US company names on the Bolton NSA intercepts that the White House is refusing to provide Congress?

Watergate Mystery Solved. Woodward and Bernstein confirm, former FBI deputy director W. Mark Felt was "Deep Throat." What was Felt's motivation?

Woodward said Felt helped The Post at a time of tense relations between the White House and much of the FBI hierarchy. He said the Watergate break-in came shortly after the death of legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Felt's mentor, and that Felt and other bureau officials wanted to see an FBI veteran promoted to succeed Hoover.

Felt himself had hopes that he would be the next FBI director, but Nixon instead appointed an administration insider, assistant attorney general L. Patrick Gray, to the post.

Bradlee, in an interview this afternoon, said that knowing that "Deep Throat" was a high-ranking FBI official helped him feel confident about the information that the paper was publishing about Watergate. He said that he knew the "positional identity" of "Deep Throat" as the Post was breaking its Watergate stories and that he learned his name within a couple of weeks after Nixon's resignation.

"The number-two guy at the FBI, that was a pretty good source," he said...

The Vanity Fair article, by California attorney John D. O'Connor, described Felt as conflicted over his role in the Watergate revelations and over whether he should publicly reveal that he was the anonymous source whose identity has been a closely guarded secret for more than three decades...

The article concluded, "Felt, having long harbored the ambivalent emotions of pride and self-reproach, has lived for more than 30 years in a prison of his own making, a prison built upon his strong moral principles and his unwavering loyalty to country and cause. But now, buoyed by his family's revelations and support, he need feel imprisoned no longer."

Extraordinary. May these new revelations re-inspire conviction that the forces of political malfeasance, corruption and lying to the public are ultimately vulnerable to the forces of truth -- and the decent people willing to sacrifice something for helping get it out there.

Update: And former Woodward WaPo colleague James Mann sure looks good from his 1992 Atlantic Monthly article, in which he analyzed why Deep Throat was probably from the FBI:

...With the benefit of hindsight, it becomes abundantly clear why someone at the FBI would have an interest in leaking information about Watergate to The Washington Post. In the very first week after the Watergate arrests, FBI investigators found that the White House was putting obstacles in the way of its investigation of the case. White House counsel John Dean insisted on sitting in on the FBI's interviews. The Bureau's efforts to interview witnesses and to obtain various records were being stalled or blocked. L. Patrick Gray, who was working closely with Dean, ordered FBI agents to call off a proposed interview with Miguel Ogarrio, a lawyer whose checks totalling $89,000 had been deposited in the bank account of one of the arrested men; Gray said the interview might jeopardize existing CIA operations in Mexico...

And these White House efforts seemed to validate their worst fear: that the Nixon White House intended to use the FBI for political purposes.

FBI officials were furious. According to Mark Felt, on July 5 three top FBI officials asked for a meeting with Gray to protest White House obstruction of the Watergate investigation...

Invoking Hoover's name, Felt made clear that he and his colleagues believed that the FBI's traditions and its future were at stake...For a senior FBI official like Deep Throat, talking to Woodward and the Post about Watergate was a way to fend off White House interference with the investigation.

Update II: National Review's The Corner asks, was Felt the head of a right-wing anti-Nixon conspiracy? More here.

Update III: Tim Noah knew it was Felt, too:

Why did Felt maintain his silence for so long? Part of the reason, I imagine, is that Felt knew his prosaic, bureaucratic-infighting motive was at least as strong as any moralistic desire to expose the truth about the crooks in the White House. That tarnishes Deep Throat's luster a little. Also, Felt's previous brush with national publicity involved his criminal conviction for bypassing warrants in his investigation of the Weather Underground. Ronald Reagan pardoned him, but it was a deeply painful experience, and Felt thinks the stress contributed to his wife's early death. It would only be logical that he'd avoid the spotlight after that. Possibly, too, he could imagine that the press would note that Deep Throat shared with Nixon an enthusiasm for illegal break-ins.

But the main reason, I think, was that Felt saw his leaks as a betrayal of the FBI...

Noah also worries about some deliberate misdirection about Deep Throat's identity over the years by Woodward.

Trojan Horse. This Israeli industrial espionage case seems far bigger than I realized from the initial reports:

Israeli authorities have uncovered one of the nation's largest industrial-espionage scandals, charging that top business executives and private investigators used sophisticated software to infiltrate their competitors' computers and cull corporate secrets.

Police said 18 people are in custody, including the software programmers, an Israeli couple living in London. The probe implicated car importers, mobile-phone providers and the nation's main satellite-television company. Police said they were still sifting through documents and computer files to figure out the extent of the damage...

According to police, the programmers developed special software, called a Trojan horse, on behalf of three of the country's largest private investigation firms. The private investigators then sneaked the program into the computers of their clients' major competitors via seemingly benign email attachments. The Trojan horse gave the private investigators complete access to their victims' computers by using the Internet, police said.

But get this: the alleged culprits claim no law was broken!

Many of the 18 people arrested in recent days in the case denied breaking the law. "The software is totally legal. The question is if the use that my client made of the software was illegal – and the answer is 'definitely not,' " said Ofir Katz Neriah, the lawyer for one of the suspects.

Those arrested include a top executive from the YES satellite TV company, security officials who worked for Pele-Phone and Cellcom, and several private investigators...

The program was designed by Michael Haephrati, 41 years old, who was arrested last week in Britain along with his wife, Ruth Brier-Haephrati, 28, police said. The two were detained pending a June 3 extradition hearing.

How was the plot discovered? A mystery novelist noticed parts of his in-the-works novel and personal documents appearing on the Internet.

Police were first tipped off to the espionage when author Amnon Jackont began discovering that excerpts of a book he was in the process of writing were showing up on the Internet. More documents from his computer began appearing on the Internet, and someone tried to use his bank details to make transactions. Mr. Jackont realized his computer had been invaded and told police he suspected the spy was his stepdaughter's ex-husband, Michael Haephrati.

What's more, the Post reports, the culprit Haephrati, with dual German-Israeli citizenship, was the model for one of the mystery novelist's characters.

Will be staying tuned to this strange case, the largest industrial espionage case in Israeli history. One wonders, were these folks for hire only to the Israeli corporate and security world, or did they outsource their freelance Trojan Horse-creating talents elsewhere? A Debkafile report suggests Haephrati was questioned previously by British authorities for crimes committed in England, days before he was arrested by Scotland Yard on the Israeli extradition warrant.

Update: More from the Guardian and Ha'aretz. "Police placed Bezeq International CEO Avi Gabai under five days house arrest after he and two senior company employees were questioned under caution Tuesday evening as part of the investigation into the rapidly expanding industrial espionage-spyware affair...

Investigators said that the scope of the affair was extraordinary, but it seems that most of the arrests are over. Eleven private investigators are under arrest, and the police are trying to convince a number of them to testify as state's witnesses."

Update II: More from Debkafile, which connects the raider software implanted to the Promis software case. More from the Washington Post. "...Israeli newspapers, which had been alerted to the case last week but were prohibited from publishing details until the roundup was completed over the weekend, characterized it as the biggest case of industrial espionage in the country's history. 'No one remembers a case like this in Israel -- an affair with such scope of investigation involving technology at this high level,' said Chief Superintendent Rafi Levy, spokesman for the national police force..."

Has "Deep Throat" been outted? More via Kevin Drum and Romenesko. Update: The family of 91 year old former deputy FBI director W. Mark Felt has now come forward to confirm the Vanity Fair story (via the AP and MSNBC).

Late Update: Woodward and Bernstein confirm, Felt is Deep Throat (via Drum).

Lame duck? Maybe premature, but certainly hobbled.

One wonders if this case isn't being pursued rather backwards. Is it possible Franklin is more interesting than the FBI realizes, in its quest to use him to close other investigations? In the FBI's Venn diagram of this investigation, its big black circle seems to have always been drawn around the AIPAC officials. Franklin stumbled into the investigation and they used him as they could to go after their primary targets, the AIPAC officials. Given what the press has reported about the evidence it has against the former AIPAC officials (and admittedly we don't know all the evidence it may have against them), one might be forgiven for being a little underwhelmed. But if on that Venn diagram, one draws the investigatory circle around Franklin, then things become far more interesting. It's just not clear the FBI has ever done that, and it's baffling why not.

Smoking jacket, indeed.
(Thanks to RS).

So the CIA's Vietnam-era Air America has morphed into North Carolina-based Aero Contractors, Ltd. and gotten contracted up with renditions, a.k.a. what its pilots call "snatches." The NYT's Scott Shane reports. But its shell company and executive identity covers aren't exactly air-tight:

...Rather than purchase aircraft outright, the C.I.A. uses shell companies whose names appear unremarkable in casual checks of F.A.A. registrations.

On closer examination, however, it becomes clear that those companies appear to have no premises, only post office boxes or addresses in care of lawyers' offices. Their officers and directors, listed in state corporate databases, seem to have been invented. A search of public records for ordinary identifying information about the officers - addresses, phone numbers, house purchases, and so on - comes up with only post office boxes in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

But whoever created the companies used some of the same post office box addresses and the same apparently fictitious officers for two or more of the companies. One of those seeming ghost executives, Philip P. Quincannon, for instance, is listed as an officer of Premier Executive Transport Services and Crowell Aviation Technologies, both listed to the same Massachusetts address, as well as Stevens Express Leasing in Tennessee.

No one by that name can be found in any public record other than post office boxes in Washington and Dunn Loring, Va. Those listings for Mr. Quincannon, in commercial databases, include an anomaly: His Social Security number was issued in Washington between 1993 and 1995, but his birth year is listed as 1949.

Mr. Glerum, the C.I.A. and Air America veteran, said the use of one such name on more than one company was "bad tradecraft: you shouldn't allow an element of one entity to lead to others."

He said one method used in setting up past C.I.A. proprietaries was to ask real people to volunteer to serve as officers or directors. "It was very, very easy to find patriotic Americans who were willing to help," he said.

Referendum Reaction. Reader JW writes from France:

Hello Laura,

I read with interest your post on the result of the French vote on the EU constitution referendum, and the articles that you pointed to as well.

One important aspect of the result of the vote is the great interest the referendum generated. The fact that the text is incredibly long and difficult to read did not deter people from trying to read it, understand it and debate it among friends and family. (In mine too, my wife voted yes and I voted no - lots of discussion before we voted.) It kind of replaced soccer as the national sport in the last two months, and the 70% turnout reflects that. So the result is not a fluke. People knew what they were voting on, totally contrary to the lots of stuff in the press and media (overwhelmingly in favor of yes) about how the no proponents were playing on the ignorance and selfishness of the people.

The European socialist leaders, and especially the leaders of the Socialist Party in France, now find themselves in a pretty mess. They wanted a yes vote on a constitution which makes a free market economy mandatory. The social protection for workers which most of the British press and politicians claim to be too rigid is in fact mostly illusion: escape clauses and "explanations" which water all of that down, especially the famous article III-209 which guarantees that in case of a conflict between social policy (like protection for working people) and the need to maintain "competitiveness" it is the latter which trumps. Not only that: except for Parliament whose powers are much more limited than parliaments in any democratic country, the European leadership is not accountable to voters in any way. Yet the Socialist Party was pushing for this thing.

The European socialist leaders recently managed to bring about a "compromise" solution to the European laws on the maximum length of the work week: it is now 48 hours, averaged over 12 months, which means that a worker can be required to work more hours during some weeks but must be compensated for the long weeks by other short weeks. The previous law allowed member states to "opt out" of the 48 hour maximum but could not have a work week exceed 65 hours. This is progress? A 40 hour week has been standard in the developed world for many decades. The French socialist leaders are now in trouble because they have been pushing for the things mentioned here, which seem like treason to socialist principles to a lot of socialist voters. According to exit polls the socialist electorate voted about 60% no, a huge disavowal. I will enjoy watching the European socialist leaders squirm.

I hope you and your readers enjoy too. But I hope that progressive forces all over Europe take this occasion to mobilize for a European project in which voters have a real say about how things work, and that Europe continues to make progress toward promoting peace and social justice not only in Europe but everywhere.

Tuesday Update: Reader 'Auriga' writes in response to JW, above:

Your correspondent's surprise at the support of the European Socialists for the French EU vote is itself surprising. The Socialist
International was captured by US social democrats in the 1970s as part of a U.S. (and other) intelligence operations and then abandoned like so much spent ammo as these folks morphed into neo-conservatives early in the Reagan administration. It has not been a "socialist" organization for a long time...

This repudiation of the SI is one of the reasons I find that vote heartening; it has hastened the SI's formal demise.

Now Schroeder has scheduled a vote that he is unlikely to survive. The real question: will the German Greens improve their electoral position? Quite possible. Bush is forcing a worldwide coalition against the U.S. and it is taking odd shapes.

Writing in the LA Times, the Project for the New American Century's Gary Schmitt analyzes why the EU constitution may be rejected today in a referendum in France. In Schmitt's cross hairs, Europe's "political elites":

...As longtime observers of Europe are fond of pointing out, European political elites have always found ways to keep their integration dreams moving along. They have done so by keeping their ultimate goal fuzzy while contending that any new arrangements would not fundamentally change the EU's character. There's a limit to that strategy. As German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said in a May 2000 speech, the contradiction between what the European Union had become (and would probably become) and the political arrangements that could give it democratic legitimacy was increasingly unsustainable. But the European elites that created the problem — and that recently expanded the EU from 15 to 25 members without consulting the public — have not found a way to write a constitution to solve it.

