Paul Richter reports that Bolton's nomination will be far more contentious than originally expected and that the Democrats, for the first time, will most likely unanimously oppose a Bush administration diplomatic choice.

Richter reports:

Democrats are likely to vote unanimously against John Bolton when his nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations comes before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next week, according to Democratic and Republican lawmakers and aides.

It would mark the first time committee Democrats unanimously opposed a Bush diplomatic nominee and would put the nomination in peril if Republicans defected to vote against him.

But Republicans say they believe the outspoken conservative will win solid GOP backing in the committee, including from moderate Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), who has voiced reservations about Bolton's nomination to be UN ambassador.

The split on the panel is one of several signs that the proceedings, set for April 7, will be acrimonious. Advocates have organized letter-writing and ad campaigns for and against Bolton.

For example, former Sen. James Sasser and two other retired American diplomats added their names to an anti-Bolton letter distributed Tuesday to Foreign Relations Committee members. Sasser is a Democrat who was former President Bill Clinton's ambassador to China.

The two other former diplomats who signed the letter, raising the total to 62, were Patricia Byrne, deputy U.S. ambassador to the UN under former President Ronald Reagan, and John Hirsch, ambassador to Sierra Leone in the Clinton administration.

The good news is that the Dems, including Feingold who still is not rock solid against Bolton, are united, and this was not the case three weeks ago.

The other good news is that the stakes are rising for Chafee. Patrick Kennedy announced yesterday that he was not going to challenge Chafee in the next Senate race. Now, Chafee needs to shore up his credentials with his Rhode Island Democratic Party supporters and a vote for Bolton may be more consequential than he thinks.

Chafee is weighing in his mind, I bet, judicial appointments vs. John Bolton. He'll probably vote against the most outrageous judicial nominees -- and feels inclined to support Bolton and give that one to the right-wingers in his state

But that is before we had the larger story (reported in passages below) on Bolton and his long-term role as Jesse Helms' attack dog, a person with an ethically-challenged record running or working in various think tanks, and his record defying demands of Congress.

I think Chafee, when confronted with the whole picture and not the gloss or the talking points handed to him by the White House and State Department, is going to have a hard time explaining WHY he would vote for such a person as one of our nation's most important emissaries to the rest of the world.

I think the same thing about Chuck Hagel -- who has already said that he wants to see more of the whole picture now -- and said that after his words of endorsement.

We have a week to go before the hearings -- and Senator Hagel and Senator Chafee need to hear from those of you who care.

Just ask them to read this material -- to look not only at Bolton's comments on the United Nations, but his entire record.

-- Steve Clemons

This is intriguing. Bolton's ethically challenged pettiness rages full throttle in the tale that follows.

Do read the three excerpts.

First, in November 1987, Legal Times writer James Lyons reported that:

The once mighty National Congressional Club has fallen on hard times. The club, the Raleigh, N.C.-based right-wing political action committee associated with Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), has a $ 900,000 debt, according to Federal Election Commission records. Carter Wrenn, the club's treasurer, says that the PAC has been forced to reduce its activity, cutting expenditures on polling, research, direct mail, and legal work.

But then mentioning Bolton and his private role advising Jesse Helms' Political Action Committee for which Bolton's firm was due fees:

Covington & Burling is one of the club's largest creditors. Partner Brice Clagett and former partner John Bolton, now assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, have represented the club for many years. In 1978, they helped form Jefferson Marketing as a vehicle to supply candidates with such services as advertising and direct mail without having to worry about the federal laws preventing PACs, like the Congressional Club, from contributing more than $5,000 per election to any one candidate's campaign committee.

Covington also defended Jefferson Marketing and the club in its long-running battle with the FEC, which resulted in the club paying a $10,000 fine in 1986.

According to FEC documents, the club owes Covington $111,000, although it did make a $5,000 payment to the firm earlier this year.

"It's our understanding that they will pay the bill," says Covington spokesman H. Edward Dunkelberger Jr.

What we will discover later in this story is that Jesse Helms was getting nearly cost-free legal representation from Covington & Burling attorney John Bolton. That's a gift -- and it's illegal now and was illegal then.

Helms was giving Bolton patronage, access, political favors. Helms' PAC got fined $10,000 by the Federal Elections Commission for violations which Rep. Charlie Rose (D-NC) notified the FEC to investigate.

Ok. Pause. Move forward nine months. . .

Legal Times writer Terence Moran reports on some new complexity in this matter, and by this time John Bolton has moved from Covington & Burling to be Assistant Attorney General for Congressional Affairs at the Department of Justice.

Moran writes:

Rep. Charlie Rose (D-N.C.) might be forgiven for figuring that his 1988 citation for violating House rules put a nasty, embarrassing battle behind him.

After all, when the House ethics panel issued a public reproof to Rose in March 1988 after determining that the congressman had put money from his campaign committee to personal use, the matter seemed closed. Rose had survived what he perceived as a vengeful political attack orchestrated by allies of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) in the National Congressional Club, a Raleigh, N.C., conservative political action committee with whom Rose has sparred repeatedly over the years.

But now, more than 14 months after the ethics panel finished with him, Rose's case has been resurrected -- not in Congress but by the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Last May, Rose was hit with an unprecedented civil action brought by Justice seeking the maximum $5,000 fine for each of six violations of the Ethics in Government Act (EIGA). Never before has the department's Civil Division brought such a suit against a sitting member of Congress.

Rose has moved for a dismissal; U.S. District Judge Thomas Jackson will hear arguments early next month.

The case against Rose has sparked a constitutional clash between the executive and legislative branches and marks another skirmish in the struggle over the scope of the Constitution's speech-and-debate clause. In addition, it represents a test case for EIGA, the 1978 law that numerous House members, including former House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas), have been charged with violating over the years.

Beyond any of the legal questions, however, the Rose case may be the opening volley in a fierce turf battle over the hot topic of ethics enforcement in Congress.

To remind readers what this was about was that Charlie Rose had improperly used campaign funds for personal use -- and six cases were determined. The norms of that time were to offer some sort of public censure and move on if the cases were generally minor. But Rose was found to have done an inappropriate thing, got knocked in the knees, and usually (in 1989 anyway) life moved on.

But John Bolton filed a civil action against Congressman Rose -- and this had never been done before. Why? Because Bolton was Jesse Helms' attack dog -- and Bolton compromised his role in the Attorney General's office to operate as the flack/attack dog of one of the most politically vile members of the U.S. Senate, Jesse Helms.

Let's get back to the chronology of events.

Rose offered his own view on why he was being treated to such a spectacular public crucifixion by John Bolton.

Moran reports:

To Rose, the department's action is pure politics. He claims that John Bolton, former assistant secretary of the division, pushed the case through the department because Bolton once worked for Helms' Congressional Club and still carries a grudge against Rose. Rose once filed a Federal Election Commission suit against the Congressional Club that resulted in a $ 10,000 fine against the PAC.

Bolton, now assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, was out of the country during the third week of August and unavailable for comment. A spokeswoman in his office says that Bolton "will not comment" on the Rose case.

Justice's Brown says Bolton "had nothing to do with this action. He recused himself from the case long before it was filed."

Rose does not believe the claim.

"I messed up John Bolton's little playhouse and now they're trying to pay me back," he says bitterly.

Rose's aggravation is understandable. He faces mounting legal bills and the possibility of stiff fines for being found guilty of the same violation that at least a half-dozen other members have committed.

In his fight to keep the Civil Division at bay, Rose has enlisted House leaders -- including Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the minority whip who rode the ethics problems of Democrats like Rose and Wright to the heights of power, Gingrich and House Speaker Thomas Foley (D-Wash.) signed on to Rose's defense team just after the Justice Department filed the suit in late May, when the House was consumed with partisan furor over the fate of Wright.

By nearly all accounts, Rose was guilty of a minor infraction. He argued that he was paying himself back for debts he privately fronted, but nonetheless the Congressional investigating committee had found that though he deserved some sanction, he had already initiated setting things in order.

More of the story:

Rose's troubles with the ethics laws are rooted in his first race for Congress in 1972. To win North Carolina's 7th District, Rose and his father pumped their own personal funds into the campaign. That money, the two men claimed 15 years later before the ethics panel, was only loaned to Rose's campaign by oral agreement, not contributed.

So in 1978, when Rose began using campaign money for his personal needs, he says he was merely repaying himself. The ethics committee rejected that argument, but acknowledged that Rose had taken some steps to set matters aright. When the case was resolved in March 1988, the panel recommended no sanction to the House.

More important, the ethics committee held that Rose had not been fully warned about the House prohibitions against tapping into campaign funds. He was "deserving of reproach," according to the committee's report, but he was not required to amend the disclosure forms that inaccurately reported his dealings.

The carefully structured settlement was a relief to Rose and a triumph for Oldaker. Their satisfaction was short-lived, however -- last December the Justice Department warned Rose that it would pursue an enforcement action under the EIGA.

The Case's Contorted Path

The department's campaign percolated up through the bureaucracy from the Office of the U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of North Carolina. After a brief review in the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division, the case landed in Bolton's Civil Division.

That paper trail convinces Rose that his old enemies in the Congressional Club are behind his persecution. Bolton, when he was in private practice with D.C.'s Covington & Burling, represented the PAC and was largely responsible for designing the financing scheme that the FEC found illegal. Rose finds this link dispositive.

"Covington & Burling, had to bring in a lot of firepower to defend that operation," Rose says. "Bolton should have built a Chinese wall between him and my case, and he didn't."

But Rose has no hard evidence that Bolton was aware of his case during the months of negotiations preceding the department's filing. Brent Hatch, Bolton's deputy at the time and now in the White House counsel's office, is adamant in Bolton's defense.

"Bolton knew this case would be hot, he knew that Rose would be trying to paint him into this corner, and he got out of it right at the onset," Hatch recalls. "When a case like this comes through and you know it's going to be trouble, you rely almost entirely on career people."

By February 1990, Legal Times writers Charles Babington bounced the watchful eye back to the Jesse Helms/John Bolton collaboration and asked important questions about the lingering debt of the National Conngressional Club to Bolton's former law firm.

Babington reports:

If the National Congressional Club accepted free legal advice from D.C.'s Covington & Burling, both could be fined and possibly prosecuted under laws that ban corporate campaign contributions.

So why, critics ask, is the political organization of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) allowed to receive such advice while paying only a fraction of its sizable and interest-free debt to the law firm year after year?

The answer, some say, is a loophole in federal elections law. The loophole enables willing companies, including law firms, to give large amounts of goods and services to campaign organizations, provided that the campaigns dutifully report that they owe money for the services.

The results were these. Rose lost his separation-of-powers appeal and had to pay $30,000 to satisfy the assault led by John Bolton. The National Congressional Club ended up paying a $10,000 fine. And John Bolton's love affair with Jesse Helms and his crowd continue to deepen no matter what Bolton's job or position.

Oil-for-Food? If Helms had ordered Bolton to put such a scheme together, Bolton may have easily put even a more elaborate fiasco together. Bolton could fit in with those in corporate America who believed that rules were not 'really' made for them.

Alternatively, Bolton's m.o. is that some rules need to be imposed more harshly and brutally than others -- depending on whether they are friend or foe -- as in the Rose case.

The problem with John Bolton's nomination to the U.N. is not just that he is a blunt, undiplomatic diplomat or that he despises the very concept of a United Nations or that he provides a slighlty more respectable, well-dressed version of populist, pugnacious nationalism.

John Bolton has not had a crystal clear record regarding responsible and appropriate governance wherever he has worked -- with the one possible exception of his short time at U.S. AID according to private reports I have had.

Bolton promulgated the Niger-Uranium story after intelligence analysts had killed it in the State Department and may have had his staff lie about his role.

Bolton acted without vested authority in issuing the Russians a deadline on the ABM Treaty.

Bolton was accused by Senators Pete Domenici and Peter Fitzgerald of taking his eye off the ball in his current job and not moving quickly or effectively enough to tie up arrangements with Russians on weapons grade nuclear materials.

Bolton accepted money from the Taiwanese government for reports which he presented to Congress without indicating the source of said funds. Bolton also helped preside over a significant amount of Taiwanese government money that annually flows into the American Enterprise Institute and demonstrated no compunction about concerns over objectivity and that funding.

Bolton succeeded Michael Baroody as President of Haley Barbour's National Policy Forum which not only took foreign money but acted as an organ of the Republican National Committee to such an overt degree that its non-profit status was stripped.

Bolton has defied Congress on many, many occasions -- refusing to appear, holding back requested witnesses and information, and allegedly destroying Iran-Contra related evidence.

There is more on the way on John Bolton.

But the thing that Senator Lugar, Senator Hagel, Senator Feingold, Senator Chafee, and other Senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee should ask themselves is "WHY THIS PERSON?" What item in his record justifies such an important appointment?

The United Nations is not a normal ambassadorial appointment. It matters -- particularly now as we initiate the process of building a new and different U.N.

Empowering this guy, John Bolton, and the crowd he represents is the absolute worst thing that Lincoln Chafee could do. Frankly, I hope that Senator Hagel reconsiders his surprisingly enthusiastic endorsement of Bolton.

Are the Senators giving this job to Bolton just because Dick Cheney wants him there to constrain Zoellick and Rice? Or is there a constructive, understandable rationale that American citizens will understand and appreciate?

I don't think there is.

-- Steve Clemons

Lots of right-wing pundits (I won't call them conservatives -- because most conservatives I know are with the centrists and liberals when it comes to the issue of John Bolton) invoked the name of late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in trying to buff up the tarnished image of John Bolton as George Bush's ambassadorial nominee to the U.N.

Now, his daughter Maura sets the record straight on the type of Ambassadorial nominee who would be in the "spirit of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan" and WHO WOULD NOT.

Here is an excerpt from a stunningly good article by Maura Moyhnihan in Newsday:

Bolton has said that if the UN building in Manhattan "lost 10 stories it wouldn't make a bit of difference," and Robert Novak recently said, "No one had more contempt for the UN than Pat Moynihan." Nonsense. Moynihan said: "The UN was created by our country, and embodies our conception of international law ... these are the proclaimed standards of the nations of the world, to which they are bound by solemn covenant."

Moynihan sought to restore integrity to the UN, not to dismantle the institution created by the Allies after the defeat of Hitler and the Axis powers.

The senator frequently admonished his constituents that we'd be worse off without the UN, and was furious with the United States for not paying its UN dues, since it weakened our influence and stature.

Which brings us to international law. Bolton said in 1999: "It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interests to do so - because over the long term the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are [sic] those who want to constrict the United States."

In his 1990 book, "On the Law of Nations," Moynihan wrote: "A great many people seem to think of law as a kind of self-imposed restraint on America's ability to act decisively or with force in world affairs. This misstates what law is, and obscures the fact that international law can actually enhance the national security of the United States. ... Macho strategists, much to be found in Washington just now, let it be known that in their view the law is for sissies ... real men do not cite Grotius."

I really miss Senator Moynihan, who if around right now, would have been working hard to make sure that John Bolton squirmed a great deal over his misplaced pretensions to be America's emissary to the U.N.

-- Steve Clemons

Here is an excellent write-up by David Corn on the long litany of reasons why John Bolton is really up for the wrong job.

Amusingly, David forgot he had co-written one of the best pieces on Bolton's bad side 16 years ago for The Nation. I posted an excerpt of the David Corn/Jefferson Morley piece the day before yesterday, but here it is again:

Bolton's record as Assistant AG for the Office of Legislative Affairs in 1986 and 1987 merits special scrutiny. He "tried to torpedo" Sen. John Kerry's inquiry into allegations of contra drug smuggling and gunrunning, a committee aide says.

When Kerry requested information from the Justice Department, Bolton's office gave it the long stall, a Kerry aide notes. In fact, says another Congressional aide, Bolton's staff worked actively with the Republican senators who opposed Kerry's efforts.

One would think that Congress would not be so easy on a guy who regularly and frequently decided not to show up at Congressional Hearings when requested, or withheld evidence or held back other witnesses. All of this is in his record.

-- Steve Clemons

Citizens for Global Solutions has taken its video clip of John Bolton arguing against the very concept of the United Nations and has turned it into a compelling television commercial.

The commercial starts running in TV markets tomorrow. Here is an excerpt from the announcement:

On Thursday, March 31st StopBolton.org will air television advertisements on three major Rhode Island TV stations in opposition to the nomination of John Bolton for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. The advertisements state that Bolton is the wrong man for the job because of his desire to dismantle the UN rather than reform it. The spots will air at 8 p.m. on WPIR (CBS), WNAC (FOX), and WJAR (NBC), as well as during the 6 p.m. evening news on NBC and during the 11 p.m. evening news on CBS.

The goal of the Stop Bolton campaign is to convince Rhode Island Senators John Chafee and Jack Reed that John Bolton is not the diplomat Americans want representing them at the UN.

A moderate Republican and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Chafee's up-or-down vote on Bolton will be crucial in determining the fate of U.S.-UN relations. It won't be easy for Senator Chafee to vote against a Presidential nominee from his own party. So it is vital that local constituents contact the Senator to let him know they want a "problem solver, not a loose cannon" at the UN.

-- Steve Clemons

This was the lead piece in the latest CQ Today

U.N. NOMINEE BOLTON GETS SCRUTINY FROM SENATE DEMOCRATS

Senate Democrats are digging through John R. Bolton's record to see whether there is enough controversy in his hard-line views on international security to derail his nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton, who has been a vocal critic of the United Nations for years, faces a daylong Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on April 7. Committee Democrats appear to be unified in their opposition to Bolton, while most Republicans have endorsed the nomination.

Norm Kurz, spokesman for Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the ranking Foreign Relations Democrat, said members and staff are doing a thorough review of Bolton's entire career. Biden has not publicly said whether he would support the nomination, but he voted against Bolton when he was nominated to be undersecretary of State in 2001.

One Senate aide said the White House is putting on a "full-court press" to keep all 10 Committee Republicans behind Bolton.

A full-court press wouldn't be needed, President Bush, if this nomination made even a little bit of sense.

-- Steve Clemons

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has reported to Stern Magazine in Germany that he was furious that he was misled about Iraq's WMD programs before his February 2003 address to the U.N. Security Council.

