The National Security Agency has now recommended that the intercept material and the names of U.S. officials requested by John Bolton be released to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
TWN does not know the terms by which the material will be handled. This is classified material, so there must be some protocol for what will be provided and how commentary will be managed.
There are some who think that the NSA intercept material will not provide conclusive insights into John Bolton’s objectives in requesting the material. Others have suggested that the material, at a minimum, will futher validate the view that John Bolton had frequent “lapses in judgment” and may underscore a personal vanity that often undermined the objectives of his unit in the State Departement as well as the Department’s diplomatic efforts in certain key cases.
As TWN has written before, this should provide a binary response to questions about Bolton. He either abused his authority and misused intelligence — or he did not.
It will be interesting to see.
I will be writing more on the NSA intercepts issue over the weekend, but the fact that the NSA has signed off on release is important.
— Steve Clemons
