Senators Chris Dodd and Joseph Biden have sent another letter (TWN will post letter on Monday) to the administration proposing that if National Intelligence Director John Negroponte is willing to deal, the Dems will send the names of three dozen U.S. official’s names to learn if any were among those revealed to Bolton.
Doug Jehl reports this morning:
Senate Democrats have prepared a list of approximately three dozen “names of concern” and are asking the Bush administration for assurances that John R. Bolton did not misuse his access to highly classified intelligence to seek information about them.
The request is outlined in a letter sent Thursday by Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, two of the leaders of the Democratic opposition to Mr. Bolton’s nomination as ambassador to the United Nations. The letter was sent to the senior Republican and Democratic senators on the Intelligence Committee, who have also been involved in negotiations with the Bush administration over access to information about Mr. Bolton’s actions when he was an official at the State Department.
The letter did not identify those on the list, but Democratic aides said they included intelligence officials and others with whom Mr. Bolton had clashed. They said the Senate Democrats would provide the list to John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, if Mr. Negroponte made clear that he would provide appropriate information in response.
The Dems are doing all that they can to demonstrate flexibility. But I fear that corroboration of names does little to show malfeasance on Bolton’s part if there was such. Seeing the intercepts seems vital as far as I am concerned. But thus far, the White House has not “formally” responded on any of these modified Senate requests.
Furhermore, the documentation on Syria is vital — and not being discussed as much as it should. This Syria material potentially shows a pattern of brinksmanship behavior by Bolton when it came to matters of promulgating false, unsupported claims on WMD programs in “countries of concern” to the U.S.
TWN has learned that there has been some shifting of position in the White House — and that a deal of some sort may be in the works.
I an investigating and will be posting more on this later.
— Steve Clemons