Unfortunately, TWN tried but failed to get folks at Stern to ask Secretary Powell what his true feelings about John Bolton were.

Still ripe for more investigation is John Bolton's role inside the Department of State promulgating the Niger-Uranium story after State and CIA intelligence analysts had fully rejected the claim. In this case, they got something right -- and John Bolton was part of the DISINFORMATION campaign.

Here is an excerpt from the AP report:

Powell, who retired as secretary of state in January, also said he still is "furious and angry" about his Feb. 5, 2003, speech to the U.N. Security Council in which he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that violated U.N. sanctions.

No such weapons were found, but Powell told Stern he had no reason to doubt intelligence from the CIA and other agencies suggesting Saddam had them.

-- Steve Clemons

While Senior Vice President at the American Enterprise Institute, John Bolton wrote this about the United Nations:

Here is an excerpt that appeared today at ThinkProgress.com:

This deep philosophical disjunction between the prevailing ethos of the United Nations and the fundamental American approach to governance is not something that will change in the foreseeable future.

What, then, does the foregoing analysis mean for the United Nations, and for America's role within the organization? It means primarily that the rest of the world should have realistic expectations that the United Nations has a limited role to play in international affairs for the foreseeable future.

According to Bolton, the UN can't become more relevant or effective through reform. And the "philosophical disjunction" is "not something that will change."

It seems to me -- and this will please Move America Forward's "Get the U.S. Out of the U.N." crowd -- that John Bolton's disdain for international engagement and the United Nations has been remarkably consistent.

Why expect anything different from him on April 7th?

-- Steve Clemons

I have spoken to several current and former senior foreign policy officials yesterday and this morning regarding John Bolton. Their chorus is the same.

They report that Colin Powell and Richard Armitage hated dealing with Bolton and that Powell did not want Bolton on his team. No one trusts him. He is lustful for power and position, disdainful of process, and frequently sees it as his right and obligation to "make his own weather" when it comes to foreign policy.

One of the more interesting tidbits I picked up in these conversations -- with several people -- is that John Bolton regularly and frequently defied command and control within the State Department. The first major example of this flamboyant disregard for authority above him -- disregard for Secretary of State Powell and the White House -- was Bolton's August 2001 announcement to Russian media that Russia had a deadline of November 2001 to accomodate the U.S. position on ballistic missile defense testing or the U.S. would initiate abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Several sources report that Secretary of State Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage were livid that Bolton had threatened (intentially or unintentionally) the Russians with a deadline -- and more importantly, had taken the lead himself (without vested authority) to argue under what terms the United States would abrogate the ABM treaty. According to insiders, Bolton had gotten ahead of the process and had spoken too early -- particularly when Bush was trying to "play nice" with Russia.

The fact is that the United States, by order of President Bush, did initiate formal abrogation proceedings of the ABM Treaty in December 2001. John Bolton also later withdrew his comments to the Russian media -- and even denied making them, though the media certainly heard what he said.

What I had not heard previously is the high level of consternation within the State Department and the National Security Council because of Bolton's cavalier behavior and failure to adhere to process and diplomatic rules when it came to speaking on behalf of the President of the United States on such an important treaty.

Some will consider this an argument over semantics as the outcome of America suspending its participation in the ABM Treaty would not have changed had Bolton followed protocol.

But these semantic issues are important if Bolton, a loose cannon on many occasions, is vested with the authority of serving as Ambassador to the U.N. and negotiating with other major players about U.N. reform.

He did not represent the President of the United States nor the citizens of this nation well when it came to ending America's ABM Treaty obligations.

He is a loose cannon who wants to call his own shots. This is not what the President needs or should want. It's what 'Move America Forward' wants.

It is what Condoleeza Rice and Bob Zoellick fear -- and is why they are already piling up the sandbags to protect themselves from Bolton.

-- Steve Clemons

Former Republican Senator and immediate past United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Danforth on what Republicanism used to be about:

During the 18 years I served in the Senate, Republicans often disagreed with each other. But there was much that held us together. We believed in limited government, in keeping light the burden of taxation and regulation. We encouraged the private sector, so that a free economy might thrive. We believed that judges should interpret the law, not legislate. We were internationalists who supported an engaged foreign policy, a strong national defense and free trade. These were principles shared by virtually all Republicans.

But in recent times, we Republicans have allowed this shared agenda to become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives. As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.

Again: "We were internationalists who supported an engaged foreign policy, a strong national defense and free trade."

Danforth's piece is a dramatic rebuke to the zealots at the helm of the Republican wheel today.

John Bolton is just a symptom of a larger problem which Danforth highlights -- but progressives and moderates need to know that they can win these battles. But one has to start somewhere -- and John Bolton's candidacy is the right issue on which to push back.

-- Steve Clemons

Fox News has not offered more than entertainment in its coverage of John Bolton -- which is not really good for advocates or opponents of his U.N. nomination -- but CBS News is getting serious.

CBS News Foreign Affairs analyst Pamela Falk said Bolton is "receiving so much bipartisan criticism that there is a widespread question about whether or not the administration was expecting the nomination to pass the Senate.

"Without question, the administration has some serious questions about the credibility of the U.N., but coming on the heels of previous Ambassadors John Negroponte and John Danforth, the nomination of John Bolton -- known to have differences with Secretary of State Rice -- may well have been a nomination to satisfy conservative critics but appears now to possibly be a sacrificial lamb in the nomination process," said Falk.

And she didn't even mention Wolfowitz. The art of diplomacy, and politics, is knowing which wins are the big ones to go after -- and which are worth losing.

The Bolton nomination is too harmful to the country and should be withdrawn. There are better candidates. . .many.

-- Steve Clemons

Here is the entire text of the letter opposing Bolton from 59 former American Ambassadors.

Fox News has apparently been making fun of the diplomats' names.

Before they go to far down that path, perhaps they should consider some of the names of U.S. Senators -- particularly Republican ones?

Trent, Lamar, Saxby, Judd, Orrin. . .and that's even before nicknames like Libby. . .

Interestingly, 46 of the listed 59 Ambassadors served at least part of their tenure during Republican administrations.

The letter:

March 29, 2005

The Honorable Richard G. Lugar

Senate Foreign Relations Committee

450 Dirksen Senate Office Building

Washington, DC 20510-6225

Dear Senator Lugar,

We have noted with appreciation the moves of President Bush at the beginning of his second term to improve U.S. relations with the countries of the European Union and of the United Nations. Maintaining these ties and the willingness of those countries to cooperate with the United States is essential to U.S. security.

It is for this reason that we write you to express our concern over the nomination of John R. Bolton to be permanent representative of the United States at the United Nations. We urge you to reject that nomination.

By virtue of service in the State Department, USAID and Justice Departments, John Bolton has the professional background needed for this position. But his past activities and statements indicate conclusively that he is the wrong man for this position at a time when the UN is entering a critically important phase of modernization, seeking to promote economic development and democratic reforms and searching for ways to cope better with proliferation crises and a spurt of natural disasters and internal conflicts.

John Bolton has an exceptional record of opposition to efforts to enhance U.S. security through arms control. He led a campaign against ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Today, the administration is pressing for development of new types of nuclear weapons. John Bolton blocked more extensive international agreement to limit sales of small arms, the main killer in internal wars. He led the fight to continue U.S. refusal to participate in the Ottawa Landmine Treaty. Today, the U.S. has joined Russia and China in insisting on the right to continue to deploy anti-personnel landmines. John Bolton crafted the U.S. withdrawal from the joint efforts of 40 countries to formulate a verification system for the Biological Weapons Convention and blocked continuation of these efforts in a period of increasing concern over potential terrorist use of these weapons and of terrorist access to the stocks of countries covertly producing these weapons. John Bolton's unsubstantiated claims that Cuba and Syria are working on biological weapons further discredited the effect of U.S. warnings and U.S. intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.

John Bolton led the successful campaign for U.S. withdrawal from the treaty limiting missile defenses (ABM Treaty). The effects of this action included elimination of the sole treaty barrier to the weaponization of space. In the face of decades of votes in the UN General Assembly calling for negotiation of a treaty to block deployment of weapons in space, he has blocked negotiation in the Geneva Conference on Disarmament of a treaty on this subject. The administration has repeatedly proposed programs calling for weapon deployment in space.

As chief negotiator of the 2002 Moscow Treaty on withdrawing U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons from field deployment, John Bolton structured a treaty without its own verification regime, without required progress reports from both sides, without the requirement to destroy warheads withdrawn from deployment, and without provision for negotiating continued reductions. Under his guidance, the State Department repudiated important consensus agreements reached in the year 2000 Review Conference of the Non-proliferation Treaty and has even blocked the formulation of an agenda for the next review conference to be held in May 2005.

Under John Bolton as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, the State Department has continued to fail to resolve the impasse with Russia about the legal liability of U.S. personnel working with Russia on the security of the huge arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of the former Soviet Union and has failed to accelerate measures aimed at the safety and security of this huge arsenal from theft, illegal sale and terrorist access.

John Bolton's insistence that the UN is valuable only when it directly serves the United States, and that the most effective Security Council would be one where the U.S. is the only permanent member, will not help him to negotiate with representatives of the remaining 96% of humanity at a time when the UN is actively considering enlargement of the Security Council and steps to deal more effectively with failed states and to enhance the UN's peacekeeping capability.

John Bolton's work as a paid researcher for Taiwan, his idea that the U.S. should treat Taiwan as a sovereign state, and that it is fantasy to believe that China might respond with armed force to the secession of Taiwan do not attest to the balanced judgment of a possible U.S. permanent representative on the Security Council. China is emerging as a major world power and the Taiwan issue is becoming more acute.

At a time when the UN is struggling to get an adequate grip on the genocidal killing in Darfur, Sudan, Mr. Bolton's skepticism about UN peacekeeping, about paying the UN dues that fund peacekeeping, and his leadership of the opposition to the International Criminal Court, originally proposed by the U.S. itself in order to prosecute human rights offenders, will all make it difficult for the U.S. to play an effective leadership role at a time when the UN itself and many member states are moving to improve UN capacity to deal with international problems.

Given these past actions and statements, John R. Bolton cannot be an effective promoter of the U.S. national interest at the UN. We urge you to oppose his nomination.

Sincerely,

The Hon. Terrell E. Arnold
Former Deputy Director, Office of Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State (Reagan)
Former U.S. Consul General, Sao Paulo, Brazil (Carter)

Ambassador (ret.) Harry G. Barnes, Jr.
Former U.S. ambassador to Romania, Chile, and India (Nixon, Ford, Reagan)

Ambassador (ret.) Robert L. Barry
Former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria and Indonesia (Reagan, Clinton)
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (Carter)
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (Carter)

Ambassador Josiah H. Beeman
Former U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and Western Samoa (Clinton)

Ambassador (ret.) Maurice M. Bernbaum
Former U.S. ambassador to Ecuador and Venezuela (Eisenhower, Johnson)

Ambassador (ret.) Richard J. Bloomfield
Former U.S. ambassador to Ecuador and Portugal (Ford, Carter, Reagan)

Ambassador George Bunn
Former member of U.S. delegation to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) negotiations (Johnson)
Former U.S. ambassador to the Geneva Disarmament Conference (UN) (Johnson)

Ambassador (ret.) James Cheek
Former U.S. ambassador to Sudan and Argentina (G.H.W. Bush, Clinton)

Ambassador (ret.) Carleton S. Coon
Former U.S. ambassador to Nepal (Reagan)

Ambassador (ret.) Jane Coon Former U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh (Reagan)

Ambassador (ret.) John H. Crimmins
Former U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic and Brazil (Johnson, Nixon, Ford)

Ambassador (ret.) Richard T. Davies
Former U.S. ambassador to Poland (Nixon, Ford, Carter)

Ambassador (ret.) Jonathan Dean
Former U.S. representative to the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction Talks, Vienna (Carter)

Ambassador (ret.) Willard A. DePree
Former U.S. ambassador to Mozambique and Bangladesh (Ford, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush)

Ambassador (ret.) Robert S. Dillon
Former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon (Reagan)
Former Deputy Commissioner General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) (Reagan)

Ambassador (ret.) Donald B. Easum
Former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) (Nixon, Ford)
Former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs (Nixon, Ford)

Ambassador (ret.) James Bruce Engle
Former U.S. ambassador to Dahomey (Nixon, Ford)

Ambassador (ret.) Richard K. Fox Former U.S. ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago (Carter)

Ambassador (ret.) Holsey Gates Handyside
Former U.S. ambassador to Mauritania (Ford, Carter)

Ambassador (ret.) William C. Harrop
Former ambassador to Israel, Kenya, and Zaire (Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton)
Former Inspector General, U.S. Department of State (Nixon)

Ambassador (ret.) Samuel F. Hart
Former U.S. ambassador to Ecuador (Reagan)

Ambassador (ret.) Arthur A. Hartman
Former U.S. ambassador to France and the Soviet Union (Carter, Reagan)
Former Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (Nixon)

Ambassador Ulric Haynes, Jr.
Former U.S. ambassador to Algeria (Carter)

Ambassador Gerald B. Helman
Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Geneva (Carter)

Ambassador (ret.) Robert T. Hennemeyer
Former U.S. ambassador to Gambia (Reagan)

Ambassador (ret.) Lewis Hoffacker
Former U.S. ambassador to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea (Nixon)

Ambassador (ret.) H. Allen Holmes
Former U.S. ambassador to Portugal (Reagan)
Former Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs (Reagan)
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (Clinton)

Ambassador (ret.) Robert V. Keeley
Former U.S. Ambassador to Mauritius, Zimbabwe, and Greece (Ford, Carter, Reagan)
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs (Carter)

Spurgeon M. Keeny, Jr.
Former Deputy Director, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency(ACDA) (Carter)

Ambassador Henry L. Kimelman
Former U.S. ambassador to Haiti (Carter)
Ambassador (ret.) Roger Kirk
Former U.S. ambassador to Somalia and Romania (Nixon, Ford, Reagan)

Ambassador (ret.) Dennis H. Kux
Former U.S. ambassador to Ivory Coast (Reagan)

Ambassador (ret.) James F. Leonard
Former Deputy U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations (Ford, Carter)

Ambassador (ret.) Samuel W. Lewis
Former Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (Ford)
Former Director of Policy Planning, State Department (Clinton)
Former ambassador to Israel (Carter, Reagan)

Ambassador (ret.) Princeton N. Lyman
Former Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (Clinton)
Director, Bureau of Refugee Programs, U.S. Department of State (G.H.W. Bush)
Former U.S. ambassador to South Africa and Nigeria (Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton)

Ambassador (ret.) Richard Cavins Matheron
Former U.S. ambassador to Swaziland (Carter, Reagan)
Ambassador (ret.) Charles E. Marthinsen
Former U.S. ambassador to Qatar (Carter, Reagan)

Jack Mendelsohn
Deputy Assistant Director of the Strategic Programs Bureau, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) (Reagan)
Senior ACDA representative on U.S. START delegation (Reagan)

Ambassador Carol Moseley-Braun
Former U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa (Clinton)

Ambassador (ret.) Donald R. Norland
Former U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, and Chad (Johnson, Ford, Carter)

Ambassador (ret.) David Passage
Former U.S. ambassador to Botswana (G.H.W. Bush)

Ambassador (ret.) Edward L. Peck
Former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Mauritania (Carter, Reagan)

Ambassador (ret.) Jack R. Perry
Former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria (Carter)

Ambassador (ret.) Christopher H. Phillips
Former Deputy U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN (Nixon)
Former U.S. ambassador to Brunei (G.H.W. Bush)

Ambassador Stanley R. Resor
Former Secretary of the Army (Johnson, Nixon)
Former U.S. representative to the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction Talks, Vienna (Nixon, Ford, Carter)
Ambassador Nicholas A. Rey
Former U.S. ambassador to Poland (Clinton)

John B. Rhinelander
Deputy Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State (Nixon)
Legal adviser to the U.S. Strategic Arms Limitation Delegation (SALT I) (Nixon)

Ambassador (ret.) Stuart W. Rockwell
Former U.S. ambassador to Morocco (Nixon)

Ambassador (ret.) Talcott W. Seelye
Former U.S. ambassador to Tunisia and Syria (Nixon, Ford, Carter)

Ambassador (ret.) Carl Spielvogel
Former U.S. ambassador to the Slovak Republic (Clinton)

Ambassador (ret.) Monteagle Stearns
Former U.S. ambassador to Greece and Ivory Coast (Ford, Carter, Reagan)
Former Vice President, National Defense University (Carter)

Ambassador (ret.) Andrew L. Steigman
Former Ambassador to Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe (Ford)

Ambassador (ret.) Harry E.T. Thayer
Former U.S. ambassador to Singapore (Carter, Reagan)

The Hon. Hans N. Tuch
Career Minister, U.S. Foreign Service, USIA

Ambassador (ret.) Theresa A. Tull
Former U.S. ambassador to Guyana and Brunei (Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton)

Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel
Former Deputy U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations (Carter)
Former U.S. representative to the United Nations, Geneva (Carter)
Ambassador (ret.) Christopher van Hollen
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (Nixon)
Former U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka (Nixon, Ford)

Ambassador (ret.) Robert E. White
Former U.S. ambassador to Paraguay and El Salvador (Carter)
Former Deputy U.S. Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States (Ford)

Ambassador (ret.) James M. Wilson, Jr.
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, East Asia and Pacific Affairs (Nixon)
Coordinator for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Department of State (Ford)

Ambassador and former U.S. Senator (ret.) James Sasser
Former U.S. Senator (D-TN)
Former U.S. Ambassador to China (Clinton)

Ambassador (ret.) Patricia M. Byrne
Former Deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (Reagan)

Ambassador (ret.) John L. Hirsch
Former U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone (Clinton)

-- Steve Clemons

Remember Iran-Contra??

John Bolton has made a career out of defying Congress. During the Iran-Contra investigations, John Bolton refused to comply with Congessional demands for records. Bolton also believed that the Independent Counsel law was unconstitutional and did everything he could do preempt Congress's efforts to investigate Iran-Contra.