Commentators here and in France have belittled French opponents of the constitution as "know-nothings" — partisans with exaggerated fears of immigration, globalization and Gaullist decline. There is some truth to that characterization. But these French "know-nothings" know something important: It matters whether citizens can control the government that controls them.

If the EU constitution goes down in flames, Europe's political elites would do well to remind themselves of that simple but profound point as they decide their next course.

Democracy Arsenal's Heather Hurlburt hears much the same thing:

Folks I talk to confirm what we're seeing in commentary; this represents less a specific rejection of the frankenstein-of-a-constitution than a general sense of unease with the EU's "democratic deficit" overlaid by a very specific sense of anger at incumbent governments, the problems associated with immigration, and --dare I say it? -- a soupcon of malaise with the 21st century in general.

Meantime, DA's Derek Chollet suggests one surprising winner of a French no vote may be the UK's Europe-supporting Tony Blair -- and a hundred European think tanks:

Oddly enough, one person who is secretly happy about all of this is British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has committed to holding a British referendum on the constitution sometime in the next few years. The EU constitution is even more unpopular in Britain, and most consider a British “yes” even more improbable. One of Blair’s fears was that all other countries would have approved the constitution and that the fate of the treaty would hinge entirely on Britain. With a French no, he’s off the hook. And in July, Britain takes over its six-month presidency of the EU (a rotation that the EU constitution would end), which gives Blair a chance to lead the effort to pick up the pieces from this mess – which is one way to work his way back from the Continental beating he has taken over Iraq.

Several people have argued that the French vote today is as much a referendum on Chirac as on the EU constitution itself, so it's worth noting the immediate benefactor of the anticipated French non vote today is Chirac's former protege turned rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, who one might have admired more if he wasn't playing on French fears of Turkish accession into the EU.

Update: And it's no. Result analysis via Praktike ahd Heather Hurlburt.

Velvet Revolution. Laura Secor has an interview in the Boston Globe Ideas section with Gene Sharp, the author of a pamphlet, From Dictatorship to Democracy, that has been used by pro democracy groups from Serbia to Ukraine, to learn the strategy and techniques for non violent toppling of dictatorships. Sharp's ideas are often misunderstood as being inspired by a pacifist sensibility, but what the nonviolent revolution strategy is really about is something else: it works and has been proven effective when more belligerent techniques have demonstrated worse outcomes. Here are some excerpts from the interview:

...IDEAS: In your book there is a chapter on something you call political jujitsu, in which a regime uses violence against nonviolent resistance, and this backfires, creating deeper and more widespread defiance.

SHARP: When I was starting out this study the belief was, oh, this is fine for the Indians, they're all Hindus, they all believe in reincarnation so it doesn't make any difference if they get killed. Literally! But if you look at the Russian 1905 revolution, it's the same thing.

Political jujitsu will not work if the people get scared, if they don't know what to do, or if they don't understand that it's necessary to hold their ground and risk some danger. Guerilla warfare has huge civilian casualty rates. Huge. And yet Che Guevara didn't abandon guerilla warfare because people were getting killed. The same is true in conventional war, of course. But then they say if you get killed in nonviolent struggle, then nonviolent struggle has failed. Some people don't understand what they're doing and they say oh, we have to go over to violence.

IDEAS: Of course, nonviolent movements don't necessarily produce democracies. The Iranian revolution of 1979 was by and large nonviolent.

SHARP: Yes, but they didn't plan for the transition, and so various people who had their own ideas of what the new regime should be took over. Now we have this other booklet on the anti-coup, or how to block seizures of power and executive usurpations. That time after a successful nonviolent struggle is very dangerous.

Our work has had major influence in Iran, except that it hasn't got a movement quite succeeding yet. ''From Dictatorship to Democracy" is in Farsi on our website. The translation was all done inside Iran. That's dangerous, and people were gutsy enough to do it. But the booklet has been declared illegal to circulate in Iran. Still, the knowledge is there, and it fits into Persian history, like in the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and then more recently in the struggle against the shah.

Worth reading. More background here, here and here.

Well, that didn't go very well, did it? Go read Suzanne Nossel on Bolton's lack of leadership leading to the US losing control of the agenda at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, which wrapped up yesterday. Bolton didn't prepare for it because he was too busy lobbying for the past six months for a high level job in Bush II. A reader alerts me to a small irony:

Note that Bolton's successor as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, Bob Joseph, was formally confirmed by the Senate [Thursday] night right before they went out -- on a unanimous confirmation motion. (Joseph's record itself is very troubling -- he was the senior NSC official who insisted on inserting the uranium text in the 2003 SOTU, but SFRC Dems were expending all of their ammo on Bolton and let him go.) Depending on when Joseph is formally sworn-in, Bolton may, for a short period of time, be out of a job.

With the White House still dragging its feet on providing requested documents to the Senate, and Thune and Voinovich planning to vote with Democrats against him June 7, it's still not over.

Powerful Memorial Day-themed post by Democracy Arsenal's Michael Signer.

Did Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita misspeak? or, you know, that other word for the distortion of the facts?

More on deliberately missing the forest for the trees from E.J. Dionne:

Conservative academics have long attacked "postmodernist" philosophies for questioning whether "truth" exists at all and claiming that what we take as "truths" are merely "narratives" woven around some ideological predisposition. Today's conservative activists have become the new postmodernists. They shift attention away from the truth or falsity of specific facts and allegations -- and move the discussion to the motives of the journalists and media organizations putting them forward. Just a modest number of failures can be used to discredit an entire enterprise.

Larry Franklin's attorney Plato Cacheris speaks to the NY Sun's Eli Lake. Cacheris expects Franklin to be indicted as early as today.

Bolton vote delayed again! Good for Lieberman for voting with the Dems on this. What's with Landrieu, Ben Nelson, and Mark Pryor? (Mark Goldberg explains). One more Dem vote* and it would have been over. So NPR is talking about this as a kind of stealth filibuster....Stygius has the play-by-play. *Friday Update: Actually the vote for cloture was 4 short of the 60 needed. Specter had left town at 4pm when the vote look assured. Inouye did not vote...So 55 Republicans in the Senate, 2 didn't vote, and 3 Dems voted with the Republicans (Frist voted with the Dems at the end only for procedural reasons).

More post-vote delay analysis from Suzanne Nossel:

But here's the thing. In its eleventh hour, the Bolton deliberation has morphed into something quite apart from a debate on the candidate's merits - its now a discussion about the scope of the Senate's obligation to advise and consent on the President's nominations. It's the same issue that came to the fore earlier this week on the judicial filibusters...This comes down to a question of whether the White House can simply refuse to provide information that a Senate Committee legitimately requests in order to discharge its oversight duties. In the foreign policy arena in particular...the principle at stake is an important one.

This Administration has a history of operating in secrecy and of providing partial information that can be misleading. Many Senate Democrats felt they were duped by the White House en route to the Iraq invasion, and they are right not to let this happen again.

Mark Goldberg gets this right. Biden's up now. Byrd ended his presentation reading poetry, I take it his own? That said, he was better than Orrin Hatch. Bring back Obama.

Biden: Frist requested the NSA information too from the administration but hasn't gotten it, because "it's really secret." "They are not going to give information to the leaders of the United States Senate because it's really secret? Where I come from that means, you don't trust me. The nerve of this outfit to say they're not going to give this information...I hope the Senate will stand up for itself today at 6 o'clock."

Physicians for Human Rights has put a video of its latest fact-finding trip to Darfur on the web, here. PHR team leaders John Heffernan and Michael Van Rooyen write, "We invite you to watch this movie and urge you to take action to save lives in Darfur and forward this message to your friends."

With the Senate taking a break, now's a good time to ask a propos of the season finale of 24 earlier this week: when did 24's writers get captured by the RNC? When did its obvious blue state appeal get hijacked by Red State ACLU-hating Cheney-ites? The season went from putting the Heritage foundation guy in conspiracy with the nuclear terrorists -- and suggesting a big defense contractor collaborating in the plot to generate profits -- to Amnesty "Global" attorney representing the terrorist conspirators and a decidedly torture-should-be-allowed-when-necessary-stop-whining-about-civil-liberties message. But the biggest clue that 24's blue state sympathizers had been kidnapped was the past few weeks' depiction of the weak, indecisive acting president unable to make tough decisions in a time of crisis (unless there is a subtext to this story that that the character actually depicts a Bush run by steel-y advisors who are actually making decisions behind the scenes?). The red state total celebration of guns another. Blue state Audrey won't stick with California/libertarian Jack after she's seen him torture people (including her now deceased husband). China is providing refuge to nuclear terrorists (total neocon). All in all, an interesting season that brought back the first season's original plane-jumping terrorist Mia Kirschner into the plot at the very end. So the Serb Nina and mercenary Kirschner were working with the Turkish Marwan the whole time? Who's running this terrorist conspiracy anyhow? It's clearly multinational and post-ideological.

Fellow 24 fan Kevin Drum writes, it seems to be all about ratings. "It's a real hodgepodge. David Palmer is a Democrat, and so incredibly bitchin that even Republican presidents call him in to run things when the going gets tough. On the other hand, torture-lovin Jack is doing what has to be done. What a guy! Honestly, I think my answer is that these guys are just writing a show and looking for ratings. Hollywood may be liberal, but it's pretty obvious they never let that get in the way of making money." Ah, Hollywood. ' Update: Spencer Ackerman doesn't get the appeal. "After watching like 19 consecutive hours to write that Salon piece," he emails, "I came away bewildered that the show is so esteemed. It’s not just the casual fascism. It’s the overwrought acting, the implausibility, the corniness..." I can't explain the appeal myself, but it's not one that is enhanced by calling security experts to find out why they watch it, apparently (then again, neither is James Bond).

Update II: LA-based reader R writes with the inside ideological skinny on 24:

Re "24" my friend...worked briefly as a writer/producer on the show in the beginning of its second season, and was quite convinced that both show-runners were quite conservative in their politics. There's a knee-jerk assumption that unless proven otherwise, Hollywood folks are liberals, but this is less and less true. Right now the king of TV is Jerry Bruckheimer, who is now exec-producing "E Ring" (as in Pentagon), about the wonderful things military intelligence is getting up to now that those wimps at the Agency are no longer running the show. The series stars Dennis Hopper and Benjamin Bratt, both of whom have served as counter-culture pin-up boys at various moments in their careers...so I don't even know what "liberal" means out here. Local scuttlebutt is that Shawn Ryan (The Shield) and David Mamet (!) pitched a show with a similar setting, but were passed over because they were politically untrustworthy...

And now even NPR/PBS is slated to get an ombudsman from the Joe McCarthy school of American journalism, Eric Boehlert reports.

The Bush administration's ally in the war on terror, Pakistani's ISI. Via Democracy Arsenal, Kandahar-based Sarah Chayes writes of the recent riots in Afghanistan in the New York Times:

...For me, after three years in southern Afghanistan, something felt not quite right about the more virulent demonstrations across the country. The instant tip-off was that they were initially led by university students. Afghans and Westerners living in Kandahar have often wondered at the number of Pakistani students in what passes for a university here. The place is pathetically dilapidated, the library a locked storeroom, the medical faculty bereft of the most elementary skeleton or model of the human body. Why would anyone come here to study from Pakistan? Our unshakable conclusion has been that the adroit Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, is planting operatives in the student body. These students can also provoke agitation at Pakistani officials' behest, while affording the government in Islamabad plausible deniability.

In both Kandahar and Kabul, alert Afghan government officials were able to calm demonstrations by holding discussions with student leaders, an indication of the degree to which protesters' actions were manipulated and not the result of spontaneous outrage.

In other words, it's a mistake to focus on the Newsweek article as the cause of the recent demonstrations in Afghanistan. Instead, the reason was President Hamid Karzai's May 8 announcement that Afghanistan would enter a long-term strategic partnership with the United States.

Such an alliance discomfits Afghanistan's neighbors. Pakistan, for one, is used to treating Afghanistan as an all but subject territory...

Go read the rest of Chayes' interesting analysis of riots not spontaneous, but organized, and by whom.

Senate debate on Bolton on C-Span 2. Stygius is covering it live. Barbara Boxer up now.

Noon update: Biden/Dodd letter on opposition to cloture to Senate Democrats:

Dear Democratic Colleague:

We write to urge you to oppose cloture on the Bolton nomination tonight. We want to make clear that this is not a filibuster. It is a vote to protect the Senate's
constitutional power to advise and consent to nominations.

