| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 9:39 am Post subject: Confirmation of Bolton Would Shatter Intelligence Analys |
| http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/052505A.shtml
Confirmation of Bolton Would Shatter Intelligence Analysts' Morale
By Ray McGovern
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 25 May 2005
Few have more at stake in the expected Senate approval of John Bolton to be US representative at the U.N. than the remnant group of demoralized intelligence analysts trained and still willing to speak truth to power. What would be the point in continuing, they ask, when - like so many other policymakers - Bolton reserves the right to "state his own reading of the intelligence" (as he wrote to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee)?
Given his well-earned reputation for stretching intelligence beyond the breaking point to "justify" his own policy preferences, Bolton’s confirmation would loose a hemorrhage of honest analysts, while the kind of malleable careerists who cooked intelligence to "justify" the administration’s prior decision for war on Iraq will prosper. I refer to those who saluted obediently when former CIA director George Tenet told them, as he told his British counterpart in July 2002, that the facts needed to be "fixed around the policy" of regime change in Iraq.
It Has All Happened Before
Bolton’s confirmation hearings provide an eerie flashback to the challenge that Robert Gates encountered in 1991 during his Senate hearings in late 1991, after President George H. W. Bush nominated him to be CIA director. The parallels are striking. The nomination of Gates, who as head of CIA analysis had earned a reputation among the analysts for cooking intelligence to the recipe of high policy and promoting those who cooperated, brought a revolt among the most experienced intelligence professionals.
Playing the role discharged so well last month by former state department intelligence director Carl Ford in exposing Bolton’s heavy-handed attempts to politicize intelligence, former senior Soviet analyst and CIA division chief Mel Goodman stepped forward and gave the Senate intelligence committee chapter and verse on how Gates had shaped intelligence analysis to satisfy his masters and advance his career. Goodman was joined at once by other CIA analysts who put their own careers at risk by testifying against Gates’ nomination. They were so many and so persuasive that, for a time, it appeared they had won the day. But the fix was in.
With a powerful assist from former CIA chief George Tenet, then staff director of the senate intelligence committee, members approved the nomination. Even so, 31 Senators found the evidence against Gates so persuasive that, in an unprecedented move, they voted No when the nomination came to the floor.
The First Exodus and Those Who Stayed
After Gates was confirmed, many bright analysts who scored high on integrity quit rather than take part in cooking "intelligence-to-go." In contrast, those inspired by Gates’ example and his meteoric career followed suit and saw their careers flourish. This explains why, in Sept. 2002 when the White House asked Tenet and his senior managers to prepare a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) parroting what Vice President Dick Cheney had been saying about the weapons-of-mass-destruction threat from Iraq, these malleable careerists caved in and did the administration’s bidding. Most of the key players in 2002 had been protégés of Gates.
These include Tenet’s deputy, John McLaughlin, who became acting director when Tenet left in July 2004 to spend more time with his family. Like his former boss, McLaughlin cannot now recall being told that one of the key sources of information highlighted in Colin Powell’s unfortunate speech at the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003 was an alcoholic, who had been championed by advocates of war on Iraq for his peddling of "intelligence" on phantom "mobile biological warfare laboratories." Also included among the players in 2002 are the obedient National Intelligence Officer who blessed the insertion of the biological warfare drivel and other nonsense into the NIE, and the manager who supervised misbegotten analytical efforts regarding the non-nuclear-related aluminum tubes headed for Iraq, as well as the reports on Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Niger - reports based on crude forgeries.
Also included: folks like the CIA Inspector General, who bowed to pressure from the White House and from McLaughlin last summer to suppress the exhaustive IG report on 9/11. (Release of that report before the election would have been an extreme embarrassment, since it is a goldmine of names - of both intelligence officials and policymakers - who bungled the many warnings that such attacks were coming.) And folks like the intelligence manager of more recent vintage who recently tried to explain it all to me: "We were not politicized; we just thought it appropriate to ‘lean forward,’ given White House concern over Iraq."
Politicization Prospers
The cancer of politicization spreads quickly, runs deep, and - as we have seen on Iraq - can help bring catastrophe.
Thanks to an official British government document leaked to the Sunday Times of London, we now know that - well before the infamous NIE of Oct. 1, 2002 on Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" - the White House told senior British officials that the US had decided to remove Saddam Hussein by military force. On July 23, 2002 the head of the UK's foreign intelligence service, fresh back from talks in Washington with CIA counterpart George Tenet, told Prime Minister Tony Blair, "Intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." It is quite rare to have documentary proof of this kind of intelligence-fixing-and-disinformation campaign.