Many Americans feel that the United Nations needs to be modernized and reformed and problems such as "Oil-for-Food" resolved so that such corruption cannot again occur.

Bolton has no record of building up and reforming institutions. He defies laws, believes in might makes right, and has worked to undermine the system of checks and balances that is key to American democracy.

Here is a selection of articles and key excerpts that illustrate Bolton's contempt for American style governance:

Washington Post, December 24, 1986 Retired General Secord Refuses To Testify Before House Panel; Reagan Urges Quick Report on Iran Affair by Senate Committee By Tom Kenworthy, Lou Cannon

Attorney General Edwin Meese was sharply criticized by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter W. Rodino (D-NJ) for the Justice Department's refusal to produce information related to the Iran-contra investigation that was requested by the panel on Dec. 11.

John Bolton, assistant Attorney General for congressional affairs, refused late Monday to comply with requests by Rodino that the Justice Department produce a broad range of documents related to the controversy and that Meese answer questions about his knowledge and involvement. In refusing, Bolton said many items requested by Rodino are "highly classified" and that no staff member of the Judiciary Committee has the proper clearances to review them.

UPI, March 19, 1987
Washington News
By DANA WALKER

Attorney General Edwin Meese has grave doubts about the constitutionality of the law allowing for independent counsel to probe top officials such as those involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, a Justice Department official said Thursday.

Assistant Attorney General John Bolton, testifying before a Senate Governmental Operations subcommittee, stopped short of saying Meese believes the law is unconstitutional, despite being pressed by Sen. Carl Levin, co-sponsor of legislation to make the law permanent. The law, the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, expires in January 1988.

"There are grave doubts about the constitutionality" of key provisions of the law, including one that authorizes a special federal court -- instead of the Attorney General -- to appoint the independent counsel, Bolton said, adding that he personally believed the law was unconstitutional. Levin said: "I think it's clear to everybody that the Attorney General feels that this statute is unconstitutional. Why don't you just say it?"

Bolton said Meese would favor the law if he had more power over the scope of investigations, the appointment of the prosecutor and termination authority over the counsel. "You want us to gut the statute," Levin said.

Former special prosecutor Archibald Cox, whose firing by President Richard Nixon in the "Saturday Night Massacre" during the Watergate scandal sparked the push for the law, agreed with Levin, later testifying that Bolton in effect was saying, "We're for renewal of the statute with the guts taken out."

Bolton left open the possibility the Justice Department may argue against the law if the appropriate case came up. "We would be prepared to argue against the constitutionality" of certain aspects of the law. . .

UPI, May 29, 1987
Washington News
By LORI SANTOS

North, who renewed his constitutional challenge of Walsh's authority secretly May 8 before the appeals court - apparently to avoid a grand jury subpoena - was fired from his NSC job for his role in the scandal.

He is contending that Walsh's appointment by a special 3-judge panel is illegal because it usurps executive authority. He specifically challenged Walsh's authority to conduct a grand jury investigation. The case is scheduled to be heard publicly by the appeals court next week. The Justice Department and the American Bar Association also filed briefs with the court in support of Walsh.

But the department backed only his parallel appointment by Attorney General Edwin Meese. That appointment, the department said, "follows a respected tradition of appointing individuals outside of the Department of Justice to aid in sensitive investigations of officials within the executive branch" and is completely within the power of the Attorney General. At the same time, however, the department noted some officials have questioned the constitutionality of the ethics law, including Assistant Attorney General John Bolton, who has expressed "grave doubts" about the act and recently told Congress President Reagan could order Walsh to give North immunity from prosecution and fire the special prosecutor if he refused…

AP, June 16, 1987
Justice Department Continues Attack on Independent Counsels
By PETE YOST

Assistant Attorney General John Bolton also attacked an independent counsel who has been conducting a criminal investigation of a former Justice Department official for the past 14 months. Independent counsels, who are appointed by courts under the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, are "utterly without review, utterly without supervision; nothing is too trivial for these people to investigate," Bolton said at a news conference.

. . ."To the extent that the present statute authorizes a prosecutor to investigate and prosecute federal crimes without...accountability, and makes a prosecutor subject to the direction and control of a court rather than the executive, we believe it is unconstitutional," said Bolton. "If this bill is enacted, we will have no choice but to recommend its disapproval by the president," he (John Bolton) said.

Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1987
POUNDING THE TABLE (editorial)

(John) Bolton would have us believe that the department's opposition is unrelated to the fact that Lawrence Walsh, the Iran-contra investigator, has been putting the heat on White House officials or that Attorney General Edwin Meese III is currently the subject of an independent counsel's investigation of his role in the the Wedtech scandal or that Meese was previously investigated for giving a federal job to a person who had done him a favor. The Administration would like to get independent counsels under its thumb to remove their independence. It has nothing to do with the Constitution.

Lawyers say that if the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law. If neither is on your side, pound the table. Administration officials are pounding the table, and Congress should not let them get away with it. The job of independent counsel may need some fine tuning, but the basic idea should be retained.

ABA Journal, July 1, 1987
Proposed changes in the law debated
By Debra Cassens Moss

. . .The Attorney General’s Office clarified its position on the law when John Bolton, assistant attorney general for the Office of Legislative Affairs, testified before a House subcommittee in April. He said that the present law is unconstitutional unless it is construed to give the president ultimate control over the decision to prosecute. The law says the independent counsel may be removed for good cause. Bolton says good cause should include failure to follow a president's orders to drop prosecution.

Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the subcommittee before which Bolton testified, complained that the Justice Department interpretation gives him a bad case of deja vu - Richard Nixon's firing of Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in the "Saturday Night Massacre."

AP, July 8, 1987
House Panel Subpoenas Prosecutors In Contra-Drug-Gunrunning Probe
By BOB McHUGH

In a letter to (Subcommittee Chairman William) Hughes (D-NJ) last week, Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-IN, chairman of the House Iran-Contra committee, declined to share transcripts of the interviews. Hamilton's letter followed an April 20 letter to Hughes from Assistant Attorney General John Bolton, refusing to make the prosecutors available to Hughes' subcommittee. Bolton said any investigation relating to the Contras was under the jusrisdiction of the Iran-Contra committees. Hughes asked Meese again on June 12 to allow the prosecutors to be interviewed. Hughes said he received no reply.

Legal Times, March 7, 1988
Bolton Moves Up Justice Ladder; Lobbying Plans Frustrated, Official to Take Charge of Civil Branch
By Aaron Freiwald

. . .In late 1986, Bolton was the key administration representative during the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. Bolton was heavily criticized for invoking executive privilege and for steadfastly refusing to release documents relating to Rehnquist's tenure at the Justice Dept in the 1970s. More recently, Bolton was an ever-present handler during US Circuit Judge Robert Bork's explosive and unsuccessful nomination to the Supreme Court.

In addition to his work on judicial nominations, Bolton has often gone to the front lines for the department's legislative agenda. He has been one of the administration's most vocal critics of the independent-counsel law. At a press conference last June, Bolton vigorously challenged the law's constitutionality in tones the White House later described as "intemperate."

Bolton was also one of the Justice Department's key legal advisers during last year's Iran-Contra hearings. Bolton accompanied several top department officials in depositions before the House committee, including Meese and Charles Cooper, assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. The committee has criticized the department - and thereby Bolton and his staff - for stonewalling efforts to obtain relevant documents during his investigation.

AP, January 19, 1989
White House Barred From Destroying Records
By PETE YOST

"We have filed suit only after prolonged negotiations during which no representative of the federal government, including counsels for the White House, National Security Council, and the National Archives, would assure us that these electronic materials would be retained at the end of the Reagan administration," said Scott Armstrong, founder of the National Security Archive, a non-profit group. "The Iran-Contra affair illustrated the importance of information stored in the PROFS system," Armstrong said in an affidavit. "Despite repeated attempts by NSC staff to shred the paper record and delete the computer record, the PROFS backup system on magnetic tape allowed investigators to reconstruct much of the Iran-Contra-related activity."

The computer tapes "are the only existing record of many important communications within the White House and specifically within the NSC at the close of the Reagan administration," Ms. Martin said in a memorandum filed in federal court. Destroying the tapes "will destroy an invaluable historical and political record that is available nowhere else and which Congress has on several occasions mandated be available to members of the public," Ms. Martin's memo said.

Assistant Attorney General John Bolton argued at the hearing that the destruction is "not some sinister conspiracy," but rather staffers in the Reagan administration staff trying to perform "house cleaning" chores so that the Bush administration can come in with "a clean slate. The archivist has given approval to erase these systems" and none of the information has "any relevance" or "anything to do with the Iran-Contra affair," said Bolton. Bolton said some material has already been deleted from the system, that the system is filled to capacity and that "it would be a grave impairment of the president's ability" to conduct the transition to a new administration "if the court were to intervene. When new people come in they have to have access to the system," said Bolton. A restraining order would impair the ability to get the administration "up and running," he said...

The Nation, April 17, 1989
From Meese to the UN; John Bolton, nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs
By David Corn and Jefferson Morley

Bolton's record as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs in 1986 and 1987 merits special scrutiny. He "tried to torpedo" Sen. John Kerry's inquiry into allegations of contra drug smuggling and gunrunning, one committee aide says. When Kerry requested information from the Justice Department, Bolton's office gave it the long stall, a Kerry aide notes. In fact, says another Congressional aide, Bolton's staff worked actively with the Republican senators who opposed Kerry's efforts.

In 1986 this chum of Meese also refused to give Peter Rodino, then chair of the House Judiciary Committee, documents concerning the Iran- Contra scandal and Meese's involvement in it. Later, when Congressional investigators were probing charges that the Justice Department had delayed an inquiry into gunrunning to the contras, Bolton was again the spoiler. According to Hayden Gregory, chief counsel of a House Judiciary subcommittee on crime, Bolton blocked an arrangement by which his staff had agreed to let House investigators interview officials of the US Attorney's office in Miami. Bolton refused to speak to us on the subject.

Senator Lincoln Chafee recently said this about John Bolton's nomination to the United Nations:

Undersecretary Bolton has been an outspoken critic of the United Nations (UN). However, I have been assured that he will bring a more balanced approach to his new role.

To what job has John Bolton EVER BROUGHT A "MORE BALANCED" APPROACH?

Senator Chafee, don't be a stooge for promises. . .Study his record carefully?

Please tell us why you don't find this man's record in every government position he has held just outrageous and antithetical to what Americans would want from their political leaders.

-- Steve Clemons

(ed. note: Journalist and producer Roger Trilling and I are working on a potential article together, and he deserves kudos for this research.)

It's all over the news, but let me add my own piece on the 59 former American diplomats who have written to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar to say that the choice of John Bolton could not be more wrong for America's perch in the U.N.

AP's Barry Schweid reports:

The ex-diplomats have served in both Democratic and Republican administrations, some for long terms and others briefly. They include Arthur A. Hartman, ambassador to France and the Soviet Union under Presidents Carter and Reagan and assistant secretary of state for European affairs under President Nixon.

Others who signed the letter include James F. Leonard, deputy ambassador to the U.N. in the Ford and Carter administrations; Princeton N. Lyman, ambassador to South Africa and Nigeria under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton; Monteagle Stearns, ambassador to Greece and Ivory Coast in the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations; and Spurgeon M. Keeny Jr., deputy director of the Arms Control Agency in the Carter administration.

Their criticism dwelled primarily on Bolton's stand on issues as the State Department's senior arms control official. They said he had an "exceptional record" of opposing U.S. efforts to improve national security through arms control.

I tried to reach former mega-diplomat and career foreign service officer Tom Pickering today -- but he was off to Brazil and reported back to me through his office that his international travel precluded him from commenting at this time on the Bolton nomination. Pickering neither knocked Bolton nor gave him any praise.

In foreign service circles, Pickering is a revered and effective diplomat who is forceful and always has a powerful opinion. His silence on Bolton is telling, in my view.

This Al Kamen column from March 8th reminds that there may be "some complicated history" between Pickering and John Bolton that may not yet have been cited in a memoir.

Thanks to this group of bipartisan ambassadors for speaking their minds and standing up for the country's interests.

-- Steve Clemons

After the election, I explained the outcome of the Bush-Kerry presidential race in part in the language of a vulgar but brilliant movie that had then been released, Team America: World Police.

The favorite line of the terrorist-tracking U.S. global cop puppets was "America: Fuck Yeah!" After watching the John Bolton video a couple of dozen times, I'm wondering whether he actually inspired the slogan. . .and the script.

In any case, this is a bit off-topic, but the night I went to see that film, I ended up winning a baby grand piano that Regal Cinemas and Schaeffer's Piano had offered as a promotion for a new Washington, DC movie complex.

It took a while to get to Washington -- but the piano arrived at my house today. On May 17th, Team America: World Police's DVD is released. I think I'm going to host a party that night, keep the DVD running over and over -- and ask someone over who can play the piano (I can't. . .yet).

I think I'm going to ask Condi to play.

That is the only thing I can think of that would make this even more over the top.

Some interesting information just crossed my desk on John Bolton. Should have some of it up tonight.

-- Steve Clemons

Michael Roston demystifies the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) that John Bolton considers to be one of his strong suits in his upcoming April 7th UN Ambassadorship Confirmation Hearings.

Roston shows that PSI had little if nothing to do with Libya's disarmament agenda -- and that two Republican Senators -- former Illinois Senator Peter Fitzgerald and New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici -- thought that Bolton was paying little attention to big-time threats and problems.

From Roston's piece:

Since PSI was linked to Libya's decision to disarm, the effort has yielded no major successes. Now-retired Illinois Senator Peter Fitzgerald looked at PSI's informal structure last July and asked one of Bolton's lieutenants "how do we know. . .you're not shirking your other duties?"

Fitzgerald was not the only Republican Senator asking this question. In June 2004, Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, Chair of the Energy Committee, took the unusual step of requesting to testify before Senator Richard Lugar's Foreign Relations Committee. Domenici was concerned that progress was not being made on the liability dispute that now impairs US-Russian cooperative disposition of excess weapons plutonium, a key part of that G-8 Global Partnership Bolton trumpeted in his acceptance speech.

As Bolton sat within arm's reach, Domenici went as far as to declare on the record that he was "not sure to this point that [Bolton is] up to" resolving the dispute, that he was uncertain "that he attaches the significance" to the program that the Senators did, and that if Bolton "doesn't think it's important enough to solve, this issue of liability, then I submit that you ought to get somebody that can." With Bolton's tenure at an end, the dispute remains unresolved.

Domenici has finally repeated his reservations about Bolton as a nominee. Will he repeat on the record for us that Bolton's not up to the job, or will we have to call him Mister Ambassador until the day we die?

Read that again....Senator Domenici took the unusual step of asking Senator Richard Lugar if Domenici could testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee against John Bolton and his work record.

-- Steve Clemons

Haley Barbour established the non-profit National Policy Forum as a sham think tank -- really designed to raise funds, organize and mobilize political donors and feed them programs and activities that pushed the agenda of the Republican National Committee.

Michael Baroody quit the organization because he knew Barbour's scheme was wrong. John Bolton bought into Barbour's vision and became President of the National Policy Forum. He knew it was an RNC front -- which later lost its non-profit status for highly partisan activities -- and he solicited and received foreign government money into the National Policy Forum -- which many Members of Congress argued represented foreign government donations to the Republican Party.

Here is a document from the investigation file and report that puts Bolton in the middle of the foreign government funding scandal. The report is the "Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law," 105th Congress, 2nd Session, House Report 105-829, Part 4.

In the list of evidence, with an explanation of its importance:

16 Ex. 12, Letter from John R. Bolton to Michael Hsu (Aug. 7, 1996) (NPF 003200, 003204).

The PCF contribution is significant because it is the only example of a foreign government contributing to an American political party. Indeed, documents produced to this Committee indicate that NPF officials understood the contribution to be from the Taiwanese government. For example, NPF President John Bolton acknowledged receipt of the contribution in two letters to Michael Hsu, a special assistant at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO), which functions as Taiwan's unofficial embassy in the U.S. (17) Similarly, RNC Chairman Haley Barbour wrote to Jason Hu, Taiwan's representative to the U.S., and thanked him for the contribution. (18) In his letter to "Ambassador Hu," Mr. Barbour wrote that PCFs "willingness to underwrite our Member Trade Briefing is greatly appreciated and enables NPF to continue to develop and advocate good international policy." (19)

Senator Lugar -- John Bolton's role in the Haley Barbour National Policy Forum fiasco ought to disqualify him as someone who can help resolve the ethics problems within the current United Nations.

Offer him an Ambassadorship elsewhere -- just to see if his behavior and views about the rest of the world really have changed. The U.N. role is just too important for Americans to have this inappropriate appointment forced on them.

-- Steve Clemons

I have a very dear third cousin whose name is Jess. We actually met via the Internet because various mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law (actually my grandmother and great-grandmother) managed to stop spending much cooperative time together and separated parts of our family.

When my mother, who lives in Bartlesville, Oklahoma became ill some time ago, I started to do some family research with her to learn more about our pioneering family that had helped settle Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky and other rough places, when they were still rough.

I met Jess and a huge network of relatives through the internet and have become close, in spirit more than phone calls, to them.

This special cousin and I haven't communicated much lately. Totally my fault. I have Bolton on the brain and a lot of other foreign policy work -- and tough to make the family time one would like when trying to keep this person from undermining American interests.

Jess is pretty conservative I think, but very reasonable. She loves George Bush, or did. My mom has made a bit of a migration -- being quite the George Wallace type conservative when I was young and then talking publicly in Bartlesville about voting for a Democrat for President.

My great-grandmother who had a prized letter from then New York-governor Franklin Roosevelt saved in a tin to thank her for her work organizing the Democratic Party in her territory just north of Tulsa would be elated that someone had gone back to her party. Just about everyone else in my family was Republican, including myself -- until I got disgusted with some of the Republican shenanigans in Orange County and West Los Angeles -- signed up as a Democrat, until Tom Bradley and a lot of Democratic Los Angeles City Hall Council Members voted to give Armand Hammer and Occidental Petroleum drilling rights off the coast of Pacific Palisades and Malibu in Southern California. Hammer didn't need to pay much to these Dems to get them to shift -- and that is when I officially became an Independent.

