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Colleagues Report that Bolton's Behavior Undermined Colin Powell and the Department of State on Numerous Occasions
Share / Recommend - Comment - Print - Thursday, Apr 28 2005, 2:53PM
John Bolton refused to live by the rules that other diplomats, career and non-career, had to live by working at the State Department. Bolton is being irresponsibly rewarded by President Bush and Dick Cheney for violating every rule in the book when it came to serving the U.S. national interest as articulated at various respective times by his boss, Colin Powell, and his even bigger boss, George Bush.
The fact that Bush himself refuses to recognize this or values a perverse type of private loyalty to Bush and Cheney over a more honorable and distinguished type of public loyalty to the foreign policy vision of the President of the United States and Secretary of State does not excuse the error here.
Douglas Jehl has a piece adding even more color to Bolton's genetic predisposition to undermine his State Department colleagues and their operations:
As under secretary of state, John Bolton routinely arranged meetings with Israeli, Russian, British and French officials without first notifying the State Department offices responsible for relations with those countries, according to three former department officials. The officials described the practice by Bolton, who has been nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, as unusual and a violation of department procedures. On at least one occasion, the officials said, Elizabeth Jones, then assistant secretary of state for European affairs, confronted Bolton to complain about meetings in Moscow that Bolton had sought with Russian officials without clearance from the European bureau. Some meetings that Bolton held in Israel, including those with officials of Mossad, the foreign intelligence service, also prompted complaints in the State Department from the bureau of Near Eastern affairs, the officials said. Bolton traveled overseas widely during his tenure but often ignored a requirement that he seek "country clearance" from the U.S. Embassy involved, the officials said. The episodes were described by former State Department officials with direct knowledge of the events. They said they regarded the episodes as notable because they reflected Bolton's practice of acting unilaterally, even in sensitive diplomatic areas in which it was important that U.S. policy be coordinated. The staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to ask questions about the episodes as it begins a new round of interviews about Bolton, whose nomination has caused unease, even among Republicans on the committee. John Wolf, a former assistant secretary of state who traveled with Bolton on some of the trips, is among about two dozen people scheduled to be interviewed by the panel in coming days.
The Bolton File thickens by the day.
Every Republican and Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- every one of them -- will have to say that none of this mattered if he or she casts a vote in favor of Bolton's nomination.
And that vote will have significant political consequence for them. This is the degree to which the White House seems willing to abuse their erstwhile Republican allies in the Senate.
More to come.
-- Steve Clemons
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Bolton is being irresponsibly rewarded by President Bush and Dick Cheney for violating every rule in the book when it came to serving the U.S. national interest as articulated at various respective times by his boss, Colin Powell, and his even bigger boss, George Bush.
this assumes that Bush wasn't just giving lip service to the concept of diplomatic norms, but actually was supportive of Bolton's inappropriate actions.
We have to keep in mind that Bush has never acted as if he was subject to "the rules" that everyone else had to play by. Bolton was acting as Bush's id -- saying the things that Bush wasn't allowed to say.
(Lets not forget the fiasco of Bush calling Kim Il Jong II a "pygmy" in a joint press conference with the President of South Korea. It was bad enough that Bush engaged in egregious ad hominem insult of the leader of another nation --- but doing it with Park (?) standing right next to him, when South Korea had its own agenda vis a vis North Korea, demonstrated that Bush was neither aware of, or concerned with, diplomatic protocols.)
Its nearly impossible to believe that Bush was unaware that Bolton was stepping (hell stomping) on people's toes throughout his tenure at the State Department, and the very fact that he was never disciplined speaks volumes about how Bush and Cheney regarded "the rules".
Steve, what Republicans will say is that the President should have his choice for UN Ambassador and the attacks against Bolton were merely partisan politics.
Whether constituents and the media let them get away with it is the important question.
As far as I understand the White House will do everything it can to block the release of the NSA. I wonder what kind of public pressure could make this position untenable.
The administration didn't like State so, even though they publicly don't want to completely show their hand, they probably high fived behind closed doors while hearing of Bolton's dismissal of department procedures.
Their thinking may be: The CIA needs to be reformed - Porter Goss; the State Department needs to be reformed - a mole; the UN needs to be reformed - the State mole.
Makes a perverse but logical sense if you have no regard for the institutions and expertise that came before your administration. Of course this administration has shown no qualms about parading their disregard. Hence, the neo-con, history be damned approach to military intervention and occupation.
Some meetings that Bolton held in Israel, including those with officials of Mossad
Between this and the NSA problem Bolton really seems to have an overly keen interest in intelligence. Seems like there is something bigger starting to materialize here.
Bob Edwards of XM Satellite Radio (and ex-NPR host) in this speech to Centre College in Danville:
"To get any information at all from the Bush administration is a triumph, for it has become the all-time champion of information control. Reporters have never had less access to the people they need to reach for information. This is an administration that wants us to report only what it says in its press releases -- beyond that, no comment.
No one has had much success in penetrating the White House stonewall. There is no appreciation by the administration that the people have a right to know what their leaders are doing in their name and with their dollars.
Instead, there's a sort of corporate control of information -- as if the details of meetings and policy formation are trade secrets never to be known -- even to the stockholders. We saw this immediately as the Bush administration took office -- reversing previous expansions of the Freedom of Information Act -- and preventing publications of papers from previous presidencies, including that of the president's father.
Then there were the meetings of the energy task force -- Vice President Dick Cheney's meetings with whom? We don't know for sure. We're not allowed to know. The Bush administration says it's none of your business to know."
Good. I hope the White House continues to hold the feet of some to the fire> Republicans like Voinovich and other moderates should be forced to choose. Remember, the rethuglicans can say that the Dems are obstructionist, but since 2001 the administration and the republ;ican leadership has assumed a partisan approach of with us or against us at every opportunity. I wouldn't mind those being with them thus far paying the cost now. I hope they all suffer sleepless nights wondering whether or not to do what's correct and just as opposed to what their masters order them to do.
This may be a rhetorical question but does Bolton actually think he is accountable to anyone?????
If the answer is no (and I think it is) why would anyone want this man anywhere near, much less in, a position of power and influcence in the public or private sector.
It's almost as if Powell was installed for PR purposes - to make Bush look good - and that Bolton was put in place for the explicit purpose of keeping Powell from succeeding in ways that the administration did not like.
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