Barring the unexpected, and despite continuing efforts by Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio) to prevent Bolton from being confirmed, the Republican-dominated Senate seems sure to confirm him, even though the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after looking so carefully into his qualifications could not endorse him.
This, too, has happened before. In 1983, the committee voted 14 to 3 to reject the nomination of Kenneth Adelman to be director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He was nonetheless confirmed in the full Republican-controlled Senate by a vote of 57 to 42. Still an influential adviser to Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Adelman was among those arguing most strongly three years ago for attacking Iraq. Like Bolton, he never hesitated to "state his own reading of the intelligence." It was Adelman who achieved dubious fame by assuring all who would listen that the invasion would be a "cakewalk."
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Ray McGovern spent 27 years as a CIA analyst, during which he chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared and briefed to senior White House officials the President's Daily Brief. He is a founding member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and now works at Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 1:57 am Post subject: JINSA Zionist Operative Bolton Orchestrated Unlawful Firing |
| JINSA Zionist Operative Bolton Orchestrated Unlawful Firing
Bolton Said to Orchestrate Unlawful Firing
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
1 hour, 46 minutes ago
John R. Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful, according to officials involved.
A former Bolton deputy says the U.S. undersecretary of state felt Jose Bustani "had to go," particularly because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. That might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war.
Bustani, who says he got a "menacing" phone call from Bolton at one point, was removed by a vote of just one-third of member nations at an unusual special session of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), at which the United States cited alleged mismanagement in calling for his ouster.
The United Nations' highest administrative tribunal later condemned the action as an "unacceptable violation" of principles protecting international civil servants. The OPCW session's Swiss chairman now calls it an "unfortunate precedent" and Bustani a "man with merit."
"Many believed the U.S. delegation didn't want meddling from outside in the Iraq business," said the retired Swiss diplomat, Heinrich Reimann. "That could be the case."
Bolton's handling of the multilateral showdown takes on added significance now as he looks for U.S. Senate confirmation as early as this week as U.N. ambassador, a key role on the international stage, and as more details have emerged in Associated Press interviews about what happened in 2002.
A spokeswoman told AP Bolton, keeping a low profile during his confirmation process, would have no comment for this article.
Bolton has been criticized for supposed bullying of junior U.S. officials and for efforts to get them fired. Bustani, a senior official under the U.N. umbrella, says Bolton used a threatening tone with him and "tried to order me around."
The Iraq connection to the OPCW affair comes as fresh evidence surfaces that the Bush administration was intent from early on to pursue military and not diplomatic action against Saddam Hussein's regime.
An official British document, disclosed last month, said Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed in April 2002 to join in an eventual U.S. attack on Iraq. Two weeks later, Bustani was ousted, with British help.
In 1997, the Brazilian arms-control specialist became founding director-general of the OPCW, whose inspectors oversee destruction of U.S., Russian and other chemical weapons under a 168-nation treaty banning such arms. The agency, based in The Hague, Netherlands, also inspects chemical plants worldwide to ensure they're not put to military use.
In May 2000, one year ahead of time and with strong U.S. support, Bustani was unanimously re-elected OPCW chief for a 2001-2005 term. Colin Powell, the new secretary of state, praised his leadership qualities in a personal letter in 2001.
But Ralph Earle, a veteran U.S. arms negotiator, told AP that he and others in Bolton's arms-control bureau grew unhappy with what they considered Bustani's mismanagement. The agency chief also "had a big ego. He did things on his own," and wasn't responsive to U.S. and other countries' positions, said Earle, now retired.
Both Earle and career diplomat Avis Bohlen, who retired in June 2002 as a top Bolton deputy, said the idea to remove Bustani did not originate with the undersecretary. But Bolton "leaped on it enthusiastically," Bohlen recalled. "He was very much in charge of the whole campaign," she said, and Bustani's initiative on Iraq seemed the "coup de grace."
"It was that that made Bolton decide he had to go," Bohlen said.
After U.N. arms inspectors had withdrawn from Iraq in 1998 in a dispute with the Baghdad government, Bustani stepped up his initiative, seeking to bring Iraq — and other Arab states — into the chemical weapons treaty.