I'm now out to hijack either one of the parties along with some other people who believe that Americans deserve better than they are getting from government. My personal motto is to "embarrass the bad decisions of government and then put a better idea on the table." Some times it is easier to do that than others -- but many of my colleagues and I try.

Back to my third cousin, who lives in Texas -- but who also spent a lot of time in Tulsa and Bartlesville. She is a good conservative, one with a conscience -- and she minces no words and doesn't EVER offer me falsehoods about what she feels.

Well, Jess is one person -- so this is more anecdote than trend, but she wrote this today:

Hi, Steve, I don't pretend to understand all that is going on in our government, but it seems to me that you are doing some very clear thinking.

This John Bolton needs to be stopped before the whole world is against us. Hope you are well and happy. Think about you often.

Really enjoyed, but was alarmed by todays reading of your blog. This Bolton thing is SCARY! Love, Jess

The point I'm trying to get across in this vignette is that people from a wide political spectrum -- conservative, centrist, progressive -- see this Bolton stuff and realize that something isn't quite right about this appointment.

Even the biggest backers of George W. Bush realize that he has to make some tough calls and even if in their eyes, he has called a lot of things right -- they can see that this appointment of John Bolton is WRONG. . .and very harmful for our interests.

I need to call my Texan cousin and encourage her to have her rather huge internet network take a look at the Bolton stuff. I don't want Jess to sway them one way or another. Some may think Bolton's comments are just what America needs, but others will not.

This is good news from Texas. Just get people to read, consider, and comment.

I hope all of you reading this -- no matter what side of the aisle you are on, no matter whether you think John Bolton is a swell guy or someone we ought to find some other kind of desk job than serving as our nation's Ambassador to the U.N. -- have a Happy Easter Sunday.

Best regards, and more later,

-- Steve Clemons

Watch the Video Clip -- to the end. Wait for John Bolton's own version of a "Dean Scream" about the United Nations. You'll either love him or "really dislike" his views.

After watching the video, lots do like him. In fact, the anti-United Nations group, Move America Forward, is reportedly thinking of using clips of it in an advertising campaign to help mobilize support for Bolton -- even though they have a campaign in play to evict the U.N. from American soil.

I think that the more Americans -- and members of the United States Senate -- who see this video clip, the better.

Jim Lobe, in a great article outlining the efforts to oppose John Bolton's nomination as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, quotes Citizens for Global Solutions staff member Harpinder Athwal.

Lobe reports:

"There are a lot of people outraged by these clips," said Harpinder Athwal of CGS, which was formerly known as the World Federalist Association.

"One thing that is very clear, however, is that supporters and opponents believe it shows real John Bolton. So the question is whether we want this guy representing U.S. national interests at the United Nations." (emphasis added)

Jim Lobe's full article really deserves a full read. But here is another key excerpt:

During the Clinton administration, Bolton worked in top positions in right-wing think tanks, notably the mainly neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute.

In his role there, he launched repeated attacks on all manner of arms control treaties, advocated independence for Taiwan, and warned of the grave threats posed to U.S. sovereignty by the United Nations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that promoted treaties and conventions that might constrain Washington's freedom of action overseas or influence U.S. laws at home.

His worldview and style were particularly well-displayed during a 1994 debate with a senior U.N. official, Erskine Childers, that was captured on video and can be seen at the CGS website, www.StopBolton.org.

It is in that debate that Bolton asserted that, "There's no such thing as the United Nations," adding that "If the U.N. (secretariat) building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

The video clip, which is expected to be run in television ads broadcast in target states over the coming weeks during the confirmation process beginning next week, shows Bolton becoming nearly apoplectic while insisting that the U.N. can only be effective when it is serving the U.S. national interest.

Significantly, the video is also featured on the website of an anti-U.N., pro-Bolton group, Move America Forward.

The Washington Note reported the other day that Citizens for Global Solutions was contesting Move America Forward's use of the video clip.

Since TWN's report, Move America Forward has posted attribution to StopBolton.org for the video it is using -- and while this attribution was not previously noted on its website, it is clear in several Move America Forward emails to its members that it indicated StopBolton.org as the source of the video clip.

That being said, the controversy still brews. Some argue that Move America Forward is using the Bolton video as a recruitment and fundraising device -- and that the "fair use" principles of accessing copyrighted materials for discussion or critique are not being followed in this case.

In the Comments Section of The Washington Note, following this blog entry, Move America Forward representatives have articulated their rationale in taking and using the clip that Citizens for Global Solutions allowed to be aired on Meet the Press and posted on its StopBolton.org website. There are well-articulated explanatory statements from Move America Forward's public relations counsel Joe Wierzbicki so that one can see the other side of this debate.

TWN has learned that Citizens for Global Solutions is pleased that Move America Forward now acknowledges on its website the source of the video clip -- but still contests Move America Forward's use of the clip.

Citizens for Global Solutions has proposed a settlement to Move America Forward, however, and it is interesting.

As I understand it, Citizens for Global Solutions has requested that Move America Forward "link" to CGS's www.StopBolton.org website wherever Move America Forward makes the video available.

Citizens for Global Solutions has also reportedy requested that Move America Forward make the complete video available on its web site and discontinue its use of the truncated version.

According to one CGS staff member, "It is the policy of Citizens for Global Solutions that no one, without our consent or authorization, may modify the video."

I think that this debate about this all-important John Bolton video clip will be solved. Opponents and advocates of John Bolton's UN Ambassadorial nomination believe that the views he expresses on the video are real, genuine, unvarnished John Bolton.

Anything else is veneer. . .both sides agree.

The most fascinating catch line in all of this comes from Move America Forward's website:

The following video is a clip from an anti-Bolton website, "StopBolton.Org". The reasons they are crying about Bolton's nomination are the same reasons why we are celebrating it.

It is rare that Americans get so clear cut a choice -- looking at exactly the same material.

Watch the (full) video -- and call your Senate office to register your own reaction and views.

-- Steve Clemons

Simply showing the rest of the world -- particularly the Muslim world -- that America holds accountable in this country those who commit heinous international crimes would do more to restore faith in this country than just about anything.

The absence of accountability in the scandal of tortured and murdered prisoners is really beyond belief.

Instead of shaking up his team in such a way as to send a clear apology both to American citizens, those outside America who used to depend on America's commitment to the highest standards of human rights and justice, and to the families and countrymen of those our forces murdered, abused and tortured -- George Bush appoints his mistress-of-spin Karen Hughes to solve America's branding problems.

After appointing Torture-Memo Al Gonzales as his Attorney General, keeping Donald Rumsfeld (who is most accountable for Abu Ghraib) at the Pentagon, giving Paul Wolfowitz (who thought Iraq would be a cake-walk) the World Bank, and nominating to the U.N. John Bolton -- who has stated that he doesn't even believe in the concept of a United Nations -- George Bush is practically assuring that all presidents who follow him will pay for the diminishment of American power and prestige that this president has created.

The U.S. government is dealing with these prisoner abuse cases shamefully and casually -- and it is darkly absurd that the military offers lines like: "U.S. Army Special Forces Command takes all allegations of detainee abuse and homicide very seriously," while at the same time, not prosecuting soldiers investigators know are responsible for documented murders.

From the New York Times this morning:

Despite recommendations by Army investigators, commanders have decided not to prosecute 17 American soldiers implicated in the deaths of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004, according to a new accounting released Friday by the Army.

Investigators had recommended that all 17 soldiers be charged in the cases, according to the accounting by the Army Criminal Investigation Command. The charges included murder, conspiracy and negligent homicide. While none of the 17 will face any prosecution, one received a letter of reprimand and another was discharged after the investigations.

There are times when it is clear that just a few adjustments, some appointment changes, an attitude shift, perhaps language in a single presidential speech, enlightened action by the Justice Department (or in this case, military prosecutors) -- just a few things done in concert -- would go a long way in restoring the American "brand" in the eyes of the world.

Move Rumsfeld to his next career. Withdraw the Bolton nomination and appoint an outstanding leader to the United Nations; why not Rob Portman for the UN instead of USTR? Ask James Baker to run the World Bank instead of Paul Wolfowitz.

Hold criminals in the U.S. armed services accountable and fire those responsible in the senior Pentagon hierarchy. Apologize to Americans and those around the globe for those prisoners tortured and abused while in our custody.

Remind Americans that while we need to be strong and continue to be vigilant against terrorism, we must get back to a world of high trust and low fear. Too many vest interests in America are benefiting from a high fear/low trust world.

President Bush could do a lot to restore genuine enthusiasm for the American brand if he changed course -- and in particular, held his people accountable for human rights abuses that occurred under our watch.

The United Nations and the World Bank are two vital global institutions where our appointments send important signals to those in the rest of the world. The Europeans seem to have mostly acquiesced to Wolfowitz -- which is too bad -- and Americans don't get to have a say about him via Congress.

But Wolfowitz and Bolton together is just too much, an overdose of pugnacious nationalism, and on Bolton then -- Americans do have a say.

Bolton's nomination to the United Nations should be rethought and stopped.

-- Steve Clemons

I have been on the phone for days talking to people who have been wronged by John Bolton for this or that. Bolton has a lot of enemies that he has built up over the years for hack jobs he did on them while at the Justice Department or in his many other roles.

I realize that there are nearly always two sides to a story, maybe even five or six, and I don't know Bolton's side -- though I'm seriously thinking of calling him up and asking him to do an interview with me in which I'll commit to a completely above-the-board discussion, fair and balanced -- and give him an opportunity to respond to some of the concerns I and others have been raising.

This news on John Bolton's "Stop ElBaradei" campaign (rings pretty close to the sound of the Stop Bolton campaign) is old and ran in January of this year. Nonetheless, this article by Dafna Linzer gives a feel of the lengths John Bolton will go to punish those who run afoul of him.

In his role as Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei questioned American intelligence on Iraq's nuclear WMD programs, and subsequently questioned our intelligence on Iran's programs.

You would think in most circumstances, the guy who had it right -- in this case, ElBaradei, would get the rewards and applause. (In a way he did, because he beat Bolton and was reappointed to a third term) But Bolton decided that questioning the authority and veracity of American claims was just too much and the guy had to be "retired."

Some excerpts from the article:

-- No country was willing to turn against ElBaradei, who is admired within the agency for his willingness to challenge the administration's assertions on Iraq and Iran. That same willingness has put ElBaradei deeply at odds with the White House and has became the driving factor in the administration's efforts to replace him, officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivities involved. "It's on hold right now," said one U.S. policymaker who was involved in lobbying against ElBaradei. "Everyone turned us down, even the Brits."

-- Most allies have viewed the campaign as retaliation against someone who questioned U.S. intelligence on Iraq and is now moving cautiously on Iran.

-- The U.S. effort, led by John R. Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, included sifting through intercepts of ElBaradei's phone calls in hopes of finding material to use against him. There have also been orchestrated leaks by unnamed U.S. or Western officials who have told reporters that Iran was secretly improving upon a weapons program and that ElBaradei was trying to hide that information from the IAEA board.

-- The U.S. effort may collapse altogether, officials said, if Bolton leaves the State Department in coming weeks, as is expected. "He was the driving force behind the block-ElBaradei idea," said one official.

Bolton's single-minded effort to get ElBaradei expelled actually worked against U.S. interests.

I think that there may be a lot of sense in replacing someone in a position after he had already had two terms -- but to do it in the form of punishment for skepticism of U.S. claims only succeeded in uniting both our friends and enemies against America's position.

Tactically, Bolton blew it big time -- and if this represents the way he will engage other key nations in the struggle over reform of the United Nations, I want someone who is going to help us win -- not get the entire world lined up against us.

Empirically speaking, if someone's diplomatic record produces dismal results that produce the opposite of what the Bush administration wanted, Bush really should consider sending someone more effective and less threatening to American interests.

-- Steve Clemons

John Bolton's confirmation hearings are officially set at 9:30 a.m., Thursay, 7 April, 216 Hart Senate Office Building.

See you there.

-- Steve Clemons

Josh Marshall caught this item about TownHall.com.

The subject interests me a lot -- for several reasons. I wrote a piece a while back called "Thought Control" which was paired with a TomPaine.com/Florence Fund Op-Ad in the New York Times titled "Think Tanks for Sale."

Here is an excerpt from my piece which focuses on the political battles and events that led to the creation of the Heritage Foundation. In the first line I am referring to John Judis and his excellent book, The Paradox of American Democracy:

Judis includes a story about the earlier days at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) that provides a refreshing glimpse of a time when think tanks used to be less for sale.

He notes how, in the early 1970s, AEI's leadership worried about attracting IRS wrath if its policy reports appeared to influence Congressional votes. So they did what they could to make it seem as if they were staying away from legislative arm-twisting. For instance, then-AEI President William Baroody delayed the release of a study supporting a Nixon administration supersonic transport aircraft program until two days after the Senate had voted on it. Some of AEI's friends, though, thought their fear of creating an advocacy impact was foolish, a kind of self-inflicted irrelevance.

That's, in part, what gave Paul Weyrich and Edward Feulner the impetus to launch the Heritage Foundation, which they said would have more "quick response capability." Such capability was very attractive to all kinds of funders who wanted their money to create action, not academic conversation. Today, Heritage is the most influential think tank in the country.

And there are many Heritage wannabes scattered all over the political spectrum. They thrive to the degree that they connect big financial support with work that leads to measurable legislative and policy results.

Thus, for TownHall.com to feel constrained by the IRS requirements governing the Heritage Foundation, one gets a sense of how political their objectives are. I applaud them for taking this step because I believe that the norms governing non-profit public affairs organizations should be strengthened.

There are more than 1,500 think tanks in Washington -- and most are small boutiques run by a single person with volunteer interns. They are probably the least known and least understood part of civil society in America, particularly inside the beltway, but these organizations play an important role in influencing policy and legislation. But lobbying money and various task-oriented consulting funds are pumping through 501c3 and 501c4 organizations with little attention being paid to this growing trend.

If there existed a Hall of Fame for Conservatives with a Conscience, Barry Goldwater would be among the first champions inducted, but as David Brooks so pungently wrote in his piece on conservative sleaze the other day in the New York Times, the recent racket among big-time Republicans is that they have "embraced the conservative part while discarding the conscience part."

But one family name that should also be included in that "Conscience of a Conservative Hall of Fame" -- particularly with regard to think tanks is the Baroody name. William Baroody who helped found and build the American Enterprise Institute clearly worried about crossing inappropriate and potentially illegal lines in directing the work and activities of his think tank.

Interestingly, his son Michael Baroody who is currently Executive Vice President of the National Association of Manufacturers, stood up and did the 'right thing' in the National Policy Forum, of which Baroody was recruited by Haley Barbour to be the first President.

John Bolton later became the National Policy Forum's president -- but more on that later.

I will paste a rather long segment of a Congressional Report from the 'Investiagion of Illegal or Improper Activities in Connecting with 1996 Federal Election Campaigns -- Final Report of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, SENATE Rept. 105-167 - 105th Congress 2d Session - March 10, 1998'. This report is one filed by the Minority, including Senators John Glenn, Carl Levin, Joseph Lieberman, Daniel Akaka, Richard Durbin, Robert Toricelli, and Max Cleland.

Note Michael Baroody's principled stand on the question of how think tanks, in this case the National Policy Forum, should be run. Something good clearly runs in the Baroody family:

Origin of the National Policy Forum

In 1993, Barbour, working with Donald Fierce, his friend, business partner, and RNC chief strategist, created the National Policy Forum as a ``think tank'' for the exchange of Republican ideas. The organization applied to the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt 501(c)(4) status, which would have prohibited it from engaging in partisan or primarily political activity. According to the testimony of several witnesses, Barbour touted the creation of NPF as a plank in his platform when he ran for the chairmanship of the RNC, stating
that he believed that the Republican Party had failed to generate new ideas that could be integrated into a Republican ideology.(9)

In June 1993, Barbour announced that Michael Baroody, a prominent Republican, would be NPF's first president. Barbour himself was the chairman of NPF as well as the RNC, and he arranged for the RNC to provide NPF with several hundred thousand dollars in start-up
money.(10)

Baroody was apparently committed to creating a genuine think tank. He set about implementing what he believed to be Barbour's vision of holding participatory conferences around the country on a variety of public policy issues ("the Forum"). He hired a large staff and began identifying conference sites and participants. However, it appears that, almost immediately, Baroody and Barbour began to clash over the operations of NPF. Baroody was interested in making the conferences open -- even bipartisan -- events where there would be a legitimate exchange of ideas.

Barbour, on the other hand, appears to have wanted to use NPF to strengthen the Republican Party's base and to give the party's supporters an opportunity to participate in formulating a national Republican policy platform. On at least one occasion, when Baroody suggested that a Democratic office holder participate in one of the
conferences, Barbour objected.(11)

Nevertheless, Barbour has characterized NPF as "the most participatory public policy institution ever," and he claimed 10,000 people attended forums held in more than 30 states.(12)

The Barbour-Baroody Split

An even more contentious issue between Baroody and Barbour developed over the question of how to fund the Forum. Baroody felt that the Forum should embody American values and American issues and therefore believed foreign fundraising would be inappropriate. From the outset, however, Barbour wanted to explore foreign sources of fundraising. In an extraordinary memorandum, Scott Reed, the executive director of the Republican National Committee, listed "foreign" under the
heading of "fundraising" as an issue to be discussed with
Barbour in a meeting on June 2, 1993.(13)

From the inception of NPF, its creators were contemplating raising foreign money. This memorandum, written only weeks before the announcement of the creation of the National Policy Forum, is extraordinary for another reason: The RNC executive director was making recommendations on the structure, goals, and personnel for a supposedly independent, nonpartisan organization.