For more than a month, we have been requesting two types of information from
the Executive Branch. First, materials related to the preparation of congressional
testimony on Syria and weapons of mass destruction that Mr. Bolton planned to give in July 2003 and ultimately gave that September. We think this will show Mr. Bolton's continued effort to exaggerate intelligence information. It may also show that he misled the Foreign Relations Committee when he told us that he was not personally involved in the preparation of the testimony. Second, information related to National Security Agency intercepts and the identity of U.S. persons on those intercepts. During the past four years, Mr. Bolton requested the identity of U.S. persons on ten occasions. There may be nothing improper in this; or there may be something highly improper. But we won't know unless we see the very same information shown to Mr. Bolton. So far that
has not occurred. The Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Select Committee on
Intelligence were shown the intercepts, but not the identities of the U.S. persons.
In refusing to provide the information about the Syria testimony, the State
Department has asserted that it does not believe that the request is "specifically tied to the issues being deliberated by the Committee." In other words, the Executive Branch is deciding what it thinks is relevant to the Senate's review. That's unacceptable. In the case of the NSA intercepts, no one in the Executive Branch has even tried to explain why the chairman and ranking member of the Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees are not allowed to see information that was made available to Mr. Bolton and even to his staff. That, too, is unacceptable.

The refusal of the Executive Branch to provide information relevant to the
nomination is a threat to the Senate's constitutional power to advise and consent. The only way to protect that power is to continue to demand that the information be provided to the Senate. The only means of forcing the Administration to cooperate is to prevent a final vote on the nomination today. We urge to you vote no on cloture.

Sincerely,

Christopher Dodd,
Joseph R. Biden

(Emphasis added).

12:40pm Update: McCain stinks.

Barack Obama rocks: "When I look at record of Mr. Bolton as top arms control officer at the State Department, I am not impressed. On North Korea, the approach advocated by Mr. Bolton and this administration has simply not worked. On Mr. Bolton's watch, no longer international inspectors or cameras in North Korea. NK has withdrawn from NPT. They have drawn material for six to eight nuclear weapons...

"Another area Mr. Bolton responsible for was the Non Proliferation Treaty. Pres. BUsh pledged to strengthen this treaty...What's happened since? Virtually nothing. The administration has made very little progress on this issue and the NPT conference currently under way is not going well. According to an article at MSNBC, the US has lost control of this conference. Where has Mr. Bolton been on this? According to that article, 'Since last fall, Mr. Bolton, has aggressively lobbied for a senior job in the Bush administration. During that time Mr. Bolton did almost no ground work on the upcoming conference. Everyone knew it was coming....But Bolton stopped all diplomacy on this six months ago' In other words, Bolton was more interested in lobbying for the UN job than the conference."

..."Here's my point. If we thought Bolton was a super diplomat, we could maybe overlook the mountain of evidence of mistreatment of subordinates and misuse of intelligence....But the record indicates that in his current job he hasn't had much success. Why are we so confident that this guy is going to lead reform at the UN? As a consequence of Mr. Bolton's diminished stature, he is the exact opposite of what we need at the UN."

Iran nuclear breakthrough? A temporary one, perhaps. Meantime, a strange and fascinating story from the LAT about Hezbollah loyalists raising $30 million in selling counterfeit goods in the US. Am told the MEK makes money in the US by running gas stations. Interesting, this concentration of these ideological diaspora communities in specialist economic (and sometimes criminal) pursuits.

Thursday Update: Here's the NYT headline: Day After Nuclear Deal, Iran Is Cleared to Start W.T.O. Process

Thune wavering on Bolton? Could this have something to do with base closings? Apparently, yes. More from the Post and the LAT. Meantime, Praktike links to former CIA and State counterterrorism expert Larry Johnson's speaking out against Bolton. Johnson's post, entitled, "Bolton and the art of cooking intelligence," is worth reading.

Bolton developments: Rockefeller Weighs In. And says Bolton improperly disclosed a US identity he was provided with by the NSA to a staff member on at least one occasion. As a Hill source writes:

...According to Senator Rockefeller, the NSA intercepts indicate a clear misuse of classified information by John Bolton:

"Based on the information available to him, Senator Rockefeller 'found no evidence that there was anything improper about Mr. Bolton’s ten requests for the identities of U.S. persons.' However, Senator Rockefeller did learn that Mr. Bolton may have violated NSA security procedures by sharing the name of a U.S. person, on at least one other occasion, with another State Department individual. The information was apparently then used to congratulate the State Department official cited in the report."

Senator Rockefeller writes Senators Lugar and Biden:

...I write in response to the Chairman’s April 28, 2005 letter asking that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence examine a number of intelligence-related issues that were raised during your Committee’s consideration of the nomination of Under Secretary John Bolton to be the United States Representative to the United Nations.

As you may be aware, I wrote to then-Director of the National Security Agency (NSA), Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden, on April 20, 2005, requesting any documentation related to Mr. Bolton’s requests for the identity of a U.S. person included in classified intelligence reports produced by the NSA.

In response, General Hayden provided Chairman Pat Roberts and me the opportunity to review all ten NSA documents containing the references to U.S. persons that generated Mr. Bolton’s requests. We were not permitted to retain these intelligence reports and other members of our Committee were not permitted access to them. Additionally, the actual U.S. identities provided by the NSA to Mr. Bolton were not shared with us.

State Department records indicate that Mr. Bolton requested the minimized identities of nineteen U.S. persons contained in ten NSA signals intelligence reports. These requests were processed by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). In each instance, the INR request to the NSA, on behalf of Mr. Bolton, included the justification that the identity of the U.S. person(s) was needed in order to better understand or assess the foreign intelligence value of the information contained in the intelligence report. This is the standard justification required by NSA in order for officials to request the identity of a U.S. person contained in a signals intelligence report.

Based on my personal review of these reports and the context in which U.S. persons are referenced in them, I found no evidence that there was anything improper about Mr. Bolton’s ten requests for the identities of U.S. persons.

It is important to note, however, that our Committee did not interview Mr. Bolton, so I am unable to answer directly the question of why he felt it was necessary for him to have the identity information in order to better understand the foreign intelligence contained in the report.

Furthermore, based on the information available to me, I do not have a complete understanding of Mr. Bolton’s handling of the identity information after he received it.

The Committee has learned during its interview of Mr. Frederick Fleitz, Mr. Bolton’s acting Chief of Staff, that on at least one occasion Mr. Bolton is alleged to have shared the un-minimized identity information he received from the NSA with another individual in the State Department. In this instance, the NSA memorandum forwarding the requested identity to State INR included the following restriction: “Request no further action be taken on this information without prior approval of NSA.” I have confirmed with the NSA that the phrase “no further action” includes sharing the requested identity of U.S. persons with any individual not authorized by the NSA to receive the identity.

In addition to being troubled that Mr. Bolton may have shared U.S. person identity information without required NSA approval, I am concerned that the reason for sharing the information was not in keeping with Mr. Bolton’s requested justification for the identity in the first place. The identity information was provided to Mr. Bolton based on the stated reason that he needed to know the identity in order to better under the foreign intelligence contained in the NSA report. According to Mr. Fleitz, Mr. Bolton used the information he was provided in one instance in order to seek out the State Department official mentioned in the report to congratulate him. This use of carefully minimized U.S. person identity information seems to be not in keeping with the rationale provided in Mr. Bolton’s request.

An interview of Mr. Bolton by your Committee may provide a more complete understanding of the extent to which he may have shared with others the nineteen U.S. person identities he requested and received from the NSA. I believe it is a matter that deserves more thorough attention.

I hope this information is of assistance to you.

Sincerely,

John D. Rockefeller IV

Vice Chairman

And another well-informed reader writes:

A reminder that, even though prospects have been looking good for a Bolton confirmation ever since Monday's filibuster compromise, this overall battle still has some legs. It appears that Dodd will force a cloture vote on the nomination; the question then is whether five Democrats are willing to join with the President in agreeing that the Senate should not complete its oversight responsibilities with regards to this nominee.

See this for more, and stay tuned. Bolton's nomination is now being debated on the Senate floor.

Wednesday 530pm Update: A Hill source reports:

The following is the expected procedure for the Bolton votes tomorrow:

Debate will continue until 6 pm tomorrow (Thursday). Final arguments will focus on the fact that the administration continues to stiff-arm the Senate with respect to legitimate requests for documents relevant to the Foreign Relations committee's review of John Bolton's fitness to serve as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. For several weeks the administration has refused to comply with the committee's request for materials pertaining to Syria policy and for the names on the NSA intercepts.

At 6pm tomorrow there will be a cloture vote. If there are 60 votes in favor of cloture, the Senate will move without any further debate to an up or down vote on John Bolton's confirmation. If there are not 60 votes in favor of cloture, the question of John Bolton's confirmation will be carried over until after next week's recess...

There will be no filibuster, but a majority of Democrats insist that the administration provide the Senate with all materials required to make a sound judgment about whether john bolton should or should not be confirmed. The 6pm vote will reveal whether a majority of the Senate believes the legislative branch is equal to or subservient to the executive branch.

Steve Clemons has a post you must read on the still outstanding unresolved matter of how Bolton was using requests for US identities from NSA intercepts, a subject in total limbo in the Senate Intelligence committee, which seems to be in a state of partial paralysis. More from Suzanne Nossel and Mark Goldberg.

China at the mall:

For the moment, the world's biggest mall is the six-million-square-foot Golden Resources Mall, which opened last October in northwestern Beijing. It has already sparked envy and competitive ambition among the world's big mall builders, who outwardly scoff at the Chinese ascent to mall-dom, even as they plot their own path to build on such scale in China.

How big is six million square feet? That mall, which is expected to cost $1.3 billion when completed, spans the length of six football fields and easily exceeds the floor space of the Pentagon, which at 3.7 million square feet is the world's largest office building. It is a single, colossal five-story building - with rows and rows of shops stacked on top of more rows and rows of shops - so large that it is hard to navigate among the 1,000 stores and the thousands of shoppers.

I've beheld just the provincial Chinese version of this mall phenomenon and it is pretty impressive even in that form. One wonders who can afford some of the merchandise we saw, but I guess even if only .001% of China wants to buy $500 Burberry trench coats, that's still 1.3 million Burberry trench coats sold, which is certainly irresistable encouragement to the developers of these malls that are bigger than the Pentagon.

Update: And while we're on the subject of China, it's a good time to bring to your attention a new China blog, China Matters, authored by a veteran Mandarin-speaking in-country China hand, who blogs anonymously for obvious reasons. Check it out.

Back to the Future? The NYT profiles the campaign of Iran elections forerunner, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani:

...Mr. Rafsanjani, 70, may best embody the absurdities of the election, on June 17, even if defending Iran by attacking the United States is a favorite tactic of any official dodging questions about domestic issues.

Political and social change is so popular that all candidates adopt the vocabulary and style of reform; the arch-conservative mayor of Tehran even showed up to register as a candidate in a remarkable, highly fashionable pink shirt. Yet none of the eight candidates allowed to run want to alter what many here see as their central problem: all power rests in the hands of an unaccountable, supreme religious leader who can overrule elected officials at whim.

Hence Iranians are expected to avoid the polls with the same zeal with which they flocked to them in the past two elections, when they arrived full of hope that their votes would produce real change.

And this:

The mere fact that Mr. Rafsanjani gave an interview to The New York Times - his first - and has spoken to a few other foreign news organizations is a sign that he seeks to convince voters that his reach stretches far beyond Iran.

The reformists' main props during the past eight years were the crushing election victories that swept Mr. Khatami to power in 1997 and 2001. Though he loosened the social climate, supporters were disappointed by constant assaults on civil liberties, like the shuttering of some 100 newspapers. Ayatollah Khamenei, who already controls the military, the judiciary and the state-run television and radio, is suspected of seeking to control the presidency next, after effectively defanging Parliament last year by eliminating all reformist candidates.

A combination of apathy and anger appears particularly rampant among the 66 percent of Iran's 70 million people who are under 30. A huge share of the 48 million eligible voters are expected to deny the government its traditional attempt to use a high turnout to argue that all Iranians support clerical rule...

"People are tired of lending a democratic face to this regime," said Abdullah Momeni, a student leader. "They don't think the regime will offer any kind of fundamental change to bring democracy."

What is the tipping point for an election to be considered illegitimate by the majority of a population? More Iranians calling for an elections boycott here.

Bolton's work erasing arms control agreements on display in slick State Department brochure at the current Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, the AP reports:

With a few keystrokes, an official U.S. brochure eliminated some historic arms-control deals, angered the champions of disarmament, and showed again that in the paper deluge of a global conference, what's left out can be as telling as what's put in...

The brochure, slickly produced by the State Department and distributed to hundreds of delegates, lists milestones in arms control since the 1980s, while touting reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. But the timeline omits a pivotal agreement, the 1996 treaty to ban nuclear tests, a pact negotiated by the Clinton administration and ratified by 121 nations but now rejected under President Bush.

Further along, the brochure skips over the year 2000 entirely, a snub of the treaty review conference that year, when the United States and other nuclear-weapons states committed to ``13 practical steps'' to achieve nuclear disarmament - including activating the test-ban treaty, negotiating a pact to ban production of bomb material, and ``unequivocally undertaking'' to totally eliminate their arsenals.

Bush administration officials now suggest the 2000 commitments are outdated. Other delegations reject that, however, demanding a reaffirmation of the goals in a final document at the current conference.

Few expect that, and they cite the blank spots in the brochure as another piece of evidence.

"Official disdain for these agreements seems to have turned into denial that they existed,'' said Joseph Cirincione, an arms-control specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who accused the State Department of rewriting history.

Sen. Voinovich's "Dear Colleague" letter excerpts:

...At a time when the United States strives to fight terrorism globally, to build a stable and free Iraq, to find a peaceful resolution to the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, to spread democracy in the place of oppressive regimes, and to enact needed reforms at the United Nations, it is imperative that we have the support of our friends and allies internationally. These strong international relationships must be built upon robust and effective public diplomacy.