Bustani's inspectors would have found nothing, because Iraq's chemical weapons were destroyed in the early 1990s. That would have undercut the U.S. rationale for war because the Bush administration by early 2002 was claiming, without hard evidence, that Baghdad still had such an arms program.
In a March 2002 "white paper," Bolton's office said Bustani was seeking an "inappropriate role" in Iraq, and the matter should be left to the U.N. Security Council — where Washington has a veto.
Bolton said in a 2003 AP interview that Iraq was "completely irrelevant" to Bustani's responsibilities. Earle and Bohlen disagree. Enlisting new treaty members was part of the OPCW chief's job, they said, although they thought he should have consulted with Washington.
Former Bustani aide Bob Rigg, a New Zealander, sees a clear U.S. motivation: "Why did they not want OPCW involved in Iraq? They felt they couldn't rely on OPCW to come up with the findings the U.S. wanted."
Bustani and his aides believe friction with Washington over OPCW inspections of U.S. chemical-industry sites also contributed to the showdown, which went on for months.
In June 2001, Bolton "telephoned me to try to interfere, in a menacing tone, in decisions that are the exclusive responsibility of the director-general," Bustani wrote in 2002 in a Brazilian academic journal.
He elaborated in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde in mid-2002, saying Bolton "tried to order me around," and sought to have some U.S. inspection results overlooked and certain Americans hired to OPCW positions. The agency head said he refused.
Bustani, now in a sensitive position as Brazil's London ambassador, indicated to the AP through an intermediary that he would have no additional comment.
The United States went public with the campaign in March 2002, moving to terminate Bustani's tenure. On the eve of an OPCW Executive Council meeting to consider the U.S. no-confidence motion, Bolton met Bustani in The Hague to seek his resignation, U.S. and OPCW officials said.
When Bustani refused, "Bolton said something like, `Now we'll do it the other way,' and walked out," Rigg recounted.
In the Executive Council, the Americans failed to win majority support among the 41 nations. A month later, on April 21, at U.S. insistence, an unprecedented special session of the full treaty conference was called.
Addressing the delegates, Bustani said the conference must decide whether genuine multilateralism "will be replaced by unilateralism in a multilateral disguise."
Only 113 nations were represented, 15 without voting rights because their dues were far in arrears. The U.S. delegation had suggested it would withhold U.S. dues — 22 percent of the budget — if Bustani stayed in office, stirring fears of an OPCW collapse.
This time the Americans, with British help, got the required two-thirds vote of those present and voting. But that amounted to only 48 in favor of removing Bustani — and seven opposed and 43 abstaining — in an organization then with 145 member states.
Bustani appealed the decision to the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labor Organization in Geneva, a judicial body to which agencies in the U.N. family submit personnel cases. The OPCW, meanwhile, named a new director-general, Rogelio Pfirter of Argentina.
In a stern rebuke issued in July 2003, the three-member U.N. tribunal said the U.S. allegations were "extremely vague" and the dismissal "unlawful." It said international civil servants must not be made "vulnerable to pressures and to political change."
Noting that Bustani did not seek reinstatement, it awarded him unpaid salary and 50,000 euros, or $61,500, in damages. He said he would donate the damages to an OPCW technical aid fund for poorer countries.
Reimann, the former OPCW conference chairman, says he looks back with sadness at what was done.
"I think there's no doubt Bustani wanted to serve the organization, to get wider membership and all these things," the Swiss diplomat said. "He was fighting very bravely to make it work." | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 4:04 pm Post subject: Reid: No Documents, No Bolton |
| Reid: No Documents, No Bolton
CNN
Thursday 09 June 2005
Washington - Senate Democrats will not allow a vote on President Bush's choice for U.N. ambassador unless the White House hands over records of communications intercepts Bolton sought from the secretive National Security Agency, Minority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday.
"You can't ignore the Senate. We've told them what we've wanted. The ball is in his court," Reid, D-Nevada, told CNN. "If they want John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, give us this information. If they don't, there will be no Bolton."
The Senate fell four votes shy of the 60 needed to cut off debate on Bolton's nomination in May after two Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee urged their colleagues to hold the issue open.
Sens. Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the committee, and Christopher Dodd have demanded the Bush administration produce documents 10 National Security Agency communications intercepts that Bolton, the State Department's undersecretary for arms control, had requested since 2001.
White House Communications Director Nicole Devenish called Reid's stance "another effort to distract from the work that the people want to see done here in Washington."