According to both Barbour and Baroody, they only discussed the issue of raising money from foreign sources on one occasion. That discussion nevertheless apparently led Baroody, who resigned one year later, to characterize Barbour as having a "fascination" with foreign money.(14)

Baroody testified that he never viewed a foreign contribution to the NPF as illegal, but later he recalled telling Barbour: "We could get the money; that would be easy. But it would be wrong." (15) As he explained in more detail during his testimony, he felt such a contribution would be "[i]nappropriate, unseemly, and imprudent." (16)

As the rift between Barbour and Baroody deepened, Barbour brought in a trusted ally, Daniel Denning, as NPF executive vice president in early 1994. Denning had held numerous positions in the Republican Party and the federal government and was working for General Electric before joining NPF. With Denning in place, Barbour began an aggressive fundraising campaign. W. Lyons Brown, a wealthy Kentucky businessman and Republican contributor, was tapped to be fundraising chairman.

Denning, with Barbour's knowledge and presumed approval, continued to explore foreign sources of funding. Denning raised the issue of foreign fundraising with Baroody but was rebuffed, as Barbour had been before him. (17)

Unbeknownst to Baroody, Denning then approached Fred Volcansek, a former Commerce Department official under President Bush, international businessman, and GOP fundraiser, to be a fundraising consultant for NPF. According to Volcansek, Denning "was consumed with the need to raise money." (18)

Volcansek testified that he, Denning, and Fierce met at Fierce's northern Virginia home in the spring of 1994 to discuss foreign fundraising options. Baroody was kept out of the loop, even though, technically, Denning was his subordinate. (19)

Later in this extraordinary report, reasons for Michael Baroody's resignation from NPF are outlined:

Baroody Resigns

On June 28, 1994, Michael Baroody submitted his resignation as president of NPF to Haley Barbour.

Baroody submitted both a resignation letter and a confidential explanatory memorandum.(24) While the letter only relayed Baroody's intent to resign, the memorandum, which the Committee obtained from sources other than the National Policy Forum, outlined in some detail Baroody's reasons for leaving. It is an extraordinary document. First and foremost, Baroody objected to Barbour's "fascination" with foreign money.

Secondly, Baroody stated his belief that Barbour had allowed the ties between the NPF and the RNC to erase the necessary barriers between the two ostensibly independent entities. Baroody wrote: "I believe that what has happened over many months has undermined my efforts, distorted our purpose, blurred the separation of the RNC and the NPF in such a way as to conceivably jeopardize our 501(c)(4) application, and has occasioned the inexcusable, heavy-handed treatment of volunteers with the NPF." Baroody continued:

I had understood at the outset that this would be an organization separate from the RNC. Though both would be chaired by you, they would operate distinctly. I had this understanding not only because you and others told me so, but because the deliberate decision had been made to organize the NPF under section 501(c)(4) of the Federal Tax Code. That provision requires separate operation. Especially in recent months, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain the fiction of separation. (25)

In his testimony before the Committee, Baroody repeated some of the examples that he had provided in his letter: the overlap of staff, the partisan nature of the conferences, the NPF's increasing indebtedness to the RNC, and the general lack of autonomy that he felt. (26)

I don't know Michael Baroody very well though we have met several times at National Association of Manufacturers meetings and various cocktail gigs in town. I did speak to him this morning just to confirm that the Baroody who managed AEI responsibly in the 1970s and the Baroody who showed such principled leadership during the National Policy Forum fiasco above were in fact in the same family. As noted, they are father and son.

One question that now must be asked given what we know of Haley Barbour's National Policy Forum is:

Why was John Bolton comfortable taking a position in the National Policy Forum engaged in activities that felt corrupt and if that is too strong a word, "inappropriate, unseemly, and imprudent" to Michael Baroody?

I'll have more on the National Policy Forum and questions for Mr. Bolton soon, but I thought that this TownHall.com news needed some attention because it gets right at the point of what is appropriate and inappropriate work and activity for non-profit, public affairs organizations.

Not too long ago, MeetUp.com's Founding CEO Scott Heiferman and Senior Political Advisor Don Means met a room full of policy wonks, think tank senior staff, and some public policy oriented journal chiefs to educate us about how MeetUp.com might be used to mobilize and activate interest around the nation in our policy work and activity. One one hand, this was all a very innocent meeting -- but on the other, a bit naieve.

I asked Scott Heiferman and Don Means if they had thought through for those of us in the room the question of how the IRS might respond if we so explicitly engaged in mobilization efforts of people around the country -- when in fact -- a strict reading of the IRS code would seem to prohibit a good deal of that activity, particularly when it came to lobbying Congress. They just had not thought it through and had no response -- but they said that they were just showing us what technology could allow us to do -- and leave the legal issues to us.

Then they showed us how TownHall.com/Heritage Foundation had become one of their major clients and was paying MeetUp.com a fee to help them build their national outreach/mobilization/fundraising machine. I was somewhat startled as I saw at least the outlines of a decent IRS investigation in what was casually tossed out at the meeting.

Thus, I'm not surprised at all that the Board of the Heritage Foundation took steps to cut ties with TownHall.com. It is the right move given how our laws are written.

But doing the right thing when technology makes it so easy to reach people and motivate them -- or when foreign money is so "easy to raise" as apparently was alleged in the National Policy Forum/Republican National Committee case -- is hard to do in this climate.

Baroody did the right thing. I think Heritage is probably making the right judgment call.

Why didn't John Bolton take the same principled stand?

-- Steve Clemons

My friend, John Aravosis who publishes AmericaBlog, is guest-hosting the Michelangelo Signorile Show and has asked me to share what's going on with the John Bolton/United Nations controversy, the recent bankruptcy legislation, and other fun stuff.

If you are a subscriber, feel free to tune in.

-- Steve Clemons

I have learned from a friend of mine who is an excellent journalist who is generally sympathetic to and hangs with the neocon wing in the country that John Bolton himself reads my blog. Just to be fair in case any one knows who I'm talking about, this journalist strongly disagrees with me on Bolton.

I'm honored actually and hope that John Bolton respects and appreciates my right to raise questions about his candidacy for this very important role in the United Nations.

Assuming he is reading this, I would appreciate any comments that he has for his many enthusiastic fans in the 'Move America Forward' organization.

These folks really, really hate the United Nations. I have never received more hate mail filled with vulgar profanity than I have from people who are advocating for Move America Forward. Some of the email has been very reasoned, sensible discourse -- and we can do what is done in a democracy, agree to disagree and go on and chase the votes. But this stuff has been nasty.

I have dug into Move America Forward and have found the following on a Center for Media & Democracy site:

Russo Marsh and Rogers (RM+R) is a political public relations firm based in Sacramento, California.

In June 2004, RM+R formed a front organization called Move America Forward. Its stated aim was to "to stand up and support the brave men and women of our Armed Forces" [1] (http://www.moveamericaforward.org/). However its chief preoccupation seemed to be a campaign against the showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 (movie 2004) in movie theaters.

RM+R also appears to trade under the name King Media Group. The website of King Media Group shows a nearly identical list of principals to that of RM+R, and it operates from the same postal address.

On its website (http://www.rmrweb.com/), RM+R is unequivocal about its area of expertise: "When it comes to winning elections, few firms can match the success of Russo Marsh + Rogers, Inc... At RM+R we think outside the box and we don't stop until you win."

I was once involved with a think tank, organized as a non-profit, 501c3 organization, and the founder-president was trying to figure out a way to extract his "sweat equity" from the organization. Well, these entities aren't owned by individuals. They are given preferential tax status so that they play an important public good. Such organizations are schools, charities, AIDS hospices, and yes. . .think tanks and membership organizations.

This individual (who will remain unnamed) secured an agent to try and sell control of the non-profit think tank to a major public relations firm. The deal went like this. Effective control of the think tank would move to the PR firm which would position its senior staff and some of its primary corporate stakeholders in decisionmaking roles in the non-profit. The founder-president of the think tank would get a large consulting fee from the PR firm but would no longer be anything more than symbolically involved.

By the time that this got to the second major PR firm for consideration, I got wind of it -- and used what leverage I had to snuff out the effort.

All that said, it is interesting to see a PR firm give birth to and build a non-profit organization like 'Move America Forward' and use the non-profit for political aims and presumably commercial.

In the "comments section" of The Washington Note, Joe Wierzbicki identifies himself as working "with a firm hired by Move America Forward." The fact is that Joe works for the firm that created 'Move America Forward'. At least, that is my understanding of it.

Anyway, optics are important, but so are systems of governance -- and it is in fact, the "Oil for Food" scandal and faulty governance at the United Nations that so many 'Move America Forward' members are railing against (much of it coming by way of email to me). I would just caution those who are engaged in this game to make sure that the 'Move America Forward' organization is run well as a professional, non-profit organization that is not engaged in partisan political activity and serves the broad public good.

PR firms are usually motivated, as they should be, by the private interests of their principals. 'Move America Forward', if indeed created by the PR firm to fight Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11, should not be hiring that firm to do its PR work.

Well, that's my view. Just wondering about that 'conflict of interest' problem.

Anybody have access to Move America Forward's 990 tax forms?

-- Steve Clemons

The Washington Note has just learned that the anti-United Nations, non-profit organization called 'Move America Forward' not only rejects international institutions and international law -- but has a pretty high disregard for U.S. laws as well.

'Move America Forward' has allegedly stolen property belonging to Citizens For Global Solutions by posting on its website a video clip of John Bolton where in about three minutes, Bolton completely guts the very idea and notion of the United Nations.

The video clip is the sole property of Citizens for Global Solutions and comes from an event called the "Global Structures Convocation," held on February 3, 1994 in New York. The video was recently found in the organization's archives.

Citizens for Global Solutions allowed Meet the Press to air the Bolton clip on March 13, 2005. Here is the transcript of that show in which full attribution for the video is given to Citizens for Global Solutions.

Later that day, Citizens for Global Solutions posted the video on its newly launched website, StopBolton.org.

By March 16th, 'Move America Forward' had posted a slightly truncated version of the video on its own website and provided no attribution for the Bolton clip.

The two video clips are identical with the exception of one segment near the end of the Citizens for Global Solutions clip where Bolton comes pretty close to his own version of a "Dean Scream" about the United Nations. Bolton looks like he's about to lose it -- and even that may have been too much for the anti-UN crusaders of 'Move America Forward'.

I have confirmed that 'Move America Forward' neither sought permission from Citizens for Global Solutions to use the video clip nor was given such permission.

Frankly, I think it is fascinating -- from a political and sociological perspective -- that the same bit of John Bolton commentary so effectively riles up both opponents and advocates of John Bolton's U.N. nomination.

Even though Congressional staffers are reporting that in John Bolton's lobbying schtick for his job, he seems to be expressing support for multilateral diplomacy and his belief in the need for a reformed United Nations, those supporters of Move America Forward's "Get the UN out of the US" campaign embrace Bolton as their guy because of what he said on the video clip.

It is also interesting (and troubling) that a group that seems to measure American patriotism by one's zealotry against any type of internationalism, that seems committed to making sure that U.S. law alone is the only global law -- would at the same time engage in what pretty much looks like a violation of U.S. laws and intellectual property theft.

Google was recently sued by the AFP News Agency for $17.5 million for a similar such violation.

Staff at Citizens for Global Solutions tell me that they are considering their options.

Here are the two clips. Watch both -- but be sure not to miss the last section of the Citizens for Global Solutions clip. It's just too good.

Bolton Video Clip from Citizens for Global Solutions available here.

Bolton Video Clip allegedly stolen by 'Move America Forward' available here (midway down the page).

-- Steve Clemons

Richard Holbrooke met John Bolton on Tuesday morning, 15 March, in Washington -- just before a full committee hearing of the House International Relations Committee called by Henry Hyde on United Nations reform. Holbrooke was brilliant in the meetings and articulated an enlighted, tough, realpolitik set of reasons that American interests were undermined if not robustly engaged in the U.N.

I feared that Holbrooke would give in to pressure by Bolton and the whole comraderie thing of people nominated to the U.N. Ambassadorship to come out and say some nice things about Bolton and support his candidacy. After all, Bolton had succeeded in getting the previously reticent Chuck Hagel to put his support of Bolton in bold flashing neon.

Holbrooke made the right call though and kept his powder dry, staying officially neutral on the nomination. But Holbrooke's neutrality is the kind I like.

Taking off for China and other parts of Asia on March 16th, he gave a number of public talks -- one before a group of American and Thai business leaders.

Holbrooke said of Bolton's chances:

Unless he changes his views it is going to be a very tough confirmation.

Holbrooke weighed President Bush's selection of Paul Wolfowitz for the World Bank and Bolton for the United Nations and remarked:

I think he (Paul Wolfowitz) will be World Bank president, but Bolton will have to fight for his job.

The zinger comment from Richard Holbrooke was:

If you read his (John Bolton's) statements it's clear if he had a choice the United Nations would not exist at all.

But then according to the Reuters report on Holbrooke's comments:

Holbrooke said he did not support or oppose Bolton's nomination.

Kudos to Richard Holbrooke for his excellent testimony in Hyde's Committee and for taking the high road on the Bolton nomination and not preempting civil society's efforts to block this shockingly bad choice for this important post. (You can go to this page, click on the March 15th link, and watch the hearing over your computer.)

Americans won't get much of a say on the Wolfowitz appointment to the World Bank -- and I think that unless Europeans go into the streets on the matter -- Wolfowitz is going to get that job. There are no Senate confirmation hearings required, and no chance to grill Wolfowitz.

But Americans, through their elected Senators, have a voice -- and get a choice -- on Bolton.

Wolfowitz and Bolton together, and lets not forget Gonzales at Justice and Negroponte as Intel Czar, create an overdose of highly placed people who have punctured the mystique of what America is in the eyes of our friends in the world -- and those who used to be inspired by our principled global leadership.

Holbrooke is right. We won't have much of a say on Wolfowitz who will most likely get his job -- but Bolton is one straw too many, and on that Americans do have a say.

-- Steve Clemons

Bob Kuttner has a powerful op-ed this morning in the Boston Globe on President Bush's nominations of John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz.

There is one super-zinger paragraph on Bolton that deserves special notice:

Bolton was among the most ferocious in promoting the fake story that Iraq had sought to buy nuclear material in Niger, long after intelligence agencies had discredited it, and he sought to mislead allies on a false report that North Korea has supplied nuclear materials to Libya. Bolton will also face questions for his role a decade ago in a foreign money-laundering scheme when he headed a think tank that lost its tax status as a Republican Party front.

Kuttner hits three important points on Bolton that move beyond question about Bolton's views of the UN and other multilateral institutions. Kuttner asks about Bolton's role pushing the Niger story inside the State Department -- and EVERYONE I speak to tells me to dig further into this. I have been told -- but have no hard evidence -- that there was an internal investigation at State specifically focused on Bolton's role in the UN/Niger story.

Frankly, I can't tell whether the Waxman letter we have previously discussed and which mentions the report of an Inspector General is the same investigation of Bolton or not. Any intel on that from readers would be helpful. What I have heard from several insiders, however, is that State Department's Intelligence and Research Division (INR) was furious with Bolton's efforts to undermine its take on the Niger/Uranium matter inside the State Department.

Secondly, Kuttner raises something I have seen no one yet mention in the press. Recently, news came to light that America had lied to its allies in Asia about North Korean nuclear materials exports. In order to put pressure on our allies in the Six-Party Talks, American authorities told allies that North Korea had exported nuclear materials to Libya when in fact North Korea had exported these materials to Pakistan, an American ally.

North Korea's exports to Pakistan have been a known matter -- but the Libya connection was entirely new and would have shown that North Korea was helping to create yet another rogue nuclear state.

Lying to allies, particularly Japan and South Korea, is reprehensible -- as it seriously undermines trust when needed in future serious contingencies.

Some are privately asking whether Bolton and his office had any role in this deception -- and I do not know whether they did or not. It seems to me that other branches of America's intelligence operations and the National Security Council could have managed this duplicitous fiasco without Bolton -- but the question must and should be asked.

To be responsible though, I think Bolton critics should realize that this is new ground in the Bolton campaign -- and more evidence and information is needed before jumping to conclusions.

Thirdly, Kuttner hits Bolton on his role in a 501c3 non-profit think tank that apparently went way over the line when it came to robust partisan activities and foreign funding that some have alleged found its way into federal elections.

This to me sounds like an investigation that Russell Feingold's staff really ought to get into.

Kuttner has lots to say on Wolfowitz too -- but just wanted to note that the questions about Bolton are gaining ground and that a nomination that many thought would be semi-controversial but go through easily is in "real play" now.

More to do.

-- Steve Clemons

Move America Forward, a right-wing non-profit organization which both supports John Bolton's nomination and wants the United Nations removed from U.S. soil miraculously moved their Bolton support numbers on an online poll from 216 votes to 471 votes overnight.

The 216 votes had remained static for days -- but erupted after our efforts last night

Those who wanted to log their opposition to Bolton moved the paltry single vote opposing Bolton yesterday to 63 votes, which I think makes an important point about alternative views.

Congrats to both teams. Now back to beating Bolton with real players.

-- Steve Clemons

I am sitting here trying to get a few friends to oppose Bolton on the Move America Forward website -- and have posted my objectives on a couple of websites.

Well, the other side is on to us. I see their numbers literally surging after not moving for more than two days. There were just 216 votes to 1 yesterday and all day today -- until I made it 2 against.

Now, someone is driving their numbers up very fast. They are going up a few votes every minute -- so a campaign has either just begun to block us -- or Move America Forward's webmaster is ticking the numbers up artificially.

Their side has gone from 216 votes to 254 votes in ten minutes.

They can't stand opposition. And as we know, they can't stand the United Nations. That's why they want John Bolton.

-- Steve Clemons

I just joined Move America Forward's website. One has to register to be able to vote on the organization's online poll regarding Bolton's nomination as Ambassador to the U.N.

The question posed is:

Do you support President Bush's choice of John Bolton to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations?

When I saw this yesterday, I noted that only one person had voted against Bolton -- and 216 in favor. Sounds like the old Soviet Union to me. . .so, I joined up on the web, under my own name. And I voted against Bolton bring the online count to 2 nays.

Hurrah for democracy!

On its Frequently Asked Questions page, Move America Forward offers:

Why do I need to register with this website to vote in MAF polls?

Unfortunately there are people out there who feel threatened by Move America Forward's grassroots activism and our efforts to bring a message to America. Many of those people would be willing to vote repeatedly in our polls in an effort to damage our ability to determine what issues are most important to Move America Forward members.

