Report depicts ”two-sided” Bolton
WASHINGTON – The report sending John R. Bolton’s name to the Senate to be considered as U.N. ambassador paints two different portraits: one of the wrong man for the job and another of a qualified diplomat wrongly maligned for his blunt style.
Democrats delivered a scathing 53-page critique of the man deemed to be one of President Bush’s most divisive nominees, detailing charges that Bolton manipulated intelligence, tried to punish analysts who disagreed with him, was abusive to subordinates and misled the committee. Meanwhile Republicans, who after weeks of investigation couldn’t muster the committee votes to endorse Bolton’s nomination, argued in a seven-page summary that most of the charges were overstated or inconclusive. And while the committee voted to send his name to the Senate without the customary recommendation, the GOP report said the most serious charge – that he sought to manipulate intelligence – was not proven.
The Republican report submitted by Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., carefully skirted reservations about Bolton voiced by other GOP senators on the panel.
“The end result of all this is that Secretary Bolton emerged looking better than when it began,” Lugar wrote in the report. He said the 1,000 pages of transcripts from 35 interviews and 800 other documents show Bolton to be a pro-active policy-maker “with strong views and a blunt style that, frankly, sometimes rubbed people the wrong way.”
In a new criticism, the Democratic report said that Bolton planned to ask then-CIA Director George Tenet to help punish a government intelligence analyst who disagreed with Bolton – and then misled a Senate committee about the matter.
Bolton pushed for months to have the analyst removed from his job or otherwise disciplined but testified under oath at his confirmation hearing that he “made no effort to have discipline imposed” on the man, the report said.
“Bolton’s effort to minimize the significance of his efforts is disingenuous,” said the Democrats’ report.
At the State Department, spokesman Tom Casey said the report revealed nothing new.
“The committee’s already reviewed this issue extensively,” Casey said. “This is a minority interpretation of events, and we completely reject it.”
Democrats on the panel oppose Bolton for the U.N. job, calling him a rigid ideologue ill-suited for the post and a nasty bureaucratic infighter who may have misused government intelligence.