"This request for additional information is clearly a stalling tactic, and one that I think the American people are growing weary of," she said.
But Reid said Bush is responsible for breaking the impasse - not Democrats.
"The president is obstructing a vote on John Bolton," he said. "We've asked for simple information that Congresses over many decades that we have been in existence have been given by the White House."
The Senate confirmed Bolton for four previous government jobs dating back to the 1980s. But his nomination to the U.N. post has been more controversial, since he has been an outspoken critic of the world body in the past.
During a Federalist Society forum in 1994, Bolton said: "If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."
The White House says Bolton's blunt style and skepticism about the United Nations is needed to promote reform within the organization. But opponents also have criticized his handling of the diplomatic standoffs over the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea during the past four years.
The Foreign Relations Committee, in a rare move, sent his nomination to the full Senate without a recommendation, and Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich has urged colleagues to vote against Bolton's confirmation.
Bush criticized the delay last week, telling reporters that the information Democrats want was given to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas and ranking committee Democrat John Rockefeller, D-West Virginia.
But Democrats have tried to argue that lawmakers have a right to that information in order to make an informed decision on Bolton, who has been accused of threatening intelligence analysts whose conclusions did not match his.
"We know very categorically that John Bolton tried to have fired two intelligence analysts because he didn't like the conclusions they reached about America's intelligence," Dodd told CNN's "Inside Politics" Wednesday.
"That, to me, is going way beyond the prerogatives of a policymaker here. Did he go further than that? I need to know the answers to those questions. I have a right to know it as a senator - not me personally, but the Senate does." | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 10:05 pm Post subject: Democrats List More Names in Inquiry on Bolton's Access |
| Democrats List More Names in Inquiry on Bolton's Access
By Douglas Jehl
The New York Times
Saturday 11 June 2005
Washington - Senate Democrats have prepared a list of approximately three dozen "names of concern" and are asking the Bush administration for assurances that John R. Bolton did not misuse his access to highly classified intelligence to seek information about them.
The request is outlined in a letter sent Thursday by Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, two of the leaders of the Democratic opposition to Mr. Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations. The letter was sent to the senior Republican and Democratic senators on the Intelligence Committee, who have also been involved in negotiations with the Bush administration over access to information about Mr. Bolton's actions when he was an official at the State Department.
The letter did not identify those on the list, but Democratic aides said they included intelligence officials and others with whom Mr. Bolton had clashed. They said the Senate Democrats would provide the list to John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, if Mr. Negroponte made clear that he would provide appropriate information in response.
The proposal represents the latest effort by the Democrats to learn more about Mr. Bolton's handling of intelligence information during his four years as under secretary of state. The administration has acknowledged that Mr. Bolton used his authority to obtain the names of 19 American individuals and companies mentioned in communications intercepted by the National Security Agency, but it has refused to give the Senate details.
A copy of the letter was provided to The New York Times by a Congressional Democrat. A Republican Congressional official expressed surprise at the number of names said to be on the Democratic list, and noted that Democrats until now had expressed concern about Mr. Bolton's dealings with fewer people. The proposal "seems to move away from a good-faith effort toward resolving this issue," the Republican official said.
Democrats succeeded last month in blocking a Senate vote on Mr. Bolton, and they have said they will continue to oppose any decision until the administration provides more information about a dispute concerning Syria that involved Mr. Bolton and about the intercepted communications. They say they need the information to help them judge whether Mr. Bolton misused his access to the N.S.A. reports, from which the names of American individuals and companies are ordinarily deleted.
The Democrats have expressed concern that Mr. Bolton may have obtained the names as part of an effort to keep tabs on adversaries in the administration, including the intelligence officials with whom he clashed over assessments on Syria and Cuba.
In their letter, Mr. Dodd and Mr. Biden said they were "prepared to drop our request" to see the names that were shared with Mr. Bolton, in order "to be as accommodating as possible" in working with the administration.
The two senators asked two leaders of the Intelligence Committee - Senators Pat Roberts of Kansas, a Republican, and John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, a Democrat - to act as intermediaries working with Mr. Negroponte in helping to resolve the issue.
"If there is any overlap between our 'names of concern' and those provided to Mr. Bolton by the N.S.A., we would request your assistance as chairman and vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence in understanding whether there was any inappropriate use of the 'names of concern' by Mr. Bolton or his staff," Mr. Biden and Mr. Dodd said. "If, on the other hand, Director Negroponte informs both of you that no overlap exists, then we believe we will be one step closer to an up-or-down vote on the nomination."