Therefore we have implemented a polling system that reflects a "one member, one vote" strategy. All members are allowed to vote, but they must be logged in to the website to vote, and they may only vote once on any individual poll.

We understand that there are people out there who may be upset that we do not want them to vote more than once in our polls, but in America the goal is to make everyone's vote count.

Well, there are plenty of online polls that do not permit repeat voting, but I'll take Move America Forward at their word that they just want every vote to count. I made my vote count today -- on their poll -- against Bolton.

Will you?

-- Steve Clemons

Mark Goldberg posted this today:

Hopefully, Feingold won't wait until the confirmation hearing to make up his mind, for Bolton is likely to undergo another "confirmation conversion" (as John Kerry labeled Bolton's 2001 testimony), whereby Bolton repudiates incendiary comments which he previously hurled at various American presidents, U.S. policies, foreign leaders, and international institutions.

In one example of this phenomenon, Kerry took Bolton to task for characterizing the Agreed Framework for North Korea as "egregiously wrong," and arguing in an op-ed that one aspect of that policy amounted to "appeasement." As Kerry pointed out, this position would have put him at odds with his bosses, President George W. Bush and Colin Powell, who at the time supported the Agreed Framework.

Not about to be placed in such an awkward spot, Bolton replied:

The secretary and the president have said that the United States supports the agreed framework, and I will adhere to that policy. I understand what intellectual integrity is. I understand what the chain of command is. I understand what loyalty is. And I don't think those three things are at all necessarily inconsistent.

Of course, Bolton doesn't have anything near a blank slate when it comes to his views on the utility of the United Nations or even the existence of international law. One hopes that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will not let him escape from his past as he assures the committee of his intentions to reform the UN. He's no UN reformer. But as the U.S. ambassador there he'll surely be a fifth column.

I guess what Bolton is saying is that after years of opposing the notion of the idea of the United Nations, of arguing that America ought to be the only power in the Security Council, and that no one would notice if ten stories were taken out of the UN Secretariat building -- that in fact he'll be a constructive player in the U.N. reform effort.

Why hold confirmation hearings at all if past deeds and comments made little difference? Luckily, they do make a difference.

There is new muscle that has come on board to support the Bolton nomination, and these are people who perceive John Bolton to be their deliverer of a "United Nations-Free America."

Move America Forward has started an email and letter campaign to support Bolton -- but on the same site they have a logo and campaign to "Get the UN Out of the US"

I think that Bolton may not admit much affection for this anti-UN crowd, but their support for him is based on his past commentary and behavior. Our resistance to Bolton is based on the same exact material (w/the exception of the recent ethics stuff of course, which really should tip the scale our way).

If President Bush wants to send a credible UN-skeptic who nonetheless is going to be a partner in reforming a new United Nations, then the President's choice should actually anger the anti-UN, Move America Forward crowd -- not make them happy.

That is the litmus test of the right Ambassador to send.

-- Steve Clemons

I have found some more on John Bolton's think tank management controversy. Think tanks are usually organized as 501c3 organizations -- organized for the public good but increasingly they are becoming money laundering operations for lobbyists or corporate consulting shops. It seems that John Bolton helped the National Policy Forum move well down this path.

The National Policy Forum of which John Bolton was President was stripped of its non-profit 501c3 status. Foreign money, mega-conference fundraisers, inappropriate political activity, possibly laundering foreign funds into political activities. John Bolton was an architect of this insidious mess.

Many conservatives have genuine concerns about the management of the United Nation's after the "Oil-for-Food" scandal, even though it's clear that the U.S. delegation to the U.N. knew what was going on.

But Bolton is a guy whose own past management experience and the blurring of legal lines in his own organization sounds a lot like what Bernie Ebbers would have looked for in his team at WorldCom or Ken Lay at Enron.

Here is an excerpt of a much longer brief worth reading:

A decade later Bolton was again entangled in money laundering schemes to support Republican candidates, but this time it involved money channeled from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the Republican Party by way of a "think tank" linked to the Republican National Committee (RNC).

In 1995-96 Bolton served as president of the National Policy Forum (NPF), which, according to a congressional investigation, functioned as an intermediary organization to funnel foreign and corporate money to Republicans.

The NPF had been established in 1993 in anticipation of the 1994 general election. Founded by the RNC's chairman Haley Barbour a few months after he assumed the party's chairmanship, the forum was organized as a nonprofit, tax-exempt education institute, although the IRS later ruled that NPF was a subsidiary of the RNC and not entitled to its requested tax-exempt status.

A congressional investigation into foreign money and influence in the 1996 presidential campaign brought to light the role of the NPF, which, according to a minority report of the congressional committee, channeled $800,00 in foreign money into the 1996 election cycle after having also used the same mechanisms to fund congressional races around the country in 1994.

When John Bolton became NPF president in 1995, the forum began organizing "megaconferences" as a hook to raise money for the party. These conferences brought together Republican members of congress, lobbyists, and corporate executives to discuss matters that were frequently the object of pending legislation. An NPF memo laid out the funding strategy: "NPF will continue to recruit new donors through conference sponsorships. ... In order for the conferences to take place, they must pay for themselves or turn a profit. Industry and association leaders will be recruited to participate and sponsor those forums, starting at $25,000."

Today, David Brooks has a stunningly good critique on the corruption of the conservative establishment titled "Masters of Sleaze." Brooks does not mention Bolton, Barbour and the National Policy Forum, but these could easily be other chapters in a David Brooks book on the subject.

Brooks writes:

Back in 1995, when Republicans took over Congress, a new cadre of daring and original thinkers arose. These bold innovators had a key insight: that you no longer had to choose between being an activist and a lobbyist. You could be both. You could harness the power of K Street to promote the goals of Goldwater, Reagan and Gingrich. And best of all, you could get rich while doing it!

Before long, ringleader Grover Norquist and his buddies were signing lobbying deals with the Seychelles and the Northern Mariana Islands and talking up their interests at weekly conservative strategy sessions - what could be more vital to the future of freedom than the commercial interests of these two fine locales?

Before long, folks like Norquist and Abramoff were talking up the virtues of international sons of liberty like Angola's Jonas Savimbi and Congo's dictator Mobutu Sese Seko - all while receiving compensation from these upstanding gentlemen, according to The Legal Times. Only a reactionary could have been so discomfited by Savimbi's little cannibalism problem as to think this was not a daring contribution to the cause of Reaganism.

Brooks best punch at the conservative establishment that has embraced sleaze and right-wingism:

As time went by, the spectacular devolution of morals accelerated. Many of the young innovators were behaving like people who, having read Barry Goldwater's "Conscience of a Conservative," embraced the conservative part while discarding the conscience part.

I think Bolton really is in trouble. I'm sending a note to David Brooks today to share this column with him but also to let him know that standing up for better moral performance of our political leadership -- on the right and the left -- is patriotic and important.

John Bolton cut his teeth in the world of big money intrigue that David Brooks describes -- and that makes him the wrong guy to pursue American interests at the United Nations at this point in the UN's history.

-- Steve Clemons

I have been scrambling on an important article spinning off of John Bolton's time at the American Enterprise Institute, but I wanted to note two excellent articles by the American Prospect's Michael Tomasky.

They launch an entirely new round of questions about Bolton, his ethical make-up, and his appropriateness to serve as America's Ambassador to the United Nations. They divulge some traces of financial sleaze in the non-profit world, not the kind of sleaze that Bolton has criticized in the U.N. but sleaze that he himself may have managed.

Tomasky's first article gets right into the battle that has erupted on Bolton's nomination and is quite friendly to The Washington Note. I think that this Tomasky article, which appeared this morning on the web will also appear as the lead editorial in the print edition of the American Prospect (Vol. 16, No. 4).

Taking stock of who on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will support and oppose Bolton, Tomasky quickly senses the key role Russ Feingold plays and how this vote could help or undermine his presidential aspirations. He writes:

Among committee Democrats, the most likely defection on paper looked to be Florida's Bill Nelson, also facing his (red) state's voters in 2006. But sources suggest that suspicious eyes are casting their glance far more toward Russ Feingold. The Wisconsin Democrat wants to seek the presidency. If anti-Bolton forces manage to wring a "no" vote out of Chafee, a "yea" from Feingold would be decisive and would send the nomination to the floor. That's not a good way to start a presidential candidacy.

But then Tomasky gets beyond the regurgitation of Bolton's well-known (now) Helmsian, anti-UN commentary and raises important questions about Bolton's working past and his ethical profile.

These grafs have some new ammunition:

Meanwhile, if Lugar really wants to express his reservations in a measurable way, he might call a certain Ambrous Tung Young to testify at Bolton's hearings. Young is a Hong Kong businessman and major GOP benefactor who donated handsomely to something called the National Policy Forum (NPF), which was set up as a nonprofit educational institute by former GOP Chair Haley Barbour in advance of the 1994 congressional elections. By 1996, the NPF had quit paying a bank loan that Young had guaranteed. According to The Washington Post, this didn't stop the NPF's president -- one John Bolton -- from authorizing the bank that held the note to start taking its payments directly from Young. Eventually, the GOP reimbursed Young for half of what he had lost, but it would be interesting to try to learn his candid views on the matter today.

I will have more to say about Bolton's "Asian Money" problems tomorrow -- but I must share a big chunk of Tomasky's next article that appeared late today.

Did Bolton play any role in helping to conceal a foreign campaign contribution channeled to the Republican National Committee that may have helped the RNC prevail in the 1994 congressional elections?

Here's the story. In the run-up to the 1994 elections, Haley Barbour formed an outfit called the National Policy Forum (NPF), a nonprofit policy and research institute. Barbour was the head of the RNC at the time, and he took the reins of the NPF as well.

As was widely reported at the time, the NPF was partially endowed via a loan Barbour solicited with the help of a Hong Kong businessman and Taiwanese citizen named Ambrous Tung Young. The value of the loan, from a lending institution to the NPF, was $2.1 million; Young put up the collateral in the form of certificates of deposit.

The NPF had owed the RNC $1.6 million; so, once the NPF had secured its loan, it paid back the RNC the $1.6 million it owed. This sounds all well and good -- except for the fact that the NPF repaid the loan in October 1994, which, handily enough, gave the Republican Party that much more money to spend on its congressional candidates in elections just a couple of weeks away. Republicans gained 54 seats in the House of Representatives that election, and while no one's arguing that they made those gains only because of this late cash infusion, it clearly couldn't have hurt. There were additional allegations that the NPF was engaging in activities that were more directly political than the group's charter would have allowed.

The story gets dirtier -- and brings us to what is, for current purposes, the punch line. By 1996, the NPF had defaulted on the loan. In April of that year, the NPF sought to extend the loan's maturity date and revise its terms. That having apparently failed, the NPF took a far more dramatic step in May, according to a June 8, 1997, article by Dan Morgan in The Washington Post. The NPF's then-new president authorized the holder of the note, Signet Bank, to start taking its payments directly out of the certificates of deposit put up by Young as collateral -- without Young's knowledge, by all accounts.

That NPF president? John Bolton.

The tale gets seedier, and more complicated -- but I agree with Michael Tomasky that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee ought to get at every nano-detail of Bolton's role in this.

Given the controversy and outrage about the U.N. Oil-For-Food Scandal in this country, particularly in Republican circles, it seems that sending anyone into the UN reform arena who doesn't have stunning credentials when it comes to managing the public's interest vigorously when finances and non-profit, 501c3 organizations meet would be an enormous mistake.

This story is out now -- and John Bolton's views about the U.N. are now just part of the game.

Now it's also a question of governance, potential corruption, possible malfeasance.

Is this the kind of character that Russell Feingold would sign off on? I don't think so. Not given Feingold's heroic efforts on campaign finance reform. (Someone please send today's post to Senator McCain's staff as well).

Bolton's nomination is not just about undermining the United Nations, or setting up a guy to compete with Condi Rice's power base, which Dick Cheney wants. It is worse than that.

Excuse my slighlty nationalist tilt to this -- but in my view, this appointment 'should be' about demonstrating a very high bar of American ethics and norms in a multilateral setting and cajoling and inspiring other nations to work themselves to standards as high.

The only problem is we have to send someone to the United Nations that is of irreproachable character. And that is just not the case with John R. Bolton.

-- Steve Clemons

Max Blumenthal took this picture in the Gila National Forest, near Silver City, New Mexico. Thanks to Max for letting me post this.

Silver City is a cool town. Jeff Bingaman was born and raised there. And the Republican Senator and former astronaut Harrison Schmitt whom Bingman beat is also a Silver City native. But Billy the Kid, not necessarily a rabid isolationist, but (if alive today) still a guy who might like John Bolton more than I, spent many years in Silver City.

Fortunately, neither of New Mexico's Senators -- Jeff Bingaman and Pete Domenici (R-NM) -- have any enthusiasm for John Bolton or his "America Alone" supporters.

-- Steve Clemons

Joshua Micah Marshall and Millet Israeli are getting married today in the Hamptons -- and that is where I'm headed this afternoon.

This blog wouldn't exist without Josh's stong nudging, and he is one of the few people I completely trust. Congratulations to Josh, Millet, and their puppy Simon for punctuating their togetherness today. I think it's going to be an amazing, sentimental afternoon for them (and me).

I have just run around Manhattan's Central Park this chilly morning and thought about John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz the entire way. I also thought about Rob Portman who has just been nominated by President Bush to be U.S. Trade Representative and think that this was an extremely "inspired" selection by Bush. I'll be writing more on Portman later -- but his selection contrasts dramatically with Bush's picks for the UN and World Bank.

I got up to the Metropolitan Museum and saw the statue near there of Alexander Hamilton, which was erected by his grandchildren. I couldn't help but think that Hamilton would be very disappointed in America's state of affairs -- stuck in a military morass in Iraq, economic portfolio in trouble, stress on credit (as evidenced in the diminishing dollar) building.

George Bush recently read Ron Chernow's brilliant biography on Hamilton and reported how much he admired Hamilton and liked the book -- but I don't think Bush has abided by any of Hamilton's key lessons.

More later. My mind is focused on the John Bolton nomination -- but am going to push the pause button in a bit to focus on Josh & Millet's nuptials.

-- Steve Clemons

Wolfowitz calls Bono.

Nixon made small talk with Elvis -- but it didn't make it right.

-- Steve Clemons

Michael Lind doesn't mince words in his comments on Paul Wolfowitz moving to head the World Bank. He notes that Wolfowitz has been "astonishingly wrong about U.S. foreign policy for 30 years.

Here is the juicy beginning, but the whole piece is available at Salon:

The nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to be president of the World Bank, following his commission of a long and costly series of blunders as deputy secretary of defense in George W. Bush's first term, comes as no surprise to those familiar with his career. Wolfowitz is the Mr. Magoo of American foreign policy. Like the myopic cartoon character, Wolfowitz stumbles onward blindly and serenely, leaving wreckage and confusion behind.

Critics are wrong to portray Wolfowitz as a malevolent genius. In fact, he's friendly, soft-spoken, well meaning and thoughtful. He would be the model of a scholar and a statesman but for one fact: He is completely inept. His three-decade career in U.S. foreign policy can be summed up by the term that President Bush coined to describe the war in Iraq that Wolfowitz promoted and helped to oversee: a "catastrophic success."

Even the greatest statesman makes some mistakes. But Wolfowitz is perfectly incompetent. He is the Mozart of ineptitude, the Einstein of incapacity. To be sure, he has his virtues, the foremost of which is consistency. He has been consistently wrong about foreign policy for 30 years.

There is a lot cooking on the Bolton nomination, including some new material on him (we think). I will be back with pieces of it shortly.

Stay tuned.

-- Steve Clemons

This just from Senator Barack Obama's office on subject of Wolfowitz and Bolton nominations:

While there are some concerns about Wolfowitz, I am much more concerned about Bolton and the UN, which is a direct statement on how we're going to interact with the international community.

This is the guy who said that if you lop off 10 floors of UN building in New York, it wouldn't make a difference. Which, you know, is not the best way to make friends and influence people. [Sen. Obama, March 17, 2005]

Senator Obama has a key vote on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Now, more work to do. . .

-- Steve Clemons

Two people I respect -- Martin Walker and Sebastian Mallaby -- are divided on George Bush's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to run the World Bank.

Martin Walker has my vote this round.

He writes:

Having nominated John Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations and now Paul Wolfowitz to the World Bank, it can only be a matter of time before President Bush proposes Dick Cheney to be the next pope.

Somebody in the White House is either having a lot of private fun with these appointments or thinks it makes sense to test to the limits the efforts being made by a lot of America's allies to forget the troubles of the last four years and start acting like friends again.

"They can't be serious. Can they?" was the reaction of one Cabinet-ranking European minister when he heard the news Wednesday.

Paul Wolfowitz has become one of the best-known No. 2s in history. He is deputy secretary of Defense, and not a member of the Cabinet, and while he is very smart, there were doubtless all sorts of good reasons why President Bush did not give him a more senior job in the first term.

Read the entire clip -- but he ends on an important replay of history in which Vietnam-tainted Robert McNamara was handed the World Bank as his escape hatch from Johnson's administration.

But in this case, Wolfowitz doesn't see the World Bank so much as an escape hatch but rather as a new opportunity to bring the world's leading multilateral institutions sharply to America's heel.

Walker writes:

And finally there are the World Bank's main clients, the developing countries, who may not have much of a say, but they know when a man is controversial. Above all, they remember the last time the Americans sent a man from the Pentagon to run the World Bank.

It was Robert McNamara, who had just been running the Vietnam War, which was probably even more unpopular internationally than the Iraq war. And what the developing countries will note is the demotion. McNamara was the Secretary of Defense; now they are being fobbed off with his deputy.

But on the other hand, World Bank-watcher Sebastian Mallaby who has been one of the leading commentators on what the criteria should be for the World Bank's next chief has endorsed Wolfowitz.

I just don't see how Paul Wolfowitz fulfills the prerequisites for the job, previously articulated by Mallaby. But, Sebastian is a very smart guy and knows Wolfowitz will probably get the job and that this is the wrong time (for Sebastian) to knock him around.

