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Bolton Kept News from Powell, Rice, Officials Say
U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton on numerous occasions withheld information on Iran’s nuclear program and other topics from his superiors at the department, the Washington Post reported today ahead of an expected vote this week on Bolton’s nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (see GSN, April 15). Officials noted 12 occasions in which Bolton failed to submit information to former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage. Memos were sometimes delayed by weeks as officials sought other avenues to reach the agency heads, and other times the information was never passed on, the Post reported. One withheld memo from October 2003 reportedly described growing international opposition to U.S. efforts to refer Iran’s nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council for investigation. “When Armitage’s staff asked for information about what other countries were thinking, Bolton said that information couldn’t be collected,” one official said. Bolton at least once has also kept information from new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Post reported. Rice made her first trip to Europe without being told about resistance to U.S. efforts to prevent Mohammed ElBaradei from serving a third term as chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Bolton has been leading the effort to unseat ElBaradei. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to vote tomorrow on sending Bolton’s nomination to the full Senate for consideration, the Post reported. Committee Republicans said they continue to support Bolton, but one noted the stream of allegations of bad behavior by the nominee. “If there’s nothing more that comes out, I will vote for Bolton,” said Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). However, Hagel said he was “troubled with more and more allegations, revelations, coming about his style, his method of operation” (Dafna Linzer, Washington Post, April 18). A Texas businesswoman has charged that Bolton verbally abused her in 1994 in Moscow while he was representing a U.S. Agency for International Development subcontractor and she worked for the subcontractor’s supervising firm, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday. “He threw some things in the first meeting,” Melody Townsel wrote in a letter to the Foreign Relations Committee. “He yelled and got really abusive.” Bolton followed Townsel back to her hotel room, she said. “He proceeded to pound on my hotel door and thrust things under the door.” Townsel said she “learned firsthand the lengths Mr. Bolton will go to accomplish any goals he sets for himself. Truth flew out the window. Decency flew out the window. In his bid to smear me and promote the interests of his client, he went straight for the low road and stayed there.” Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) released Townsel’s letter. The businesswoman acknowledged in an interview being a liberal Democrat who opposed the re-election of President George W. Bush, the Times reported. A State Department official said the administration had reviewed Townsel’s claims and believed them to be baseless. “This stuff just didn’t happen, as far as we know,” the official said (Efron/Serrano, Los Angeles Times, April 17). A former national intelligence officer for Latin America told committee staffers that Bolton and former Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America Otto Reich attempted to have him removed from his job over disagreements over intelligence on Cuba’s weapons programs, the New York Times reported. Bolton testified before the committee that he sought to have Fulton Armstrong reassigned because he had lost confidence in the officer’s work. Reich told the Times that Armstrong too often gave “the benefit of the doubt” on accusations of human rights and security problems against leftist leaders such as Fidel Castro of Cuba and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, according to the Times. “His political views colored his intelligence judgment, and many of my colleagues … stopped reading his stuff,” Reich said (Steven Weisman, New York Times, April 16).
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