself from consideration for the job, the Associated Press reported. “I think he’s going to embarrass the president. I think he’s going to … have a very difficult job serving if he’s confirmed narrowly by the Senate,” Dodd said on Face the Nation. “He should withdraw and the president ought to withdraw this nomination.” A White House spokeswoman said President George W. Bush continues to support Bolton (Siobhan McDonough, Associated Press/ABC News, April 24). Meanwhile, 43 people who worked with Bolton at the American Enterprise Institute sent a letter to Biden and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar rejecting claims that Bolton is given to poor behavior and angry outbursts. “Several of us were Mr. Bolton’s subordinates, and the idea that he would seek to punish or settle scores with those who disagreed with him seems particularly preposterous,” the letter states. Vice President Dick Cheney also took a shot at Bolton’s detractors. “I’ve looked at all of these charges that have been made. I don’t think any of them stand up to scrutiny,” he said. “And if being occasionally tough and aggressive and abrasive were a problem, a lot of members of the United States Senate wouldn’t qualify” (Vicki Allen, Reuters, April 22). New questions about Bolton’s conduct continued to arise even as lawmakers debated previous allegations. British officials have become irked by Bolton’s hard-line stances as undersecretary for arms control and international security, Newsweek reported in its May 2 issue. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw complained to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell in November 2003 that Bolton was undermining efforts to develop an allied stand on Iran’s nuclear efforts. Powell quickly told an aide to get “a different view on (the Iranian problem). Bolton is being too tough.” During 2003 negotiations to persuade Libya to abandon its WMD programs, Bolton rejected a proposed compromise in which the United States would pledge not to seek to unseat Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi, Newsweek reported. An agreement was reached only after high-level British officials persuaded the Bush administration to keep Bolton off the negotiating team, according to Newsweek. An administration official said both accounts are “flatly untrue.” The Foreign Relations Committee is also reportedly investigation claims that Bolton misused or promoted bad intelligence on Syria, China and Iran (Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, May 2). Bolton in October tried to remove a State Department lawyer from a case in which a U.S. company sought a waiver to import goods from a Chinese company that had fallen under U.S. sanctions, Time magazine reported. Bolton opposed the waiver, while the lawyer backed the application. Bolton yelled and shouted as he tried to persuade chief department lawyer William Taft to remove his subordinate from the case. “But that was nothing unusual,” a witness to the meeting told Time, “because John was always a strong friend to his own opinion.” Taft refused to take the lawyer off the case, Time reported (James Carney, Time, May 2). A former U.S. Agency for International Development official said that in late 1982 or early 1983 Bolton — also working at the agency — became enraged when she refused his directive to press U.N. delegates to weaken World Health Organization rules on marketing infant formula to developing nations. “He yelled that if I didn’t obey him, he would fire me,” Lynne Finney stated in a letter to the Foreign Relations Committee. “I said I could not live with myself if even one baby died because of something I did. … He screamed that I was fired” Peter McPherson, AID chief administrator at that time, said before Finney’s letter was released that he did not recollect any troubles between Bolton and his staff, the Boston Globe reported. “He's a man of strong views, but he listened to people that worked for him,” McPherson said (Farah Stockman, Boston Globe, April 24).
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