I hope that Sebastian is taking a page out of Bob Woodward's book -- and playing nice now as Woodward did in Bush at War -- and then ready to lay it all out as Woodward did in the Bush administration-unfriendly Plan of Attack.

So, my bet is that Mallaby will keep his powder dry for the moment and then expose Wolfowitz when he places the aggrandizement of American power over the important mission of getting the developing-nation problem right.

Ironically, the latter mission, and the more noble one, would help assure sustainable American prominence and influence for generations -- while the former more crude imposition of power that Wolfowitz seems good at is more like to wreck and diminish America's ability to drive global affairs.

-- Steve Clemons

Wolfowitz tapped to head World Bank
Pentagon official to replace James Wolfensohn
The Associated Press
Updated: 9:35 a.m. ET March 16, 2005

The administration began notifying other countries that Wolfowitz was the U.S. candidate to replace replace World Bank President James Wolfensohn. He is stepping down as head of the 184-nation development bank on June 1 at the end of his second five-year term.

What an Orwellian nightmare. Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank. John Bolton at the United Nations.

President Bush, why did you go to Europe again?

I have a message for many of the progressive and centrist voices who were advising John Kerry and providing general foreign policy punditry before the election. Many of you said that neocons were going down -- that Iraq had been a disaster -- that America was at its limits and everyone could see that.

You might recall that I said that there was no empirical evidence that neocons had suffered at all from the consequences of their role in making foreign policy and that I (and a few others) expected the neoconservative grip on the helm of American foreign policy to remain tight and formidable.

You scoffed. This is not an "I told you so" moment -- but I do believe that progressives and centrists need to realize that this is not just a game where the other side gets to dominate for a while -- and our team will get to call the shots in a couple of years.

There is something radically different about this time. In political science jargon, this is a period of major, dramatic discontinuity.

Stop underestimating the impact of these people and what is going on.

That is what Senator Feingold, Senator Chafee, Senator Lugar, Senator Hagel and others need to weigh.

Do they want to keep empowering this neoconservative machine?

-- Steve Clemons

P.S. Der Tagesspiegel Washington Bureau Chief Malte Lehming just wrote to me, "Maybe Bill Kristol should be nominated as successor to Kofi Annan, or Richard Perle. And James Woolsey should get UNICEF."

Wake me up when it's over.

-- Steve Clemons

Condoleeza Rice is off to India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Japan, and South Korea this week reminding Asia that we remember where the place is. America has been AWOL in the region for some time, but we are trying to quickly reestablish our presence with one of Condi's power visits.

However, the broader issue of America's global attention deficit disorder and disengagement from Asia, or from the United Nations as Richard Holbrooke discussed yesterday, allows others to fill the void. If we aren't constructively engaged in Asia, China will fill the vaccuum; and in the U.N., other nations will hijack commissions there as Libya and Cuba recently did on the Human Rights Commission.

Holbrooke's comments yesterday before Henry Hyde's House International Relations Committee were the most compelling of the day -- and should be reminders of why it is so important that Republicans withdraw Bolton as nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the UN and suggest a more credible and serious choice.

Reported on Holbrooke:

Richard Holbrooke, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1999 to 2001, says the United Nations faces a future in which it will become progressively weaker without U.S. support.

He suggests a stronger U.S. role in supporting and reforming the United Nations would help ensure the human rights commission acts more aggressively, while not falling under the control of rights violators.

"A weaker U.N. is one where the human rights commission is dominated by such terrible violators as Cuba and Libya," he said. "In other words, what is wrong with the U.N. or the human rights commission, is not the core ideas that it stands for but the instances where due to lack of American engagement and leadership the institution was hijacked by states whose practices are anathema to all the U.N. stands for."

-- Steve Clemons

Check out this well-done UPI piece that queries Senator Chuck Hagel about the "Waxman Brief" on John Bolton.

Senator Hagel's public comments supporting Bolton's nomination occurred before broad public awareness of the contents of a letter by Rep. Henry Waxman to Rep. Christopher Shays. In this letter, Waxman alleges Bolton played in promulgating the Niger-Uranium story in State Department reports, despite rejection of that evidence by CIA and State Department intelligence analysts.

Waxman then argues that Bolton's people tried to conceal Bolton's role and that State Department staff lied to Congress regarding Bolton's involvement.

To his credit, Senator Hagel gave a less catchy but still quite good variant of the "John Maynard Keynes line." Keynes once said:

When confronted with new information, I reassess and modify my position. What, sir, do you do when confronted with new information?

Bourge reports this on Hagel:

When asked by UPI about his support of Bolton's nomination in the light of the Niger uranium accusations, Hagel said Tuesday that such issues are the reason that nomination hearings are held and that it and other problems committee members may have with the nominee should be addressed before senators look at Bolton's entire record.

"Let him respond to that and clarify those," said Hagel. "You vote on the full record, on moving forward, on all the dynamics."

The Washington Note is just fine with Hagel's response.

TWN will continue to work with other researcher to confront the Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the full Senate with new material so that they can adjust accordingly.

-- Steve Clemons

Wouldn't it be useful if outrageous political appointments could be "offset" by compulsory adjustments elsewhere in the administration?

In other words, if the Bush administration wanted to invest a lot in John Bolton going to the United Nations as America's Ambassador, then a corresponding offset of equal weight elsewhere in America's foreign policy portfolio would be required. Pumping up Millennium Challenge funds by another $5 billion or actually giving civil servants and real diplomats in the State Department the funding and capacity to do their jobs -- taking it from the Defense Department for example -- might work.

But the Bush administration is just trying to force-feed John Bolton down the American throat without any other credible investments in global diplomacy, aid, or competency building on the order of magnitude of this destructive appointment.

Mark Schmitt highlights a truly important provision that Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) are pushing that gets Congress back to requiring offsets in spending bills if new projects or efforts that require new spending are proposed.

This is the kind of fiscal conservatism that the Republican Party used to be about -- and by which most Americans want to see their legislators abide.

Schmitt notes that Feingold and Chafee are also the two key senators in the upcoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearings (April 7th) on John Bolton's UN nomination.

I think Americans should applaud Feingold and Chafee's leadership on PAYGO and should also ask for their leadership on Bolton -- where unfortunately we don't have the ability to demand offsets for his costly position in our American diplomatic portfolio.

-- Steve Clemons

Media Matters sets the record straight with many pro-Bolton, America Alone Alliance members groping around for Democrats to compare John Bolton to favorably.

Compare, as the Media Matters piece does, Bolton's comment:

"It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so -- because, over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are [sic] those who want to constrict the United States."

with Daniel Patrick Moynihan's position:

"A great many people seem to think of (international) law as a kind of self-imposed restraint on America's ability to act decisively or with force in world affairs. This misstates what law is, and obscures the fact that international law can actually enhance the national security of the United States. ... In the realm of law, the United States seems almost to have forgotten our once deep and abiding commitment to the rules of international conduct."

I think Moynihan's ghost may be a bit ticked off at those Bolton-ites mischaracterizing his views.

(There is a list of people and editors Moynihan is probably angry at in the Media Matters article -- I agree with the list except for Jacob Heilbrunn, whose very high batting average on foreign policy debates is still, despite this slip, probably good enough for Moynihan).

-- Steve Clemons

Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) practically accuses John Bolton of undermining American national security by failing to aggressively help secure the elimination in Russia of "about 70 tons of weapons-grade plutonium."

This is the most overt comment yet from a Republican who has problems with John Bolton's competence and appropriateness as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

I am pleased to say that Pete Domenici ranks highly in our evolving Leadership League roster.

Here's the key excerpt from the Albuquerque Journal article:

Domenici, in an interview last week, said he and U.N. ambassador-designate John Bolton have clashed over Bolton's role in helping the U.S. and Russia secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union.

"Mr. John Bolton, who has been assigned to negotiate this, has a very heavy responsibility," Domenici said. "I hate to say that I am not sure to this point that he's up to it."

If you feel up to it, call Pete Domenici's office and leave a message for the Senator -- or his Chief of Staff, Steve Bell -- and thank him for the seriousness and leadership he is bringing to this debate about John Bolton.

(202) 224-6621. Be nice -- and give them credit.

-- Steve Clemons

Al Gonzales had La Raza.

But I've been scratching my head wondering who would be pushing Bolton so hard -- other than, of course, Dick Cheney, and many other Jesse Helms staffers who want to help the former Senator's ghost continue to harrass the United Nations as he did in office.

The fact is that there is no constituency of consequence pushing Bolton. It's a cynical appointment. Condi Rice did not want him at all but settled on letting him on State's payroll if he worked and resided a three hour Amtrak ride away.

His champion besides Cheney appears to be Henry Hyde, who is apparently retiring.

This from a Chicago Sun-Times piece today:

Hyde is making United Nations reform and accountability a priority this year and had a behind-the-scenes role in promoting John Bolton to become the new U.N. ambassador, appointed by President Bush last week.

Today, Hyde presides over a full committee hearing on the challenges of reforming the United Nations. The witness panel features three former U.N. ambassadors: Madeleine Albright, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Richard Holbrooke as well as Richard Williamson, who returned to his Chicago law practice after serving as the U.S. alternative representative to the United Nations for special political affairs.

Note to Senator Chafee: if there is no constituency supporting Bolton, there is less to fear. As a Republican in a blue state, you have to be selective when you stand with the President and when you vote against him. Of course, principles should guide all of your decisions -- but you and we know that some votes matter more than others.

Bolton's nomination seems casual and pursued by a few people you can afford to frustrate.

Jesse Helms' ghost may have a problem if you oppose Bolton -- so might the retiring Henry Hyde. Dick Cheney is a more serious problem -- but frankly, i think your reelection would be assured if you could get Cheney to yell some cuss word at you on the floor of the Senate -- but it need not go that far.

Democrats killed Bill Clinton's requested "Fast Track" trade legislation not because they really hated trade but because it was a vote that not that many cared about -- and which could be used to push back the President after the damage done to the Democratic Party from welfare reform.

Voting against John Bolton's nomination is that same sort of vote -- one where a Senator can stand by principles of grand GOP style committed to pursuing American interests via global leadership -- and help President Bush secure a better nominee.

This is a battle that the Bush team can afford to lose because there is NO CONSTITUENCY BEHIND BOLTON.

More later. . .

-- Steve Clemons

Bolton pushed the Niger-Uranium story over the objections of and rejection by State & CIA analysts.

He covered his tracks with "sensitive but classified" secrecy designations to block your and my access to his role.

And Senator Hagel, John Bolton's staff lied to Congress about this.

Are you going to ask him if he is going to correct this tendency too?

Part I
On September 25, 2003, the State Department responded with a definitive denial: "Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, John R. Bolton, did not play a role in the creation of this document."

Part II
Mr. Boucher specifically asked Mr. Bolton "for help developing a response to Iraq's Dec 7 Declaration to the United Nations Security Council that could be used with the press. According to the chronology, which is phrased in the present tense, Mr. Bolton "agrees and tasks the Bureau of Nonproliferation," a subordinate office that reports directly to Mr. Bolton, to conduct the work.

Part III
the Bureau of Nonproliferation "sends email with the fact sheet, 'Fact Sheet Iraq Declaration.doc.'" to Mr. Bolton's office (emphasis in original). A second e-mail was sent a few minutes later, and a third e-mail was sent about an hour after that. According to the chronology, each version "still includes Niger reference." Although Mr. Bolton may not have personally drafted the document, the chronology appears to indicate that he ordered its creation and received updates on its development.

Part IV
The Inspector General's chronology was marked "sensitive but unclassified." In addition, the letter transmitting the chronology stated that it "contains sensitive information, which may be protected from public release under the Freedom of Information Act" and requested that no "public release of this information" be made.

-- Steve Clemons

Here is an Eli Lake article that ran in the New York Sun, which favors Bolton's confirmation. It's a good, fair piece and lays out a reasonable picture of what is going on.

It's interesting that though Hagel defected yesterday from the Leadership League to join the America Alone Alliance, the New York Sun's headline gives the "anti-Bolton campaign" credit for "gaining ground."

We have much more to do before I'd give us that credit.

-- Steve Clemons

John Danforth served about 8 months as America's Ambassador to the United Nations -- and I have just had information shared with me from someone close to him that he saw coming down the pike from Bush Central Command a combination of total disdain for the United Nations and recklessness about it that made his role practically impossible.

Danforth is exactly the type of leading national figure whom American citizens should have representing them at the U.N. -- particularly during the coming negotiations on reform.

Wheras John Bolton typifies the worst of the America Alone Alliance, Danforth represents the best of the Leadership League.

Senators Lugar, Hagel, Chafee, and others -- Bolton may sound contrite when he meets with you, promise a radically different style, offer explanations on some of his past misstatements -- BUT HE IS NO JACK DANFORTH.

And that is the type of person we should be trying to hire.

-- Steve Clemons

I just received this March 1, 2005 letter written by House Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman to Representative Christopher Shays who chairs the Government Reform Committee's Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Security.

Waxman is basically blowing the whistle on the administration's extravagant use of "sensitive but unclassified" designations on official acts to block public access to and transparency of government policymaking.

On pages 5-7, Waxman reveals that John Bolton promulgated the Niger-Uranium fiction at the State Department despite rejection of this claim by State Department and CIA intelligence analysts.

Waxman then argues that not only did Bolton and his people then try and conceal Bolton's role in pushing the Niger-Uranium agenda by marking the material "sensitive but unclassified" and blocking it in case of a Freedom of Information Act request, the State Department actually LIED TO CONGRESS about John Bolton's role.

I think Senator Hagel might want to reconsider his support for the Bolton nomination now. . .

Here is the excerpt from the Waxman letter:

Concealment of a State Department Official's Role in the Niger Uranium Claim

The Inspector General's chronology was marked "sensitive but unclassified." In addition, the letter transmitting the chronology stated that it "contains sensitive information, which may be protected from public release under the Freedom of Information Act" and requested that no "public release of this information" be made. (15) In fact, however, the chronology consisted of nothing more than a factual recitation of information on meetings, e-mails, and documents.

This is not a constructive reformer out to promote American interests in a dignified manner in the world's most significant multilateral institution.

There are many administration jobs that John Bolton may be completely appropriate for -- but the one that he has been nominated for is not on that list.

Senator Hagel -- don't you see that?

-- Steve Clemons

Chuck Hagel has just announced that he intends to vote to confirm John Bolton's nomination as Ambassador to the United Nations.

We regret to add Senator Hagel to the "America Alone Alliance" but must.

Whereas Reuters reports:

Hagel of Nebraska was the only Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who had declined to say whether he would back Bolton, currently under secretary of state for arms control. His support removes a possible obstacle to Bolton's nomination advancing to the full Senate.

I don't believe this is accurate. While Lincoln Chafee's comments about Bolton cannot be classified as negative, there still exists enough wiggle room in what he said to vote against Bolton.

It will be an uphill battle to turn Chafee, but there is material soon to re-emerge on John Bolton that may complicate his campaign.

Bolton has been lobbying hard -- but there is still some time to highlight key problems in Bolton's ascension to this job.

Bolton is reportedly meeting Richard Holbrooke on Wednesday. Those who know Holbrooke ought to share their own views on Bolton's nomination as soon as the meeting is over.

The two key senators in this battle are now Russell Feingold who tends to tip towards giving the President the appointees he wants -- and Lincoln Chafee who is still straddling both sides of this debate.

-- Steve Clemons

Citizens for Global Solutions has just launched StopBolton.org.

There's streaming video of Bolton's 1994 comments on the U.N. on the front page. Check it out.

-- Steve Clemons

Yes, I know. Rice said that John Bolton was her "first choice" as the nominee for American Ambassador to the U.N.

Appearances are sooo important in this town. What we know is that Bolton was on Condi's "No way, Never List" as Deputy Secretary of State -- and that Cheney's obsession with getting Bolton well-placed produced a compromise decision on the U.N.

But Condi is now working quickly to outflank Bolton even before he is confirmed, which I hope the President reconsiders with all of the material this blog and others is going to generate on why this is such a tremendously bad appointment.

On Friday, Condoleeza Rice announced the selection of Shirin Tahir-Kheli as Senior Adviser to the Secretary of State on United Nations Reform. I guess it's good to have her own person feeding her perspectives on how to shape up the United Nations that depending on Bolton and his team.

Come to think of it, why not just make Shirin Tahir-Kheli our Ambassador?

-- Steve Clemons

MoveOn.org has entered the fray on John Bolton's nomination.

The following email letter went out to MoveOn subscribers in states of Democratic Senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as well as those in Rhode Island, Nebraska, and Indiana to cover Lincoln Chafee, Chuck Hagel, and Richard Lugar.

We are looking to make sure that these Democratic Senators and these three critically important Republicans are all "UN-Bolted," and reject the "America Alone Alliance" in favor of our newly created "Leadership League."

Here is the letter from Eli Pariser:

Dear MoveOn member,

-- Eli Pariser, March 11, 2005

I commend MoveOn for encouraging its many members to consider whether John Bolton is the person we want representing our interests in the United Nations at this time.

I think that America can do far better -- and should.

We have some time now to organize before the confirmation hearings -- but for future reference, the numbers below may be helpful.

The letter that I received referred to Paul Sarbanes because I have a house in Maryland, but here is the contact information for Democratic Party members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as well as the numbers for Hagel, Lugar, and Chafee:

(202) 224-5042 Joseph Biden, Delaware
(202) 224-3553 Barbara Boxer, California
(202) 224-2823 Christopher Dodd, Connecticut
(202) 224-5323 Russ Feingold, Wisconsin
(202) 224-2742 John Kerry, Massachusetts
(202) 224-5274 Bill Nelson, Florida
(202) 224-2854 Barack Obama, Illinois
(202) 224-4524 Paul Sarbanes, Maryland

(202) 224-2921 Lincoln Chafee, Rhode Island
(202) 224-4224 Chuck Hagel, Nebraska
(202) 224-4814 Richard Lugar, Indiana

Those assembling on our side of the battle lines on Bolton -- those who believe in principled and robust American leadership in the world while treating other nations, and particularly our friends, with dignity -- are turning out to be a pretty impressive group.

