Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice spoke in Crawford, Texas today and encouraged the Senate to move forward on the Bolton nomination, suggesting that State had been extremely compliant in providing the material the Senate had requested on John Bolton.
This is not true.
The single most important evidence that has not been sent to the Senate for review are the 10 intercepts that John Bolton had requested during his tenure as Undersecretary from the National Security Agency. For some time, these intercepts were blocked by the State Department that refused to sign off on the NSA providing access to the classified materials.
Rice is not telling the truth about this and needs to tread carefully on this matter. Chris Dodd has been working for weeks to get access to these important intercepts, and at the time of this writing, TWN does not believe that terms of access have been resolved yet.
Until the NSA intercepts — in full form — are read by Senators and senior staff in some classified setting, the Bolton nomination cannot proceed.
Rice knows that this is an unresolved matter and should be much more honest and forthcoming that there have been problems in clearing the NSA intercepts.
— Steve Clemons