There was no immediate response to the proposal from the White House or from Mr. Negroponte's office. For several weeks, the White House has said it believes that the Senate has all the information it needs to vote on Mr. Bolton's nomination, and it has expressed confidence that the nominee will prevail in an up-or-down vote.
Mr. Negroponte's office also did not respond to a request for comment, but rejected an earlier request from Mr. Dodd that sought corroboration about what names Mr. Bolton had obtained.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said through a spokesman on Friday that the proposal by Mr. Biden and Mr. Dodd represented the latest in a series of efforts to ensure that the Senate acts "to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities" in the standoff over Mr. Bolton.
"So far, the administration has offered only one option: stonewall and obstruct," Mr. Reid said. He added, "If the administration decides to work in good faith to give the Senate the information it deserves, Senate Democrats are ready to immediately give Bolton an up-or-down vote." | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 5:15 pm Post subject: 'JINSA John' Bolton May Accept Recess Appointment |
| Bolton May Accept Recess Appointment
By Charles Babington and Dafna Linzer
The Washington Post
Wednesday 13 July 2005
Stalemate continues on UN nomination.
John R. Bolton's nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations was the hottest issue in Congress a few months ago. But it has virtually evaporated this summer, eclipsed by speculation over a Supreme Court nominee and the fate of the president's top political adviser.
With neither the White House nor Senate Democrats showing any sign of yielding in their long-running dispute over documents related to Bolton's State Department work, speculation is rife that Bolton is prepared to accept a recess appointment good through the end of 2006, despite warnings from some GOP senators that it would weaken his influence and effectiveness.
Although the Senate has twice voted to sustain a filibuster against his nominee, President Bush has refused to surrender the fight over Bolton. "The president continues to believe that John Bolton should receive an up-or-down vote, and he encourages the Senate to move forward on his nomination," spokeswoman Erin Healy said yesterday.
But an administration source who is close to Bolton said that Bolton is prepared to accept a recess appointment next month unless the administration and Senate Democrats can resolve differences that have held up the confirmation for four months.
"He'll take the recess" appointment, said the administration source, who is familiar with Bolton's thinking. "The president has made his selection, and the president is asking the Senate to confirm the selection, and if the Senate refuses to do that, then most assuredly Bush will make a recess appointment."
The president is constitutionally empowered to fill vacancies when the Senate is in recess, and the appointments are effective through the final adjournment of the sitting Congress. The White House took no action during last week's Fourth of July break. The next recess, scheduled to last a month, starts July 30.
There is no indication that Bush has considered withdrawing the nomination and seeking another candidate.
Bolton, an outspoken conservative who had often criticized the United Nations, triggered controversy from the moment Bush nominated him March 8. State Department officials accused him of berating career officials and analysts who challenged his views, and of selectively choosing intelligence to support his assertions about the dangers posed by Cuba and other nations. When a Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. George V. Voinovich (Ohio), decided to oppose Bolton, the nomination moved to the full Senate with no recommendation.
Since then, the impasse has focused on Democrats' demands to see two sets of documents related to Bolton's State Department work. One involves national security intercepts of conversations. Democrats want to know whether Bolton was seeking secret information on rivals in the intelligence and foreign policy communities. The other documents involve Syria and questions of whether Bolton misled lawmakers about his role in compiling them.
"I haven't heard anything," Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), a central player in the dispute, said in an interview Monday. "I talked to the White House today on other matters, and it didn't come up."
Bolton - who lost the title of undersecretary of state June 1 when his successor, Robert Joseph, was sworn in - has spent the past four months in a transition suite at the State Department, and colleagues said he continues to ready himself for the ambassadorship.
Two months ago, while his confirmation was in trouble, Bolton began efforts to double the office space reserved within the State Department for the ambassador to the United Nations, according to three senior department officials who were involved in handling the request.
Previous ambassadors have kept a small staff in Washington in a modest suite. Bolton told several colleagues he needs more space and a larger staff in Washington because, if confirmed, he intends to spend more time here than his predecessors did.
"Bolton isn't going to sit in New York while policy gets made in Washington," the administration source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the source lacks authorization to discuss this on the record. But Bolton's efforts to obtain more space have encountered resistance. Two colleagues said Bolton's request was inappropriate because he had not been confirmed. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