More tomorrow.

-- Steve Clemons

Thanks to all who entered The Washington Note's contest to name the Senate factions supporting and opposing John Bolton's nomination as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. There were more than 400 entries, and the decision has been extremely tough.

Though the judges were nearly seduced a couple of times by some brilliant zingers, I don't want to go "negative" in this campaign, and many of the most noteable catch phrases hit a bit harder than I'd prefer.

I'm also merging two of the best and will use my own judgment as to when to use the terms independently or together. I'll explain in a moment.

And one person who didn't make a submission gets a mug -- and that is Katie, the receptionist in the majority office of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who was a trooper in taking all of our calls. She was overwhelmed yesterday and had no idea this issue was popping -- so though she might stuff it in the back of the cupboard or toss it, she gets a mug.

Winning for naming the anti-Bolton group is "Praktike" from this board, who questioned whether this was an effort worth fighting. He wins for "The America Alone Alliance."

Remember John Bolton's infamous line on America and the UN:

If I were doing the Security Council today, I'd have one permanent member [the United States] because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world.

The next WASHINGTON NOTE MUG winner is Ben Rosengart who also comments frequently on this. He made numerous suggestions, including "Mission Mockers" that seemed to remind me of a John Malkovich skit for some reason. But his winner is "The Leadership League." Simple, inspiring, and in the great bilateral traditions of American engagement and 'leadership' in the world. I liked it a lot.

I am going to use it, but the fact is that 90% of the 40 or so people I gave these to to rank kept picking David Meyer's "The UN-Bolted." It's clever, says a lot, and nearly works as "The UN-Bolted Leadership League."

Honorable Mention goes to Douglas McGray's "Ten Stories Coalition," which cleverly plays off of Bolton's line: "The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

I recognize that these don't have the zinginess of "Faint-Hearted Faction" and "Conscience Caucus" -- but they are close enough. And I can use the UN-Bolted and/or Leadership League when the situation fits.

So, Mugs to Katie, Praktike, Ben Rosengart, and Dave Meyer. The mugs are on order now and will be sent to these winners with our compliments and congratulations -- and will be available to all soon.

Now we have to get to the real work of telling the Bolton story that he'd rather not have told.

-- Steve Clemons

I just received a phone call from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I was informed that the Committee will definitively not hold hearings on John Bolton's nomination next week and that they will occur some time in April.

I confirmed with my source in the State Department that the effort to fast-track Bolton has been successfully derailed -- thanks to your efforts and to the good sense and reason of Senator Lugar who does want to play honorably and fairly when it comes to these hearings.

It was important to make these calls today. While the State Department was pushing from one side on Lugar's staff, there was no resistance from the other. Many of you provided the resistance to make sure that this was not ram-rodded through.

And just to be clear, the Dem staff needed this too. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is pretty collegial -- so for Biden to take exception to a decision by Senator Lugar would require some reason. If there had been no civil society alert in this case and Lugar had made the announement on Bolton, Biden would have had little to give Lugar by way of excuses for delay.

So, today's effort was extremely useful on many fronts.

This is one small victory. Much more to do now.

But at least we have some time to prepare our case on the many, many better options Republicans have for Ambassador to the United Nations than John Bolton.

-- Steve Clemons

NOTE TO WASHINGTON NOTE READERS:

Please immediately call the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Majority Staff) office at 202-224-4651 and state that while you are not opposed to the Bolton Hearings themselves, you are asking Senator Lugar NOT TO ANNOUNCE THE DATE OF THE HEARINGS TODAY.

The committee staff is now aware that this is a matter of contention. If Lugar does not announce the Bolton Hearings today -- then they cannot be held next week. The first opportunity would then be during the week of April 4th.

This is important. Please call today -- Friday -- TODAY.

202-224-4651.

-- Steve Clemons

Dear Senator Lugar:

You are the kind of outstanding citizen committed to principled American leadership in the world that our Ambassador to the United Nations should also exemplify.

Many of your fans and those who feel that America must make some credible efforts at rebuilding bridges with parts of the world that have traditionally been friends and allies are hopeful that America will begin demonstrating fresh and revitalized, principled global leadership. President Bush's nomination of John Bolton as Ambassador to the United Nations inflames world opinion and may undermine America's efforts to constructively assist in UN reform efforts.

John Bolton has served in government a long time and deserves a fair hearing -- but that hearing must be fair for those who have serious questions and doubts about his candidacy.

The State Department is worried about the Bolton hearings and is pressuring your office to announce his confirmation hearings TODAY so that by the "six-day notification rule" those hearings can be held next week and before recess.

Please do the right thing. The fair and balanced thing to do is give advocates and skeptics a reasonable amount of time to make their case or lodge their concerns.

Please announce Bolton's hearings at a later date -- but not TODAY.

With sincere respect,

Steve Clemons

We will name the factions tonight -- but as one TWN reader said, "who cares -- we just need to get to work opposing Bolton's confirmation and flood the appropriate Senate offices with our views." Soooo right.

Well, the first Democrat to officially break ranks is Senator Ben Nelson who is playing the "Zell Miller Lite Strategy" and plans to vote to confirm Bolton unless he hears something to dissuade him in the next several days.

We hope to send him material to help him in that ultimate decision -- but you can help by contacting his office at (202)224-6551. You may try and connect with his foreign affairs legislative assistant, Eric Pierce, or his receptionist.

You can send an email to the Senator here or to senator@bennelson.senate.gov.

On other offices, let me just say that MOST OF THEM ARE NOT YET EVEN THINKING ABOUT THE BOLTON NOMINATION and have no idea that State is trying to fast track it. So, alert them -- and tell them to take a stand one way or another. Most of the caucus -- which I will report later -- is alleging to be undecided.

Senator Reid, you have some work to do.

-- Steve Clemons

Sidney Blumenthal's column today exposes the perversity of appointing John Bolton to serve as our Ambassador to the United Nations.

Here are the most poignant lines in the piece, but I recommend reading it in full:

-- John Bolton has been named by President Bush as the US ambassador to the UN. "If I were redoing the security council today, I'd have one permanent member because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world," Bolton once said. Lately, as undersecretary of state for arms control, he has wrecked all the nonproliferation diplomacy within his reach. Over the past two decades he has been the person most dedicated to trying to discredit the UN. George Orwell's clock of 1984 is striking 13.

-- Bolton is an extraordinary combination of political operator and ideologue. He began his career as a cog in the machine of Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, helping his political action committees evade legal restrictions and federal fines. Helms, the most powerful reactionary in the Senate, sponsored Bolton's rise to Reagan's justice department. . .Bolton is often called a neoconservative, but he is more their ally, implementer and agent. His roots are in Helms's Dixiecrat Republicanism, not the neocons' airy Trotskyism or Straussianism.

This debate about John Bolton is not just about him, or the United Nations -- it is about restoring a sense of integrity and common purpose among the great nations of the world and restoring U.S. leadership after the debacle that preceded the Iraq War.

Appointing Bolton to this position is the same as smiling at and talking about fresh start with the international community, like Bush did in Europe, while at the same time sliding a sharp knife into the world's back.

-- Steve Clemons

The time line just got pushed up. This just in from a very well-placed source:

FYI, I'm hearing that they are trying to move this nomination very quickly because the longer it hangs out there, the more time opponents have to mobilize. The State Department's material for the confirmation hearing (Q&A, etc) is due by COB today; they hope to schedule his hearing for next week.

This person also said that at State, you can feel the "nervousness in the air" about Bolton's nomination. The powers-that-be there want to push this fast next week and catch the opposition off guard.

Folks -- this is important. Bolton is not the kind of constructive force America should have pursuing its interests in the United Nations.

We will soon be naming the Coalitions For and Against the John Bolton confirmation.

NOTE TO SENATOR REID -- Don't punt on this one. If you pull together the caucus quickly, demonstrate principled vision and strength on this outrageous Bush choice for the UN, there is a chance that some moderate Republicans may empathize. Let's talk.

More very soon. . .

-- Steve Clemons

I have kept my powder dry these last several days on John Bolton's nomination to serve as America's Ambassador to the United Nations. I have just been trying to get my head around this gesture by Bush & Co. -- and think that there is virtually no centrist ground to occupy when it comes to his appointment.

I originally thought that Bob Zoellick's lateral move from serving as U.S. Trade Representative to the position of State Department Deputy Secretary finally showed some gains of the realists over the neocons in the Bush administration. Bolton's nomination though demonstrates that neocons are still in dominance throughout government -- and within State, shows that realists and neocons are neck and neck.

Bolton's portfolio within the State Department bureaucracy keeps him and his retainers well-placed to both spy on and constrain Rice and Zoellick.

Here is the deal. I just don't think America's core interests can be served by this appointment. I don't mind a U.N.-skeptic going to the United Nations, but at least that skeptic needs to believe in the essential role and function of a reformed United Nations -- and needs to be a constructive force in achieving that goal.

I have thoroughly read through Bolton's statements and writing and can find nothing that indicates that he would be anything but destructive.

Democrats and moderate Republicans have to stop ceding decisions to the President when those decisions are so harmful to the nation as a whole. We have to stop saying, "we will oppose the President even though Bolton's nomination will probably go through."

We need to embarrass the government on this decision -- and suggest better alternatives, other Republicans who would be a far better choice as our representative to the United Nations, than John Bolton.

Here is what we need from you in the blogosphere -- and I realize that some of you may not agree that this fight is worth the effort. Please indulge those of us who feel that opposing Bolton is in your interest, as well as ours.

We need language to reward and inspire Senators willing to oppose Bolton -- and language that shames those willing to stand with Bolton and who essentially want the United Nations to be a non-entity. It is worth remembering that Bolton once stated, "The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

Josh Marshall has been successful with this kind of approach by first launching his Faint-hearted Coalition and Conscious Caucus in the Social Security Privatization debate. He has now launched the Credit Card Corps and the Consumer Champs in the battle over bankruptcy legislation.

The challenge of those of you interested is to help generate language that might divide the world (well, in this case the U.S. Senate) between those inspired by principled global engagement (a long-time Republican norm) and those not.

A couple of good ideas thus far include:

The UN-Bolted
(those opposing Bolton)

and

The Ten Stories Coalition
(those supporting Bolton -- or who are undecided)

But rather than having a flurry of brain-storming sessions with folks I know, it would be interesting to hear from those of you who are creative word-smiths.

The winner will get the very first Washington Note coffee mug -- that are now in production.

Thanks for your support -- and brilliant ideas -- in advance. We need this language fast.

-- Steve Clemons

When you have time today, read this very long and very good commentary by famed editor Tom Engelhardt on Woolsey, Podhoretz & Co. on their contrivance of World War IV.

I particularly like this excerpt:

"World War IV" does many other useful things as well. It moves the goalposts into the future, way off there in an endless generational struggle. In other words, it conveniently excuses much that might otherwise seem baleful or ridiculous in the present.

It becomes possible to write, as Earl Tilford, former director of research at the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute, did: "This is World War IV. Forget the sleazy sickness of Abu Ghraib. Stop mouthing meaningless slogans like, 'Bush lied, soldiers died.' Steel yourselves for a long, bloody fight. This is a war we must not lose."

-- Steve Clemons

George Soros must be getting ready for some incredible windfalls. Korea, Russia, and now Japan have discussed diversifying their foreign reserves portfolios and essentially offsetting their heavy dollar dependency with other currencies.

Shockwaves. Some of us have been saying that this would happen -- and have held the position ever since the current account deficit began to skyrocket from it's long term average of roughly 2% to 6% of GDP.

This in from Reuters:

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Thursday that diversification of Japan's foreign-exchange reserves was "necessary," rekindling speculation in the currency market that the government could shift its reserves, the world's largest, out of dollars.

When asked about the risks of having reserves too concentrated in one currency, Koizumi told a parliamentary committee, "I believe diversification is necessary."

What Japan is doing is diversifying its political portfolio.

Let's review the latest dynamics in Japan's policy positions and whether they represent a net negative or net positive for George Bush, who spends a lot of time mentioning Koizumi in his press conferences.

1. (+) Japan extends term of service for its approximately 600 non-combat Self-Defense Forces stationed in Iraq (and Australia commits 450 new troops to protect the Japanese since the Dutch have pulled out).

2. (-) Japan pursues UN Security Council Seat and for the Europeans and others in the mix, regularly underscores the importance of the United Nations.

3. (-) China replaces the United States as Japan's largest trading partner.

4. (+) America gets Japan to publicly declare what has been privately understood for years -- that Taiwan's security is Japan's concern as well and is explicitly mentioned in the last revision of the U.S.-Japan Joint Defense Guidelines.

5. (-) Japan fails to show up on September 9, 2004 at treasury bill auction. Still uncertain as to whether someone overslept, got the date wrong, or whether this was a subtle political signal.

6. (-) George Bush discovers this week that he has been misled by Koizumi on re-opening Japan's markets to American beef after the last Mad Cow disease scare. Whereas Koizumi once said that this was a done deal, he is now saying he is working on it with no date for resumption yet in place.

For the first few years after 9/11, the policy positions between Japan and the United States on every front were identical -- so close in fact that Japan seemed to blend into U.S. policy so closely that Japan didn't seem to matter anymore. It largely disappeared as a force in D.C. -- whereas Europe whose portfolio of confrontation and collaboration with the U.S., depending on the issue, saw its stock and presence rising.

Although Japan Ambassador to the U.S. Ryozo Kato would regularly state that Japan-U.S. relations had never been better than during the last few years -- the truth is Japan-U.S. relations have never been more thin or fragile. Koizumi positioned Japan as America's lap dog since September 2001 and Kato and Japan's Foreign Ministry have opted for a low-visibility, below-the-radar-screen type of interaction with administration officials where Richard Armitage, Michael Green, and Jim Kelly orchestrated U.S.-Japan deals with a few gatekeeper Japanese officials. Simple. Uncomplicated. But anything but robust.

Today, it seems Koizumi is realizing he has leverage with America because of his loyalty and the deployment of troops in Iraq. And he is also realizing that he is "over-bought" in his America-only portfolio.

He is now diversifying -- and it is fascinating to observe.

Watch out....Japan is coming back as a force with which to reckon.

-- Steve Clemons

According to a New York Times article out today by Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt, a high-level panel is going to report to President Bush that our intelligence on Iran's arms is inadequate.

This hasn't stopped the grind towards an Iran confrontation though. Porter Goss recently gave a statement that sounds exactly like the pre-Iraq War accounts of their nuclear, biological and chemical weaposn programs.

According to the Times:

The most complete recent statement by American agencies about Iran and its weapons, in an unclassified report sent to Congress in November by Porter J. Goss, director of central intelligence, said Iran continued "to vigorously pursue indigenous programs to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons."

I am not in a position to know whether Iran is trying to feverishly produce WMDs or not. I have spent time with Michael Ledeen -- who along with James Woolsey -- comes as close to a modern Dr. Strangelove as anyone, and Ledeen sees Iran as the hub of all evil in the world. Afshin Molavi, my colleague at the New America Foundation, paints an entirely different picture.

The point is that given our unbelievably faulty intelligence on Iraq's WMD programs, America's credibility on the intel front is non-existent and needs to be re-established.

My proposal for the time being is to defer to the law of averages and give the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) the lead on Iran.

INR got Iraq right -- and as Justin Rood's excellent article in the Washington Monthly explains -- while they don't always get "it right," their batting average is higher than any other intelligence bureaucracy in our government.

What does INR say on Iran? That would be interesting to know. . .

-- Steve Clemons

Tom DeLay will be upset. Another liberal pol got a job in Washington -- and is even co-opting a well-placed conservative.

My friend Steve Elmendorf who ran Dick Gephardt's world for more than a decade has tied up in a lobbying enterprise with Jack Oliver, "former money man for President George W. Bush and a one-time campaign aide to almost every big-name Missouri Republican."

Besides serving as Gephardt's Chief of Staff for a decade and running his boss's failed presidential bid, Elmendorf served as Deputy Campaign Manager on the Kerry Campaign. After Kerry's failure, I sat next to a big-time fundraiser for the Dems on a plane to Chicago who said that "the only person who ought not to be fired and barred from the next several presidential campaigns is Elmendorf."

Deirdre Shesgreen reports:

One of the oddest new couplings will be announced today: Jack Oliver, former money man for President George W. Bush and a one-time campaign aide to almost every big-name Missouri Republican, is teaming up with Steve Elmendorf, longtime confidant to former Rep. Richard Gephardt and former adviser to Sen. John Kerry's presidential bid.

The pair will head a new lobbying wing of St. Louis law firm Bryan Cave. Oliver and Elmendorf would not name any prospective clients, but they are pitching their fat Rolodexes and insiders' political perspective to lure Missouri clients and other interests to sign up with their new venture.

She continues:

At first blush, they seem an unlikely match.

Elmendorf describes himself as "pretty liberal." Oliver says he's a George W. Bush-style "compassionate conservative."

Elmendorf, 44, is a gruff, bare-knuckled veteran of partisan combat who has mostly stayed behind the scenes, leaving the limelight to Gephardt and Kerry. Oliver, 36, is gregarious and polished and is nurturing his own political ambitions.

Talking with many of Elmendorf's friends over the last year, the most referenced traits mentioned are that no one is smarter on grass-roots politics, mobilization, and the like -- but that he's not a "people-person" (like Jack Oliver) and not a glad-handing type. In fact, even the report linked above emphasizes "he has never been a gregarious glad-hander."

Elmendorf's gruffness may seem impenetrable to many who know him -- but he's really got a soft side.

Elmendorf has a second home not far from mine in Chestertown, Maryland, and the town goose died recently. Yes, a big white goose, with lots of character and attitude -- named Lucy. A real goose, not a human pretending to be one.

I couldn't be at Lucy's memorial service near the dock on the Chester River where Lucy ruled her domain. Apparently, Lucy's ashes were released into the river.

Word is that Elmendorf made it to the service and some even said that a small tear could be seen in the corner of his left eye. It might have been the light -- but I think it's evidence that Steve indeed has a soft spot.

Good luck to Steve Elmendorf and Jack Oliver. We need more odd bedfellow partnerships in this town.

-- Steve Clemons