I applaud our President for understanding this and for his leadership on U.S. public diplomacy. He and Secretary Rice have taken important steps to reach out to the international community and strengthen relationships. Additionally, I applaud the President’s decision to appoint Karen Hughes to enhance U.S. public diplomacy at the State Department, and recently to get even the First Lady involved in these important efforts to promote public diplomacy.

However, it is my concern that John Bolton’s nomination sends a negative message to the world community and contradicts the President’s efforts. In these dangerous times, we cannot afford to put at risk our nation’s ability to successfully wage and win the war on terror with a controversial and ineffective Ambassador to the United Nations. I worry that Mr. Bolton could make it more difficult for us to achieve the important U.N. reforms needed to restore the strength of the institution. I strongly believe that we need to reform the U.N., make it a viable institution for world security, and remove its anti-Israel bias. However, I question John Bolton’s ability to get this job done.

I know that you are very busy, but I would appreciate it if you would review my edited statement before the Foreign Relations Committee as to why I think we can do much better than John Bolton at the United Nations. In my closing words, I stated the following:

“Mr. Chairman, I am not so arrogant to think that I should impose my judgment and perspective of the U.S. position in the world community on the rest of my colleagues. We owe it to the President to give Mr. Bolton an up or down vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate. My hope is that, on a bipartisan basis, we send Mr. Bolton’s nomination to the floor without recommendation and let the Senate work its will. I would plead with my colleagues in the Senate, if this nomination gets to the floor, to consider the decision and its consequences carefully, to read all of the pertinent material, and to ask themselves several pertinent questions: Is John Bolton the best possible person to serve as the lead diplomat at the United Nations? Will he be able to pursue the needed reforms at the U.N., despite his damaged credibility? Will he share information with the right individuals and will he solicit information from the right individuals, including his subordinates, so that he can make the most informed decisions? Is he capable of advancing the President and Secretary of State’s efforts to advance our public diplomacy? Does he have the character, leadership, interpersonal skills, self discipline, common decency, and understanding of the chain of command to lead his team to victory? Will he recognize and seize opportunities to repair and strengthen relationships, promote peace, and uphold democracy -- as a team – with our fellow nations?”

If you have any comments or questions in regard to my deep concerns about this appointment, I would welcome them.

Sincerely,

George V. Voinovich

United States Senate

How does the Senate deal affect the Bolton nomination? Steve Clemons reports on several developments, including the Democratic Caucus discussion on Bolton today. And this:

One of the issues that still lies outstanding is the failure of the administration to provide the NSA intercepts as requested by Senators Lugar and Biden. Chris Dodd started the intercepts request process more than a month ago -- and still nothing has been received.

Rumor has it that Senator Rockefeller and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence staff have discovered patterns of conduct by Bolton and Fleitz that raise red flags. They are now "looking into" how Bolton and Fleitz used the intelligence from the NSA intercepts -- or bettter put, "misused it."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been standing by waiting form some sort of communication from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which Negroponte said would be communicating with SFRC on the intercepts. This has not happened.

Some senators on both sides will not vote to confirm Bolton simply on this issue -- all of the necessary information needed to make a decision is not in.

And in their LAT report on the Senate deal, Ron Brownstein and Janet Hook report today on the potential implications of Senate centrists testing their strength:

Their success in this case may embolden moderate Republicans to come together and challenge their party's conservative leaders on other issues.

I haven't been following this closely, but Mark Goldberg says it looks like votes on the EU constitution are slated to fail in Holland and France. What are the implications? I look forward to hearing from some of my EU readers.

Update: Dutch reader B writes:

Dear Laura,

You said you wanted to hear from EU readers about why the Dutch would vote against the upcoming EU constitution.

This is a rather tricky issue, but the way I see it, most of the people here are rather discontented with government lately and because the government is actively campaigning in favour of the constitution, people are doing the opposite.

The major problem is, that apart from some slogans and advertising phrases, hardly any education has been done on the meaning of this new treaty. The constitution is way too much to read for one person, so nobody does. The general idea most people have is that this constitution will largely end Dutch autonomy and transfer a lot of power to Brussels.

This has a largely short term historic background; the introduction of the Euro coincided with a slowdown of economic growth, which was consequently blamed on the Euro, which was 'caused' by the government.

So as more people have blogged, it's more an anti national government vote than an anti European vote. Personally I'm going to vote in favour of the constitution, I have great faith in our politicians, who are from a Dutch era not long ago, when issues instead of personal infamy ruled our dutch democracy...

More from Reader J in Holland:

There is a general tendency within continental western european states of declining public trust in the political elites and their coteries. This is at least the case in the Netherlands. Since the '80s privatisation and globalisation have been on the political agenda. However, the specifics have never been mentioned beforehand in the election campaigns, neither have the short and longterm consequences.
The gradual evaporation of public services, amenities and the wellfare state (health, social security, affordable housing and education) has not been felt immediately, but years later. Partly this has been blamed on the EU and partly because of general economic trends.

In short, social issues that are of prime importance to large segments of the electorate are not taken up by the mainstream political parties. Furthermore, the elite acts as if the electorate are peasants living in the middle ages; the elite knows what is good for the population and for the voters. We just have to convince them.(Business as usual).

This bodes ill when placed within the inflammable context of the threat of local islamistic fundamentalism (whether real of perceived), and continuing social and economic decline.

Voters are aware of developments in neighbouring countries. If, for example they have travelled to the UK they have seen the new standards of services like the railways. Higher prices, more taxpayers money allocated to the private firms then ever before and (of course) declining standards. However for years one of the main papers in the Netherlands has written in very positive terms about the privatised railways in the UK (more choice, etc. etc.).

Not many people here have had objections against the entry of countries of Eastern Europe into the EU. However, the financial costs of this extension is being paid by taxpayers in western Europe. The benefits of these transfers are not felt by the population here as jobs in the manufacturing industry disappear to these countries. And of course the political tune is & more cutbacks.

As one can see this is not what people want and if they can't have much influence on political agenda setting on the national level, how would that be on a European level. But what they can do is giving the elites a signal: enough is enough.

And from an American BR married to a Dutch woman living in Holland:

From this morning's Volkskrant, a moderate/left newspaper in the bNetherlands, Ja and Nee op-ed pieces on the European constitution.

The Ja article, written by a board member of a political think tank argues that without a constitution, the EU will lack the necessary unity to pursue and ensure its economic and geopolitical interests. America will continue to dominate, especially regarding military solutions to terrorism and rogue states. "A vote against the constitution is a vote for the American approach." Likewise, the EU will be weaker dealing with the growing Asian powers, particularly China and India.

The Nee article was written by Geert Wilders, the new Pim Fortuyn, populist spokesman for the discontented anti-government folks. He sees Dutch interests weakened within a European "super state." The Dutch pay relatively too much money to Brussels compared to the Germans and British. The Dutch will no longer "remain boss in its own land." Essential policies regarding asylum and immigration will be compromised. The reality is that Europeans didn't ask for this constitution. It's a construct of the political elite in search of a European people that doesn't exist.

My Dutch is limited, which prevents me from having nuanced conversations
with people here, but I can read the papers and follow the gist of things on TV. The Nee voters aren't that nuanced anyway. The Dutch are primarily interested in themselves these days, and fear what is happening to their small country and vulnerable culture. My wife, who is Dutch, will vote Ja, but I'm afraid that the tide is running the other way. I've always had mixed feelings about the EU, given the historic diversity of Europe, and I tend to agree that the EU is more politically elite than democratic. But this is a critical time, and a No vote will be a significant step backwards. The US needs both a strong partner and check on its power.

And from reader JW in France:

...Here in France the no vote has a slight lead in the polls over the yes but the result could go either way next Sunday. The leadership of the UMP party in power and that of the opposition socialists both support a yes vote in the name of European solidarity for peace and prosperity. Also they argue that it is important to maintain the possiblility of a coherent opposition to American hegemony and excesses when they occur. The no camp contains a good number of right wing extremists and people who remember the Vichy collaboration with the Nazi occupation with fondness, and others who simply rail that Europe is taking away French sovereignty. But there is also a different kind of no vote. As your Dutch reader pointed out, a lot of people feel that too much economic power is transferred from their own country to Brussels. Right now in France unemployment is 10% and rising, and multinational companies continue to outsource jobs that used to be French. The new constitution will do nothing to stop this trend; it requres "a highly competitive social market economy," and any social policies must respect "the need to maintain the competitiveness of the Union economy." (Article III-209)

I had originally planned to vote yes because I have always been for European solidarity, but was shocked by how an unfettered free market economy is written in stone by this constitution just about impossible to amend, so now I plan to vote no. The constitution is very undemocratic. The only elected body, the Parliament, has very limited powers, and none at all in the areas of defense or monetary policy. The powerful executive is not elected.

Not only is it "way too much to read," as your Dutch reader wrote, it also contradicts itself in key areas. For example it outlaws the death penalty (Article II-62) but in the fine print of the Final Act, there is the "explanation" that it can be imposed by any member state "in time of war or imminent threat of war." (Declaration 12) A not so nice example of how things are with this constitution. I have less faith in our politicians than your Dutch reader. They will be able to continue to blame "Europe" for their own failures to implement policies the people want, which is why they wrote the constitution this way in my opinion.

Hmmm. People want "Europe" but they don't love this constitution, or the rules being made from Brussels...

Steve Clemons and Matt Yglesias are still looking for signs of life from the Senate Intelligence committee.

Interesting WaPo article on deputy national security advisor, J.D. Crouch, and his evolving positions on US approach to North Korea. And the LAT's Alyssa Rubin and Sebastian Rotella preview the upcoming round of talks between Iran and the European troika, in Geneva this week.

Apologies for the light posting, I was busy this weekend. Just let me say I was struck at the jampacked AIPAC policy Iran presentation today how much the outlyer position of democratic revolution being the solution to US concerns about a nuclear Iran has become a mainstream position, advocated by all on the panel today. Interesting and brilliant work by the idea's policy entrepreneuers to move this front and center, whether you agree it can be realized on a speedy timeframe or not.

Just Out: My new piece on the FBI investigation of the Franklin case in the Nation.

Steve Clemons has the latest on Bolton and the NSA intercepts, which apparently remain a complete mystery to the members of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, despite a joint letter from the chair and vice chair of the committee requesting access to that information. It turns out not even the chairs of the Senate Select Intelligence committee got anything approaching a complete look at the intercepts either.

Newsweek reports on the controversial formerly Saddam Hussein-supported Iranian terrorist group, the MEK, including highlights from a new Human Rights Watch report on the cultish group that some US hawks believe Washington should work with. From Newsweek:

Paranoid about defectors and possible infiltrators from the Tehran regime's intelligence apparatus, in the l990s, according to Human Rights Watch, MEK leadership ordered a series of stringent "security clearances" in which "many" members were arrested by group organizers and interrogated and even imprisoned in special buildings inside the boundaries of MEK camps in Saddam-ruled Iraq. Human Rights Watch says the testimony of former MEK prisoners paints "a grim picture of how the organization treated its members, particularly those who held dissenting opinions or expressed an intent to leave the organization."

Witnesses contacted by Human Rights Watch reported two deaths during the
course of MEK internal interrogations and other cases of lengthy imprisonment. One MEK detainee interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Mohammad Hussein Sobhani, claimed to have spent eight and a half years in solitary confinement in MEK detention facilities after he started raising questions about the leadership's policies. He said he was beaten on 11 occasions with wooden sticks and leather belts. Another former MEK member interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Farhad Javaheri-Yar, claimed to have been imprisoned in solitary confinement by the group for five years.

Other witnesses told Human Rights Watch claimed it was the practice of MEK interrogators to tie thick ropes around prisoners' necks and drag them along the ground. One witness told investigators: "Sometimes prisoners returned to the cell with extremely swollen necks—their head and neck as big as a pillow." In a statement accompanying its investigative report, Joe Stork, a Human Rights Watch expert on the Middle East, commented: "The Iranian government has a dreadful record on human rights. But it would be a mistake to promote an opposition group that is responsible for serious human rights abuses.”

Update: More from Justin Delabar.

NYT:

Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.

"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"

At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

The accompanying interactive video is here.

A sketch by Thomas V. Curtis, a former Reserve M.P. sergeant, showing how Dilawar was chained to the ceiling of his cell. (credit: NYT)

The world isn't flat yet. It's hard to imagine that the US would ever decree what the air conditioner temperature would be set at in public and private offices, as it will be this summer in Japan, the birthplace of the Kyoto protocols. A rather sweltering 82 degrees.

Take that, Leo Strauss. This should make a few readers chuckle: The Forward's Ami Eden asks, is Darth Vader the galaxy's original neoconservative?

So, after two trilogies and countless merchandising opportunities, what have we learned about the nature of evil and the dark side of the Force? ...

To paraphrase neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol, an evil Sith lord is a noble Jedi knight mugged by reality.

Or, to put it in more contemporary terms, Darth Vader is the galaxy's first neocon.

A stretch, it is not. Just ask Washington's most influential neoconservative journal, The Weekly Standard, which published an article in 2002 defending the takeover of the galaxy by Darth Vader and his evil master, Emperor Palpatine.

