Senator Richard Lugar’s intervention in the efforts by Biden’s team to request information from the administration on John Bolton’s activities has had a chilling effect on the investigation. The impact on the collegiality and good will between the staffs on both sides of the Committee has been seriously wounded.
Lots of information is pouring in on Matthew Freedman, a consultant who has been allegedy providing counsel on various strategic issues and management advice to John Bolton over the last four years. One former highly placed official recounted a meeting with Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance, Paula DeSutter.
Wow. Richard Lugar is a decent, respectable, “fair and balanced” guy — but I really don’t understand this. He has weighed in on the question of what materials the State Department should send at Senator Biden’s request and which not to worry about.
The White House is apparently working over-time schmoozing the media and suggesting that there is nothing new out there on John Bolton. You could have fooled me.
There are some Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who have stated that they will NOT vote to confirm John Bolton until a full investigation of his pattern of activities and views are known.
Abu Farraj al-Libbi’s capture is a big deal. This No. 3 player in the al Qaeda network no doubt has information on al-Zawahri and bin Laden’s operation that will bring these two mastermind terrorists closer to capture or some other form of justice. Bush has a big score here.
On another front in Bolton World, it was Fred Fleitz’s role in all of this as Bolton’s chief spear-carrier and warrior, that seems unusually important.
Demetri Sevastopulo of the Financial Times has a piece out noting that the National Security Agency has recommended that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee be given to the intercepts in which John Bolton had such an interest during his last job.
The White House has made a genuinely inspired choice of Robert Kimmitt, whom I wrote about just this morning as a potential U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., and nominated him instead to be Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. This just in from Chris Nelson’s The Nelson Report: On the subject of money. . .
Here is a roster of key quotations in Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff interviews held on the 7th and 8th of April, 2005 on the subject of the tumultuous interaction between Undersecretary of State John Bolton and State Department INR analyst Christian Westermann. The interviews were with: 1.
