Bolton's Civl War. There is much worth contemplating in Sonni Efron's LAT review today of John Bolton's being dropped behind enemy lines in the State Department: that Bolton proved himself so untrustworthy that Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage appointed a full time minder to watch him and required that all his speeches be vetted; that foreign officials had to be told to not accept that Bolton's pronouncements represented Bush administration policy towards Iran and North Korea; that Condoleezza Rice has personally called Senate Republicans to say Bolton would be carefully "scripted" at the UN and that if "he goes off the reservation, he's out"; that one key reason Bolton got the UN nomination is because Rice wouldn't accept Bolton as her deputy secretary but thought she could manage him in a position less to do with policy than following instructions; and this:

Some U.S. officials complained that Bolton's undiplomatic style sometimes backfired, harming U.S. interests.

A U.S. government nonproliferation expert said that in the fall of 2003, Bolton insisted on taking a harsh line against Iran at the board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The U.S. mission in Vienna, where the agency is based, had been assigned a key task: winning a board vote referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council for action to restrain its nuclear programs.

But energy agency board members from other countries refused to go along. Nevertheless, Bolton instructed the U.S. mission at the agency not to compromise on any of the changes sought by other countries to a draft resolution, the official assigned to "mind" Bolton said.

"Next thing I know, our ambassador … is calling the secretary or Armitage and saying, 'What the hell are you guys doing? You're going to send this train over the cliff!' " the official said.

Bolton was overruled.

Bolton was distraught at what he considered a soft-line policy on Iran, and sought to have [his chief of staff Frederick] Fleitz travel to Vienna to sit in on a luncheon meeting of energy agency ambassadors, the official said. But the trip was seen as an attempt by Bolton to keep an eye on the U.S. ambassador there, and was nixed as "highly inappropriate."

The senior State Department official declined to comment on specifics of the Iran policy flap, calling it an example of the "malevolent gossip" surrounding Bolton's nomination.

Reading between the lines, it's pretty clear that key Bush administration officials, including Rice, acknowledge there are serious reasons to not have confidence in Bolton in the role of parlaying and representing Bush administration policy at the UN. The multiple accounts of bureaucratic warfare gathered here also add to the suspicion that when Bolton sought the US names from the NSA transcripts he obtained, it was in his role as fighting a guerrilla war against US officials inside the Bush administration, rather than in pursuing external national security matters. More to come, as Steve Clemons alerts us that the NSA has recommended release of those intercepts. More speculation on who was intercepted by Newsweek's Mark Hosenball. "...[Was Bolton] hoping to find out what two members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said to Iran's U.N. ambassador? Wondering what the NSA had on an unnamed U.S. journalist?"...Huh?

Update: Clemons' take.

Update II: Last item by Novak here suggests why Chafee may still be wavering on Bolton:

Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman has attempted, unsuccessfully so far, to dissuade Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey from challenging Chafee in the Republican primary. Although the White House is supporting Chafee, there are no plans for President Bush to attend a major fund-raiser for the senator in June.

That's pretty thin White House "support" either way.

Posted by Laura at May 1, 2005 10:05 AM