"The truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad," wrote Jonathan V. Last, online editor of The Weekly Standard. "The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good."

Ha! Darth Vader is one thing, but does Star Wars explain Ahmad Chalabi, and his relationship with pro-Tehran hardliners and those in the Pentagon urging the overthrow of the mullahs? Or do we need to wait for the sequel? And could Darth Vader be anyone but Dick Cheney?

Numerous readers have written in to say I must read Riverbend of Baghdad Burning on this or that topic, and finally, I got around to it. Why have I not been reading her regularly I don't know, but it's really worth your time. She's just riveting on the ominous uptick in violence in Iraq the past few weeks about which one just doesn't know what to say:

...The last two weeks have been violent. The number of explosions in Baghdad alone is frightening. There have also been several assassinations- bodies being found here and there. It's somewhat disturbing to know that corpses are turning up in the most unexpected places. Many people will tell you it's not wise to eat river fish anymore because they have been nourished on the human remains being dumped into the river. That thought alone has given me more than one sleepless night. It is almost as if Baghdad has turned into a giant graveyard.

The latest corpses were those of some Sunni and Shia clerics- several of them well-known. People are being patient and there is a general consensus that these killings are being done to provoke civil war. Also worrisome is the fact that we are hearing of people being rounded up by security forces (Iraqi) and then being found dead days later- apparently when the new Iraqi government recently decided to reinstate the death penalty, they had something else in mind.

But back to the explosions. One of the larger blasts was in an area called Ma'moun, which is a middle class area located in west Baghdad. It's a relatively calm residential area with shops that provide the basics and a bit more. It happened in the morning, as the shops were opening up for their daily business and it occurred right in front of a butchers shop. Immediately after, we heard that a man living in a house in front of the blast site was hauled off by the Americans because it was said that after the bomb went off, he sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman.

I didn't think much about the story- nothing about it stood out: an explosion and a sniper- hardly an anomaly. The interesting news started circulating a couple of days later. People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away.

The bombs are mysterious. Some of them explode in the midst of National Guard and near American troops or Iraqi Police and others explode near mosques, churches, and shops or in the middle of sougs. One thing that surprises us about the news reports of these bombs is that they are inevitably linked to suicide bombers. The reality is that some of these bombs are not suicide bombs- they are car bombs that are either being remotely detonated or maybe time bombs. All we know is that the techniques differ and apparently so do the intentions. Some will tell you they are resistance. Some say Chalabi and his thugs are responsible for a number of them. Others blame Iran and the SCIRI militia Badir.

In any case, they are terrifying. If you're close enough, the first sound is a that of an earsplitting blast and the sounds that follow are of a rain of glass, shrapnel and other sharp things. Then the wails begin- the shrill mechanical wails of an occasional ambulance combined with the wail of car alarms from neighboring vehicles and finally the wail of people trying to sort out their dead and dying from the debris...

Go read.

More on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Democratic and Republican member reports on the Bolton nomination and the uncertain timing of a full Senate vote from the NYT's Douglas Jehl.

There are so many moving targets on the judges battle in Congress and how any and all of them may affect the timing of any full Bolton vote on the Senate floor, it's hard for me at the moment to play any role except that of spectator. Congressional procedure is not a topic I know anything about, although I'm willing to argue the substantive reasons against voting for Bolton any time. Fortunately, there's Steve Clemons who's good for both. Check out his several latest posts on how the Bolton vote may be subsumed, or may not, by the judges battle, which has just started with debate on the reptilian Priscilla Owens. He's predicting a hold on the Bolton vote until next week, but everything could change very quickly. Meantime, Tapped has some good running coverage of the Senate judges debate on its site. Here's live coverage from C-Span 2.

I have not followed this story closely but can someone tell me what is the source of Norm Coleman's documents on Galloway? He says they're different than the ones provided to the Daily Telegraph that were later proven fraudulent, but could they be different documents, same source? Anyone heard about any organization in Iraq in the habit of providing lots and lots of documents?

CBS cancels 60 Minutes II, the NYT reports.

Fox in the Henhouse: DC NPR affiliate WAMU is featuring Corporation for Public Broadcasting chair Ken Tomlinson on its Dianne Rehme talk show this morning....Tomlinson was recently reported by the NYT to advocate that NPR stations broadcast less news and more music.

Some stats:
$450 million Congressional money for public broadcasting
80% for TV
20% for Radio
Most money Congress appropriates for public broadcasting flows from CPB to local stations
Accounts for about 7% of operating funds for stations like WAMU or WETA

Rehme: How do you determine balance?

Tomlinson: Balance is not rocket science. Balance is to make sure within a program or an evening various points of view are heard...

Rehme: Trends in public support for public broadcasting?

Tomlinson: We should say public broadcasting should strive to represent all points of view. My concern two years ago was the Bill Moyers show on Friday night (Now). I sought to encourage creation of programs to balance that show. I don't want to continue to fight Bill Moyers. He does represent a libera point of view, I think we should have a program with the conservative point of view and let the people decide. There was an initial disagreement between me and head of PBS (Pat Mitchell) about the need to balance Moyers' show. After that disagreement ended, we moved on.

Rehme: Of course two things happened: Bill Moyers resigned from his position as host of NOW and the CPB gave $5 million to fund the new program with the conservative bent hosted by Paul Gigot (of the WSJ)...

Rehme: you hired polling firms to learn about public perceptions of NPR and public TV stations. What were results?

Tomlinson: The polls were generally good news for public broadcasting. McNeill/Lehrer was the original 'we report you decide' news program....While polls were positive, there were indications of concerns about balance. But it's a problem that's highly correctable. It's one of those evergreen issues we're always going to have to face.

Rehme: Am I incorrect that a majority of the US adult population does not believe that the news and information programming on public broadcasting is biased? In fact, the plurality of Americans indicates there is no apparent bias one way or other, while approximately one in five detects a liberal bias, and one in ten detects a conservative bias?

Tomlinson: That is a proper reflection of the poll.

Rehme: Then how does that lead us to believe that we must have something to balance a program like Bill Moyers?

Tomlinson: Well do you agree that Bill Moyers was liberal advocacy journalism?

...

Tomlinson: Last year PBS ran a three part series on oil. One part was on drilling for oil. Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens wrote CPB and said that program was not balanced!

Someone wrote and said NPR is anti-Israel. A single opinion from a member of Congress - leading Democrat from California (Brad Sherman from CA).

So I thought finding a means of assessing journalism is difficult. But why don't we find a way when people are concerned about alleged bias, why don't we create a situation to find a place where people can turn to with their complaint and have it dealt with professionally.

Rehme: Doesn't that go against the initial commitment of the CPB to provide a firewall between the Congress and public broadcasting, by bringing in ombudsmen who will in fact be political in nature of how they assess?

Rehme: On this program, we have always tried to represent the Palestnian and the Israeli perspective. And on each program we have been criticized by both sides. It (bias) is in the ear of the beholder...

Tomlinson: Let these things be dealt with on a case by case basis.

Rehme: Any complaints NPR was anti-Arab?

Tomlinson: All complaints that day in open hearing were that NPR was anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian reporting.

Rehme: Did that not surprise you?

Tomlinson: Interest groups become activated...I always say the best way to mount a campaign among liberals in this country is to say conservatives are trying to take over public broadcasting.

In the Jewish community there's been a lot of activism on this issue...

Rehme: How unusual was it for CPB to fund the new Paul Gigot/WSJ program at $5 million?

Tomlinson: We fund lots of new programs....they have to find sponsors after one year....

Rehme: You've already said Now with Bill Moyers was monitored, now should the new WSJ program be monitored?

Tomlinson: NOW was monitored only because a key leader was saying it was ok. We know WSJ is going to reflect a conservative point of view (so it won't be monitored) (It will essentially be side by side with NOW that represents a liberal point of view). Other programs will not reflect a conservative point of view. Balance will be built into the framework of the show (The Lehrer news hour)....

Rehme: A listener emails....the two people chosen for ombudsman Ken Body who endorsed GOP candidate Mitch Daniels in his bid for governor of Indiana and William Schultz, avowed conservative.....

Tomlinson: These people are professionals...I knew Body in a different point of his life when he was with the New Republic....

Listener/Caller: I think it's the investigative reporting by NPR and PBS that is in the eyesight/cross hairs of Mr. Tomlinson....

Rep. Ben Sherman (D-Ca): NPR should monitor/balance the content of its individual speakers, not that it has two Jewish speakers, one Arab speaker....

Rehme: CBP chair has told board that NPR should direct money away from national news broadcasts to classical music programs...

Tomlinson: We've had discussions...But we're not going to have any "redirection." We're considering our consultations with stations...We're going to try to provide some emphasis on local news...Some common sense encouragement of cultural programming

Rehme: But is that really the function of the CPB to define what stations put on their air by virtue of the money you allot for example to classical music as opposed to news?

Tomlinson: Some of that money may flow in the future to cultural programs, to local news.

Rehme: Classical program across the country has lost listeners, lost support, whereas news program has gained support, gained listeners, by virtue of its news program. So I ask again why would CPB be directing any monies towards the development of classical music programs when most stations have moved away from that?

Tomlinson: Music programming is very important in the history of public radio.

Rehme: It used to be.

Tomlinson: Power of musical programming is very important. Where reasonable we should encourage the development of music programming....

CJR on Newsweek:

There is a final irony. Representing the government that sent an entire nation to war based on false premises concerning weapons of mass destruction, State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said at a briefing in Washington that "It's appalling, really, that an article that was unfounded to begin with has caused so much harm, including loss of life."

More here, here and here.

The horrible fate of the former INC official Mithal Al-Alusi who visited Israel last year. Kicked out of Ahmad Chalabi's INC for this act, his two sons have since been murdered. The fools who support Chalabi should speak up about Chalabi's appalling venal opportunistic utterly typical cowardice in this matter.

Eric Umansky writes about avoidable tragedies in Iraq, and how checkpoint procedures could be changed with "achingly common sense" measures -- such as signs and a public education campaign -- that would save innocent lives. Worth reading.

Israel's ambassador to Washington Danny Ayalon may be recalled, the papers report. Ripples from the confusing Franklin affair, you wonder? Nope. Apparently, and I kid you not, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and his wife Judy Shalom wanted to sack Amb. Ayalon's personal secretary "because he failed to organize a meeting between Judy Shalom and Madonna during the singer's visit to Israel." A full investigation is being conducted, Ha'aretz reports.

Harvard intelligence historian Ernest May has a story that looks well worth our time in The New Republic, on how the 9/11 commission, set up to fail, managed to succeed.

Insane:

In one of several points of conflict in recent months, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates federal funds for public radio and television, is considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR news programs for evidence of bias, a corporation spokesman said on Friday.

The corporation's board has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations.

The CPB wants NPR listeners to have access to less news? Is this like in the Soviet Union when they broadcast Tchaikovsky to cover up the death of leaders? They want NPR listeners to stop being so well-informed? This is a stated goal of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Insane.

Perhaps with the $1 billion granted it by McDonalds' heir Joan Kroc, NPR can tell the CPB chair to kindly email his ideas to the intern who handles that sort of thing.

Kevin Drum passes along quite an interesting scooplet today from Jeanne D'Arc: According to Seymour Hersh, no less than George W. Bush has intervened to ask Jordan to drop charges against Ahmad Chalabi. But Drum also informs us that the proud Chalabi won't accept a pardon. So much for all of the President's hard lobbying work on his behalf!

Since when does the State Department think it has the prerogative to resist Congressional oversight, advice and consent? Barbara Boxer is absolutely right to hold any debate on Bolton 'til State complies with all information requests put forward by the Senate committee mandated to vet Bolton's candidacy:

Boxer said the Democrats want to know if Bolton sought the names of U.S. officials whose communications were intercepted by U.S. intelligence, details on the private business activities of a Bolton assistant, Matthew Friedman, and the circumstances of a tough Bolton speech on Syria.

And those are very interesting questions. The FT says Bolton would be a bad choice for the job.

Plame Perjury Investigation? David Ignatius reports.
(Via Kevin Drum).

The conservative narrative about why Bolton getting to the UN is so important to them is really quite fascinating. Is it about winning? Vindication of the Iraq war? Judges? Party discipline? UN bashing? It's surprisingly thin on why Bolton would be any good. Here's Eric Pfeiffer from NRO:

Conversely, should Bolton’s nomination fail, it would be a strong setback for President Bush’s foreign policy. Democrats and many in the media would treat it as no less than a rebuke of Iraq’s liberation and the Bush doctrine of promoting freedom abroad. American critics in the United Nations would be able to cite Bolton’s defeat as evidence that even the American people are dissatisfied with America’s image and role on the world stage.

Of course, even while it remains in limbo, the fight over Bolton's nomination has already brought to a world stage the discomfort many Americans, moderate Republicans and Democrats have with this White House's inappropriate choice of this most unilateralist, extremist, abusive figure to represent the country at the UN. And it didn't have to be all or nothing, it doesn't have to be all or nothing, except that that the White House insists on making it so. As Sen. Voinovich and Steve Clemons and many others have made clear, there are plenty of eminently qualified people -- conservative, no-nonsense, reform-minded -- that Bush could have and still could nominate, who could inspire a team and institute the administration's goals for UN reform. But there's a degree of fixation not on Bolton's qualities, but on sheer not losing, that really seems to drive Bolton's supporters.

Ron Brownstein captures that today (via Clemons):

Like so many of Bush's initiatives, the nomination of the blustery Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations energized conservatives, outraged Democrats and squeezed moderates in both parties.

And as he has many times before, Bush won the legislative fight by the narrowest of margins -- maintaining just enough support from Sen. George V. Voinovich of Ohio and other conflicted Republicans on the committee to overcome uniform Democratic opposition and move the nomination to the floor on a party-line vote.

In that way, the vote demonstrated again Bush's willingness to live on the political edge -- to accept achingly narrow margins in Congress and at the ballot box to pursue ambitious changes that sharply divide the country.

As the GOP becomes increasingly dominated by extremists and barren of moderates, the disconnect between its politicos and the silent majority of America's moderate constituents will become more pronounced, and seems poised to become its own political dynamic. "It's like a Soviet military parade," historian David Greenberg writes of the Bolton latest. "Displaying power makes people fear your power." And revolt. More here.

Dana Milbank:

It was, perhaps, not the ideal slogan for confirmation: Bolton -- not a criminal.

And just below:

The difference, of course, was Voinovich, who challenged Bush and GOP leaders in a way few of his colleagues have dared. "What message are we sending to the world community?" he asked about Bolton. Though he said that "all things being equal" he would support a presidential nominee, "all things are not equal." Responding to a main White House argument, he added: "To those who say a vote against John Bolton is against reform of the U.N., I say, 'Nonsense.' " Lugar held a thin smile while Voinovich talked. Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), who took a political risk by backing Bolton, stared at his water glass and looked as if he were about to cry. Bolton defender Norm Coleman (R-Minn) fidgeted in his chair; Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), another Bolton fan, smirked...

Democrats could not praise their newfound ally enough. "I want to tell my colleague from Ohio what a privilege it is to serve with him," said Sen. Christopher Dodd (Conn.). Voinovich smiled appreciatively when Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) observed: "Probably our saying something nice about him puts him in a difficult situation."

Go read the rest.

So, Lugar knew in advance that Voinovich was going to call for forwarding the nomination without a recommendation, and he facilitated that, according to the LA Times, giving Voinovich a most prominent place to steer the day's proceedings that way. Small retribution against the White House for its heavy handed tactics in pushing a nomination many GOP moderates found misguided?

Chris Nelson on where we are on Bolton:

After 10 days of really hardball politics from the White House and Republican partisans, it’s hard to say who was more surprised...Democrats, or the White House...but enough Republicans are still showing enough signs of discomfort at the idea of John Bolton representing the United States at the United Nations that his defeat on the Senate Floor remains a real possibility. Today’s Foreign Relations Committee action may be confusing to outsiders...basically, Bolton’s nomination is still alive because it was sent to the Floor for an “up or down vote”, so that’s a “win” for the White House, right? Not exactly...the move came with a “no recommendation” which is highly unusual, and almost unheard of for a nominee of the controlling party.

What has Dems feeling pretty good about their chances, IF the Bolton nomination is not withdrawn by the White House, is that while Dems led the fight, it was a Republican, Ohio’s George Voinovitch, who cited substantive concerns in blocking the committee from approving Bolton. And the former Mayor of Cleveland clearly not alone. Listening to the debate gives one a definite sense that other Republicans, including ‘08 GOP presidential hopeful Chuck Hagel, possible party-switcher Lincoln Chaffee (if bullied by fellow Republicans), and Lisa Murkowski...all remain open to persuasion. So suddenly the math looks dangerous for Bolton, since only two more Republicans would be needed to have him lose an up/down Floor vote...if it gets to that point.

There is talk today that Dems might resort to a filibuster (freezing ALL Senate business with stalling tactics) if it looks like they can’t beat Bolton on the merits. We don’t think so...from a partisan Democratic standpoint, the “nuclear option” is best reserved for an issue a whole lot more important than Bolton...that is, the federal judge approval process. Our sources feel it would take really active Administration stonewalling on still-pending information requests before Dems seriously considered anything like a filibuster on Bolton, and it seems clear they understand why a filibuster would be both risky and unnecessary.

First, Dems clearly feel pretty good about how they managed to oppose Bolton on the merits, and to avoid making this “purely partisan”, thanks to Voinovitch and the others; second, Dems continue to think Chairman Lugar privately regrets the Bolton nomination, and that today’s result may well cause him seek to persuade the White House (or Bolton) to pull the plug in favor of an acceptable conservative...say, current Undersecretary for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky; third, the battle for more information isn’t over yet...Dems plan to keep up the pressure on State and the Administration to hand over classified documents which may show genuine misfeasance by Bolton in the use or misuse of intelligence...and thus make it easier for more Republicans to come out against him.

Just mentioning the popular Dobriansky may be the kiss of death for her chances, but her “merits” are being talked up by Dems (and quietly, some Republicans), and that includes the argument that “surely conservatives deserve a better candidate than Bolton? Is he really their BEST?” This is followed by noting that most “support” for Bolton is of “the President deserves support” variety...not exactly a ringing personal endorsement.

And on the merits, there’s increasing attention being paid to former Secretary of State Powell’s refusal to endorse Bolton. The implication is now raised that Powell’s move isn’t just personal, but professional, based on a negative assessment of Bolton’s performance on behalf of his primary responsibility...non-proliferation. Newsweek currently has a tough critique of Bolton’s failure to get the US properly positioned for the NPT crisis with Iran, and for his mishandling of the battle over IAEA director ElBaradei’s reappointment, just when the US desperately needs the IAEA, and its director, on its side. Newsweek even quotes expert observers who say Bolton wasn’t the key man behind his claimed triumph, the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) against N. Korea...because he was so busy bullying and posturing that it was the NSC’s Bob Joseph who did the heavy lifting on PSI.

A gloomier take from Slate's Fred Kaplan, who thinks all Bolton needed to do today was "survive." But he gets the disappointment that is Chafee just right:

Chafee took over the seat when his father, John Chafee, died in 1999. John Chafee, a Marine veteran who fought at Guadalcanal and in Korea, was a principled moderate and internationalist who served 23 years as a Republican senator for a Democratic state. Lincoln Chafee, who faces his first real vote next year, may go down, not because he voted for Bolton but because he did so knowing full well that it was the wrong thing to do.

It takes enormous self-deception to believe that John Bolton is truly qualified—much less the "best man"—for this job. He has long held the United Nations in contempt. He has disparaged the legitimacy of international law (the basis for enforcing U.N. resolutions). As an undersecretary of state in Bush's first term, he repeatedly sought the removal of intelligence analysts who dared to disagree with him. He was such a loose cannon that Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state, forbade him to say anything in public without prior approval. A half-dozen officials, most of them Republicans who served in this administration, say that Bolton would make—in the words of Colin Powell's chief of staff—"an abysmal ambassador."

Voinovich said today that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured him that Bolton would be firmly supervised in his new job. Voinovich wondered, "Why in the world would you want to send somebody up to the U.N. that has to be supervised?"

Another good summary of the day, and the fight to come, from AP's Barry Schweid.

Reported Without Recommendation. Go read this. Steve Clemons makes a very important point. The SFRC will not be recommending Bolton for nomination. They will vote to forward the nomination for a vote to the full Senate floor without their recommendation, e.g. neutral. That's quite a turn of events if you think about it.

Lugar: the goal to report the nomination without recommendation.

10-8. Nomination is reported. Without Recommendation.

And this should be the take-away headline:

Republican Senator Declines to Support Bolton

This is good too:

Panel Declines to Recommend Bolton but Sends Vote to Senate

John R. Bolton suffered a setback in his quest to become ambassador to the United Nations today when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee declined to recommend him even as it voted to send the nomination to the full Senate for consideration...

Meantime, a very well informed reader writes that Bolton's vote on the full Senate floor could easily be subsumed by a much larger battle:

Agree with Clemons that we are at the mid-way point of a long journey. Voinovich's statements will provide cover for other Republicans to vote against the nomination on the floor, including Hagel and Chafee. But this nomination is about to be subsumed by a much larger battle.

Reid and other Democrats have vowed to bring the Senate to a halt for all but urgent national security issues if the Senate GOP exercises the nuclear option on judicial nominations. Urgent issues most assuredly does not include the Bolton confirmation. Chris Nelson and others have argued that Democrats will not filibuster Bolton because they want to save their ammunition for the judges. That assessment was correct so long as the Bolton floor vote took place before Frist exploded the nuclear option.

But, as all accounts indicate and if no compromise emerges, Frist will move for a parliamentary ruling next week. Once that occurs, all hell will break lose and the Senate Democrats will not allow the Bolton nomination to come to a floor vote this year.

In short, because of the likely timing of the nuclear option, I suspect the only way we will see John Bolton in Turtle Bay will be through a recess appointment, an unprecedented step for a Cabinet-level nomination.

Go read Steve Clemons on "breaking through the psychological warfare." You and I may have been a tad skeptical only yesterday, but now we can indeed believe him that we are at mile 16 of a 26.2 mile marathon, and it looks set to go down to even that wire.

Voinovich Makes the Case Against Bolton

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First let me take this opportunity to thank you and your staff for your graciousness and hard work on this nomination. You have made strong arguments in favor of the nominee throughout this process. Additionally, thank you for providing all of the members of this committee with timely information related to Mr. Bolton. I believe that the inquiry has been fair and exhaustive. I am confident that I have enough information to cast my vote today. Again, I appreciate your staff's hard work, as well as the administration's efforts.

Since our last meeting on this subject, I have pored over hundreds of pages of testimony, have spoken to dozens or so of individuals regarding their experiences, interactions and thoughts about John Bolton. Most importantly, in addition to the meeting that I had with Mr. Bolton prior to the official business meeting that we had on his nomination, I once again met with Mr. Bolton this week personally to share my concerns and to listen carefully to his thoughts.

After great thought and consideration, I have based my decision on what I think is the bigger picture. Frankly, there is a particular concern that I have about this nomination, and it involves the big picture of U.S. public diplomacy.

It was not long ago when America's love of freedom was a force of inspiration to the world and America was admired for its democracy, generosity and its willingness to help others in need of protection. Today, the United States is criticized for what the world calls arrogance, unilateralism and for failing to listen and to seek the support of its friends and allies. There has been a drastic change in the attitude of our friends and allies in such organizations as the United Nations and NATO and in the countries of leaders that we need to rely upon for help.

I discovered this last November when I was in London with people in the Parliament there. I found that to be the case when we visited the NATO meeting in Italy, that things have really changed in the last several years. It troubles me deeply that the U.S. is perceived this way in a world community, because the United States will face a steeper challenge in achieving its objectives without their support.

We will face more difficulties in conducting the war on terrorism, promoting peace and stability worldwide and building democracies without the help from our friends to share the responsibilities, leadership and costs.
To achieve these objectives, public diplomacy must once again be of high importance. If we cannot win over the hearts and minds of the world community and work together as a team, our goals will be more difficult to achieve. Additionally, we will be unable to reduce the burden on our own resources. The most important of these resources are the human resources, the lives of the men and women of our armed forces, who are leaving their families every day to serve their country overseas.

Just this last Tuesday we passed an $82 billion supplemental bill for our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is clear that the costs of this war are rising all the time, and they are not expected to go down any time soon.
There are not many allies standing up to join us in bearing the cost of these wars, particularly Iraq. We need the help of other countries to share the financial burden that is adding to our national debt and the human resource burden that our armed forces, National Guardsmen and contractors are bearing so heavily now, including the deaths of over 1,500 American servicemen and women.

And the key to this, I believe, is public diplomacy.

Mr. Chairman, I applaud the president and secretary of state for understanding that public diplomacy is an important objective and beginning this new term with an emphasis on repairing relationships. I applaud the president and Secretary Rice for reaching out to our friends in the world community and articulating that the United States does respect international law and protocol. And I also applaud the president's decision to appoint Karen Hughes to help take the lead in this effort. Though the United States may have differences with our friends at times and though we may need to be firm with our positions, it is important to send a message that we're willing to sit down, talk about them, discuss our reasoning and to work for solutions. The work of the president and Secretary of State Rice is a move in the right direction.

But what message are we sending to the world community when in the same breath we have sought to appoint an ambassador to the United Nations who himself has been accused of being arrogant, of not listening to his friends, of acting unilaterally, of bullying those who do not have the ability to properly defend themselves? These are the very characteristics that we're trying to dispel in the world community.

We must understand that next to the president, the vice president, secretary of state, the next most important, prominent public diplomat is our ambassador to the United Nations. It is my concern that the confirmation of John Bolton would send a contradictory and negative message to the world community about U.S. intentions. I'm afraid that his confirmation will tell the world that we're not dedicated to repairing our relationship or working as a team, but that we believe only someone with sharp elbows can deal properly with the international community.

I want to make it clear that I do believe that the U.N. needs to be reformed if it's to be relevant in the 21st century. I do believe we need to pursue its transformation aggressively, sending the strong message that corruption's not going to be tolerated. The corruption that occurred under the oil-for-food program made it possible for Saddam's Iraq to discredit the U.N. and undermine the goals of its members. This must never happen again, and severe reforms are needed to strengthen the organization. And, yes, I believe that it will be necessary to take a firm position so we can succeed, but it will take a special individual to succeed at this endeavor, and I have great concerns with the current nominee and his ability to get the job done.

And to those who say a vote against John Bolton is against reform of the U.N., I say, nonsense. There are many other people who are qualified to go to the United Nations that can get the job done for our country. Frankly, I'm concerned that Mr. Bolton would make it more difficult for us to achieve the badly needed reforms to this outdated institution. I believe that there could even be more obstacles to reform if Mr. Bolton is sent to the United Nations than if he were another candidate.

Those in the international community who do not want to see the U.N. reform will act as a roadblock, and I fear that Mr. Bolton's reputation will make it easier for them to succeed. I believe that some member nations in the U.N. will use Mr. Bolton as part of their agenda to further question the integrity and credibility of the United States and to reinforce their negative U.S. propaganda, and there's a lot of it out there today.

Another reason I believe Mr. Bolton is not the best candidate for the job is his tendency to act without regard for the views of others and without respect for the chain of command.

We have heard that Mr. Bolton has a reputation for straying off message on occasion. Ambassador Hubbard testified that the tone of Mr. Bolton's speech on North Korea hurt rather than helped efforts to achieve the president's objectives. According to several respectable sources, Mr. Bolton strayed off message too often and had to be called on the carpet quite often to be reprimanded. In fairness, those sources said that once reprimanded, Mr. Bolton got back on track, but that he needs to be kept on a short leash. However, this leaves me a very uneasy feeling.

Who is to say that Mr. Bolton will not continue to stray off message as ambassador to the U.N.?

Who is to say he will not hurt rather than help U.S. relations with the international community and our desire to reform the U.N.?

When discussing all these concerns with Secretary Rice, John Bolton's propensity to get off message, his lack of interpersonal skills, his tendency to abuse others who disagree with him, I was informed by the secretary of state that she understood all these things and in spite of them still feels that John Bolton is the best choice and that she would be in frequent communication with him and he would be closely supervised. My private thought at the time, and I should have expressed it to her, is: Why in the world would you want to send somebody up to the U.N. that has to be supervised?

I'm also concerned about Mr. Bolton's interpersonal skills. Mr. Chairman, I understand there will be several vacant senior posts on the staff when Mr. Bolton arrives in his new position. As a matter of fact, I understand all the senior people – or five of them – are leaving right now. For example, Anne Patterson, who is highly regarded, is moving to another position. And I've been told by several people that, if he gets there, to be successful, he's going to need somebody like Anne Patterson to get the job done for him. As such, Mr. Bolton's going to face a challenge. These people are gone right now. He's going to have to find some new ones. But his challenge right now is to inspire, lead and manage a new team, a staff of 150 individuals that he will need to rely on to get the job done. We have all witnessed the testimony and observations related to Mr. Bolton's interpersonal and management skills. I have concerns about Mr. Bolton's ability to inspire and lead a team so that it can be as effective as possible in completing the important task before him.

And I'm not the only one.

I understand that 59 U.S. diplomats who served under administrations from both sides of the aisle sent a letter to the committee saying that Mr. Bolton's the wrong man for the job. I want to note that the interview given by Colin Powell's chief of staff, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, has said that Mr. Bolton would make an abysmal ambassador, that he is, quote, incapable of listening to people and taking into account their views. I would also like to highlight the words of another person that I highly respect who worked with Mr. Bolton and told me that if Mr. Bolton were confirmed, he'd be OK for a short time, but within six months his poor interpersonal skills and lack of self-discipline would cause major problems.

Additionally, I wanted to note my concern that Colin Powell, the person to whom Mr. Bolton answered to over the last four years, was conspicuously absent from a letter signed by former secretaries of state recommending Mr. Bolton's confirmation. He's the one that had to deal with him on a day-to-day basis. He's the one that's more capable of commenting about whether or not he's got the ability to get the job done and his name was not on that letter.

We are facing an era of foreign relations in which the choice for our ambassador to the United Nations should be one of the most thoughtful decisions we make. The candidate needs to be both a diplomat and a manager. A manager is important. Interpersonal skills are important. The way you treat other people – do you treat them with dignity and respect – very important. You must have the ability to persuade and inspire our friends to communicate and convince, to listen, to absorb the ideas of others. Without such virtues, we will face more challenges in our efforts to win the war on terrorism, to spread democracy and to foster stability globally.

The question is, is John Bolton the best person for the job? The administration has said they believe he's the right man. They say that despite his interpersonal shortcomings, he knows the U.N. and he can reform the organization and make it more powerful and relevant to the world.

Now, let me say there is no doubt that John Bolton should be commended and thanked for his service and his particular achievements. He has accomplished some important objectives against great odds.
As a sponsor of legislation that established an office on global anti-Semitism in the State Department, legislation that I worked very hard to get passed, I am particularly impressed by his work to combat global anti-Semitism. I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Bolton that we must get the U.N. to change its anti-Israeli bias. Further, I'm impressed by Mr. Bolton's achievements in the areas of arms control, specifically the Moscow Treaty, the G-8 Global Partnership Fund, and the president's Proliferation Security Initiative.

Despite these successes, there is no doubt that Mr. Bolton has serious deficiencies in the areas that are critical to be a good ambassador. As Carl Ford said, he is a kiss-up and kick-down leader who will not tolerate those who disagree with them and who goes out of his way to retaliate for their disagreement.
As Ambassador Hubbard said, he does not listen when an esteemed colleague offers suggested changes to temper language in a speech. And as I've already mentioned, former secretary of state Powell's chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson said he would be an abysmal ambassador.

Some others who have worked closely with Mr. Bolton stated he's an ideologue and fosters an atmosphere of intimidation. He does not tolerate disagreement. He does not tolerate dissent. Another esteemed individual who has worked with Mr. Bolton told me that even when he had success he had the tendency to lord it over and say, Hey, boy, look what I did. Carl Ford testified that he'd never seen anyone behave as badly in all his days at the State Department, and that he would not even – testified before this committee if John Bolton had simply followed protocol and simple rules of management – you know, just follow the procedure.

Mr. Chairman, I have to say that after poring over the hundreds of pages of testimony and – you know, I wasn't here for those hearings, but I did my penance, I read all of it – I believe that John Bolton would have been fired if he'd worked for a major corporation. This is not the behavior of a true leader who upholds the kind of democracy that President Bush is seeking to promote globally. This is not the behavior that should be endorsed as the face of the United States to the world community and the United Nations. Rather, Mr. Chairman, it is my opinion that John Bolton is the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be.

I worry about the signal that we're sending to thousands of individuals under the State Department who are serving their country in foreign service, in civil service, living at posts across the world and in some cases risking their lives, also they can represent our country, promote diplomacy and contribute to the safety of Americans everywhere.

I just returned from a trip to the Balkans. I had a chance to spend four days with people from the State Department. He's not what they consider to be the ideal person, Mr. Chairman, to be our ambassador to the United States – to the United Nations. And I think it's important that we think about the signal that we send out there to those people that are all over this world that are doing the very best job that they can to represent the United States of America.

This is an important nomination by the president. What we're saying to these people when we confirm such an individual to one of the highest positions – so what are we saying? I want to emphasize that I weighed Mr. Bolton's strengths carefully. I have weighed the fact that this is the president's nominee.

All things being equal, it is my proclivity to support the president's nominee. However, in this case, all things are not equal. It's a different world today than it was four years ago. Our enemies are Muslim extremists and religious fanatics who have hijacked the Koran and have convinced people that the way to get to Heaven is through jihad against the world, particularly the U.S. We must recognize that to be successful in this war, one of our most important tools is public diplomacy.

After hours of deliberation, telephone calls, personal conversations, reading hundreds of pages of transcripts and asking for guidance from above, I have come to the determination that the United States can do better than John Bolton.
The world needs an ambassador who's interested in encouraging other people's points of view and discouraging any atmosphere of intimidation. The world needs an American ambassador to the U.N. who will show that the United States has respect for other countries and intermediary organizations, that we are team players and consensus builders and promoters of symbiotic relationships. And moving forward with the international community, we should remember the words of the great Scot poet who said, Oh, that some great power would give me the wisdom to see myself as other people see me.

That being said, Mr. Chairman, I'm not so arrogant to think that I should impose my judgment and perspective of the U.S. position in the world community on the rest of my colleagues. We owe it to the president to give Mr. Bolton an up-or-down vote on the floor of the United States Senate. My hope is that on a bipartisan basis we can send Mr. Bolton's nomination to the floor without recommendation and let the Senate work its will.
If that goes to the floor, I would plead to my colleagues in the Senate to consider the decision and its consequences carefully, to read all the pertinent material – so often we get nominees and we don't spend the time to look into the background of the individual – and to ask themselves several questions.

Will John Bolton do the best job possible representing a trans- Atlantic face of America at the U.N.?
Will he be able to pursue the needed reforms at the U.N. despite his damaged credibility?
Will he share information with the right individuals?
And will he solicit information from the right individuals, including his subordinates, so he can make the most informed decision?
Is he capable of advancing the president and secretary of state's effort to advance our public diplomacy?
Does he have the character, leadership, interpersonal skills, self-discipline, common decency, and understanding of the chain of command to lead his team to victory?
Will he recognize and seize opportunities to repair and strengthen relationships, promote peace, uphold democracy as a team with our fellow nations?

Lastly, Mr. Chairman, I would like to say this. I have met with Mr. Bolton on two occasions, spent almost two hours with him. I like Mr. Bolton. I think he's a decent man. Our conversations have been candid and cordial. But, Mr. Chairman, I really don't believe he's the best man that we can send to the United Nations.

Courtesy of ThinkProgress.org.

The Hearing. Order of speakers agreed by Lugar/Biden after some discussion: Lugar, Voinovich, Biden? That doesn't sound so great.

Voinovich is up.......Since our last meeting, I have poured over hundreds of pages of testimony,...Most importantly, I once again met with Mr. Bolton this week to share my concerns and to listen carefully to his thoughts. After great care and consideration, frankly there is a particular concern I have about this nomination, big picture of US public diplomacy. It was not long ago that when America was loved by the world...Today the world is criticized for arrogance,.....allies alienated, London, NATO meeting in Italy, things have really changed.

It troubles me deeply that US is perceived this way....steeper challenge in achieving this objective without their support. If we cannot work together as a team, our goals will be more difficult to achieve....

It is clear the costs of this war are rising all the time and are not expected to go down any time soon.

There are not many allies standing up to join us in bearing these costs, part. in Iraq.

Key to this is public diplomacy. I applaud the president, Sec. Rice for reaching out to our friends. I also applaud the President's decision to appoint Karen Hughes to lead this effort...

But what message are we sending to the world community when in the same breath we appoint a US ambassador to the UN who bullies those....these are very characteristics that we are trying to send to the world community....

I am afraid his confirmation will tell the world ...

I do believe in UN reform. But it will take a special individual to succeed in this endeavor. I have great concerns about this nominee and his ability to get this done.

There are many other people qualified to go to the UN.

Tendency to act without the view of others, and tendency to not respect the chain of command.

In fairness, those sources say - once reprimanded, Bolton got back in line, and he will be kept on a short leash.

Who is to say that he is not going to stray at the UN?

I was informed by Sec. Rice that she is aware of all these concerns....

My question to her is: Why in the world would you want to send someone up to the UN who has to be supervised?

I am also concerned about his interpersonal skills.

His challenge now is to inspire, lead a new team. We have all witnessed testimony (that he's abusive, bully....)

I have concerns about Mr. Bolton's ability to inspire and lead a team. and I am not the only one. I understand that 59 US diplomats have signed a letter saying Mr. Bolton is the wrong man for the job. Testimony by Lawrence Wilkerson, Bolton would be an abysmal ambassador.

Additionally, I want to note that Colin Powell was conspicuously absent from former Secretaries of State endorsing Bolton...

We are facing an era in foreign relations in which choice for our ambassador to the UN is critical. Do you treat people with dignity and respect, very important.

The question is, is John Bolton the best person for the job? Let me say, there is no doubt that John Bolton should be commended and thanked for his service and achievements.

Impressed by his work on combating anti-Semitism.....

Despite these successes there is no doubt that Mr. Bolton has serious deficiencies in the areas needed to be a good ambassador. Kiss up, kick down leader, as Carl Ford says. As Amb. Hubbard says, he does not listen. Former Sec. State Powell's chief of staff said he would be an abysmal ambassador.

He's an ideologue and fosters an atmosphere of intimidation. He does not foster dialogue. He lords over when he has success. Carl Ford testified he'd never seen anyone behave as badly.

Mr. Chairman I have to say that after pouring over 100 pages of testimony, I belive that Mr. John Bolton would have been fired if he had worked for a major corporation. This is not the behavior that shoudl be endorsed as the face of the US to the world. Rather, it is my opinion that Bolton is the poster child for what someone in the UN court should not be.

I worry we are sending the wrong single to thousands of diplomats in foreign service, representing our country, risking their lives.

I was just in the Balkans, with employees of our State Department. He's not what they consider to be the ideal rep of the US.

(Is this like something out of the West Wing? Do politicians even do things like this any more?????)

I have come to the determination that the United States can do better than John Bolton.....

That being said, Mr. Chairman, I am not so arrogant that I should impose my judgment on the rest of my colleagues.

(Oh no). My hope is we can send Mr. Bolton's nomination to the Senate floor without recommendation. Read all the testimomy. Will he solicit information from the right individuals? Is he capable of advancing the president in public diplomacy? Does he have the common decency to lead his team to victory?

I have met with Mr. Bolton on two occasions. I like Mr. Bolton, I think he's a decent man. Our conversations candid and cordial. But Mr. Chairman, I really don't think he's the best man to send to the United Nations.

[Some analysis from a reader of what's happened:

So much promise, only to let us down at the last moment.

Yep, Voinovich will not vote to affirmatively endorse the Bolton nomination to the floor, but he will vote for a "no recommendation" (or perhaps a negative recommendation), to allow the full Senate to debate the nomination. We'll see if Voinovich's statement inspires any change of heart among the other three Republican fence-sitters.

In a floor vote, the key number is now 46. 45 Dems and one Republican will vote against the nomination. We need to strip five more Republicans away ...

Biden is up. Don't know why I didn't think for a moment Mr. Voinovich should go second? (laughter)

Why would you send someone to the United Nations that needed to be supervised?

I did ask the Sec. of State when she had the courtesy of calling me before the nominee was announced. At the time she asked me would I withhold stating anything publicly until I had a chance to talk with her. I did withhold until the day of the hearing.

We didn't seek out this testimony....

The argument we need Bolton at the UN for reform, reminded me of that old saying.

I knew Pat Moynihan, and he's no Pat Moynihan. Moynihan is rolling over in his grave over this comparison.

Bolton has done some great things. The anti-Zionist resolution. That's a big deal, a notable accomplishment. But that does not a UN ambassador make. A lot of people have done very good things who turn out not to be qualified.

Also concerned we were given some misleading testimony from the nominee....This committe has a right and a duty to look at the evidence. [State Department] wouldn't provide....

No cogent rationale while they give us some things and not others. The Department's lack of cooperation is significant departure from the past. Significant departure.

A letter from the Chairman and myself requested the Names of US persons on the NSA intercepts that Bolton request be unredacted were not provided....

We expected that access...Storage material and access, not if we could get access. Mr. Chairman, you made assurances that intel committee would share it with us. The Intel committee leadership were briefed by Gen. Hayden on the NSA intercepts, I understand they were not given the identity of the US persons that Mr. Bolton requested and received. I have no information on when we will get access. Mr. Chairman, your request has not been fulfilled, and I don't know why. And I don't think that's acceptable. We have responsibility to serve our oversight, advise and consent responsibility. Can someone at least do us the courtesy of telling us why this information has not been provided. What gives them the right to determine what this committee needs to serve its duty. It has no right under the constitution, that they do not believe the request to be specifically tied to the responsibilities of the committee. We are a co-equal branch, equally powerful and important, with a specifically assigned Constitutional responsibility that only we have a right to determine whether information is relevant or not. It is our power to decide what is relevant to our deliberations in the exercise of our responsility. With due respect Mr. Chairman, I think we're making a big mistake in not insisting on this information be provided.

I think we have undermined our authority...I will continue to insist we are entitled to that information, it is just a matter of principle.

Let me turn to the matter of the nomination. This is a big deal.

1) Mr. Bolton repeatedly tried to fire underlings

2) He repeatedly looked for the intelligence to support his ideology. He politicized the intelligence process...

3) In relation with colleagues, Mr. Bolton repeatedly showed abusive behavior to colleagues and subordinates, and provided misleading testimony to this committee....

Seven senior officials have testified to the committee that Mr. Bolton
1) seeks retribution against officials who disagree with him

That he pushes the envelope on intelligence information.

I don't recall any senior official being told by the Sec. of State that you cannot say a single thing before the Senate committees or make a single public speech without clearing it first.

Thirdly, he doesn't like to hear dissent, misses the forest for the trees, that he mischaracterizes the views of his colleagues. This is neither hearsay or innuence. This is what a judge would call direct evidence.

Some people might ask that none of this matters. Nobody lost a job. Mr. Bolton gave the speeches he was authorized to give. The people ultimately landed on their feet. If you think his actions don't matter, why woudl so many serious people come forward with little to gain and lots to lose to tell their stories.

We didn't subpoena a single person. They came forward because they think Mr. Bolton's actions matter a lot. Because words matter.

Sarbannes: John Bolton doesn't believe in international law or that the US has an obligation to pay its dues to the UN....

Clear he's attempted to manipulate intelligence in a way that has harmed our nation's interests...In testimony here he denied he had tried to have analysts punished....and yet we have learned from extensive interviews with numerous administration individuals he did try to seek having analysts removed from their positions....that he did not succeed does not speak for Mr. Bolton. What it speaks to is to those who resisted his demands. Given this conduct, when he goes before the UN to make a statement about evidence of nuclear weapons production, who is going to believe him knowing he repeatedly punished analysts who published contradictory information? Knowing he took isolated facts and made much of them to build a case then I thought the intelligence warranted. Cherry picking of isolated factoids to draw out the starkest possible case.

We need a credible spokesman at the United Nations and this past conduct on his part casts serious doubt.

Finally, his poor management skills make him unqualified for a senior role...

Sen. Allen (R-Va): ...Desperate need for reform in the United Nations...

Chris Dodd (D-CT) is up....

We had one this morning. A Senatorial moment. I want to tell my colleague from Ohio it's a privilege to serve with you. When you stand up against the flow of events in your own party. So I thank him for what he did.

A lot of people, 20 people, have sat with our staffs, and done something you rarely see. Rarely see so many people of different stripes willing to come forward and say, please be careful about what you're doing. This is a rare moment. He lists the officials who have come forward....

Stuart Cohen, acting director of NIC
Alan Foley, former head of CIA/WINPAC
John McLaughlin, former deputy director of CIA
Chrisian Westermann, INR analyst
Tom Fingar, INR
attorney at State Department
William Taft, legal advisor to State
Fred Fleitz
Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Powell
Robert Hutchins, NIC
...

All these people said, this is a bad choice.

Chafee up....I am apprehensive that by endorsing Bolton then we are endorsing intimidation of intelligence analysts.

I am also concerned by Bolton's South Korea speech. It does not diminish his having delivered it at such a serious time.

I also recognize his accomplishments...Proliferation Security Initiative....

I do want to take, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Bolton at his word as to how he'll perform as ambassador to the United Nations. (Why???) ...(All Bolton's statements to the committee, several of which have been proved to be false).

I will support Mr. Lugar's and Mr. Voinovich's position (forward nomination to the full floor without a recommendation? Lugar and Voinovich don't share a position). (Chafee is useless, Rhode Island should dump him.).

John Kerry's up. I think this ought to end here. But if it doesn't end here, there will be a long debate on the floor of the Senate, and that debate will not benefit Bolton's standing....

Coleman: Is this the right guy? And who makes that judgment? (this guy is such a hack. When his enemy is the UN, his zealotry in trying to personally destroy Kofi Annan was relentless. When the issue is John Bolton, the evidence is so contradictory, he sniffs. 'Is John Bolton the nicest guy in the world? He's not going to win that prize.' Thanks for conceding the obvious. Mr. Coleman might want to explore the nature of Mr. Freedman's private contracts, the type of stuff he was so concerned about when his target weren't Republicans. Enough said. Onto)

Russ Feingold: I share the views of many in insisting on UN reform. But Mr. Bolton's record would suggest that he woudl rather see that institution dramatically weakened than reformed...

Barbara Boxer: Mr. Coleman, you should read the Constitution.

There is not a majority on this committee in favor of this nominee. And it is our job to send a signal to our colleagues. There is not a majority on this community that supports John Bolton today. I will not be voting to move that forward today. I am deeply disappointed we have not gotten all the information that we have requested. This is a matter of principle. Perhaps there's nothing in there. Perhaps there's something. The intercepts. Mr. Freedman. And some information about Syria. I will just say, that I am going to do all I can to see that we get this informatoin before this moves out of here onto the floor. It's not right to cast a vost where you really don't have the full information.

Why on earth would we want to hire someone who has shown he puts pressure on intelligence analysts in order to politicize intelligence? It creates politicization and culture of conformity that is dangerous. This is not a person we should be promoting when we have a war in Iraq that was based on this politicization of intelligence.

Put someone into that situation who has said there is no United Nations, it is shocking...

The failure to be candid with this committee. My God. We ought to at least believe we expect someone to tell us the whole truth.

It's shocking to me that more people on the committee are not disturbed this.

The strongest opposition to Mr. Bolton comes from members of the Bush administration. Carl Ford, Mr. Wilkerson, etc. Elizabeth Jones, "I don't know if he's capable of negotiations, but he's unwilling." John Wolf: "It's fair to say some of the officers in my bureau felt undue pressure to conform to views of Secretary [Bolton] rather than views they support." etc. ...Republicans, conservatives, coming out against this nominee. It is hard for me to understand why the President didn't say he's going to send down someone else. I guess he wants a fight. I guess he's asking people to walk the line. And if that's what he wants, there's going to be a fight.

American people are going to look at it. And at the end of the day, I think they may sway some of my colleagues.

We'll take this battle, we'll take these quotes, we'll take these interviews down to the floor. I am going to ask the American people to help us on this one.

Sen. Alexander: He has the credentials. So I expected to be impressed, and I was, when he testified that day.

So after one day I was impressed.

I was surprised and disappointed after the second day. Carl Ford was a good witness. Very believable. He didn't overstate his case....Very mad Bolton had 'chewed out' someone lower down the line. Many members of the committee know and respect him and I found his testimony believable.

There have been some other things said about Mr. Bolton which Mr. Ford himself dismissed. Politicization of intelligence.

As I have listened very carefully to all the charges, only one charge had substance. (This is so highly disingenuous, it's laughable). That John Bolton has been rude to staff members, jobs subordinate to his. I imagine Mr. Bolton is embarrassed by those charges. Perhaps he's learned a lesson.

What I heard didn't change my vote, but I hope it might change Mr. Bolton's dealings with his colleagues and the other people in the bureaucracies with whom he'll be working..

Obama: I was extraordinarily impressed by the presentation Sen. Voinovich made.

(Shorter Obama; previous speaker was pursuing a total strawman theory of why people like Voinovich oppose Bolton. It's not about "he shouts.")

The basis for our objections have to do with specific allegations that Mr. Bolton reached down not to immediate subordinates but far afield to attempt to fire intel officers that would not support statements he was making on behalf of the US government.

We can define politicization in various ways, what I do know is that there is substantial credible evidence from Republican appointees serving in the Bush administration that Mr. Bolton sought to massage intelligence to fit an ideological predisposition.

Murkowski: I want to thank you for the delay to get to the facts. I appreciate the chance you gave this committee to go out and do its homework.

Has a management style that is far different from my management style. And as you go through the transcripts, as you listen to the testimony that we have heard, and as I have talked to individuals who have worked with Mr. Bolton, words like "hard charging," "overbearing" and "confrontational." Also use the word very difficult to work with, he can be overaggressive....also clear to me that when Bolton has made up his mind, it can be difficult to change that mindset.

I have paid my penance for going through all the pages of testimony. A lot of time to do reading and thinking. When I first met with Mr. Bolton, this was prior to any allegations have come out that he has been abusive to staff members. His role in NY was discussed, inflammatory statements he had made in the past. Whose opinion would he be representing at the UN? When he made his comments about North Korea's leader, we in Alaska spent a lot of time looking and focusing on the North Korea issue. I found Mr. Bolton's statements to be inflammatory.

I also understand that Mr. Bolton's remarks that he had received a thank you from Amb Hubbard and yet when I reviewed the transcript from the interview, it was very clear that Hubbard's intent had not been to thank Mr. Bolton for the speech itself. I have to agree with Amb. Hubbard's statement that the speech did not advance the President's objective.

Second matter: concern that Bolton would get out ahead of the President's policy. I believe there is a pattern of Mr. Bolton pushing that envelope.

Push policies more ambitious than President's policy willing to go....But (evidence) suggests speech had been cleared. I do question language used, reality is Mr. Bolton did what he was supposed to do in getting his speech approved.

Now when the committee learned of allegations Bolton had berated INR analyst, that concerned me a great deal. And additional charges of trying to get additional persons removed from positions also had me concerned. It says a lot, about them as a person and how they will work with others.

In this position at the UN, our rep needs to be able to work with others. But at the same time I recognize this is the President's nominee. He deserves to be surrounded by individuals he trusts and advances interests of the administraiton.

When it comes down to it, it's not about Mr. Bolton's intelligence, not about his capability, which he's demonstrated....My question has to do with the conduct, how Mr. Bolton treats people....how Bolton will interact with other rep and their staff at the UN and how he represents the US. That conduct will reflect on the president and the head of the department. it's the prez' responsibility that his nominee is part of the team and is not a freelancer. And listens to that input.

The president has put his trust in John Bolton, the Secretary of State has put her trust in Bolton, the President deserves to have an individual he trusts in that position, and with the understanding that how Mr. Bolton conducts himself in NY will reflect on the administration, I support moving Mr. Bolton's nomination to the Senate floor.

Nelson: Where's the biggest threat in the world today? Iran and North Korea. Over the past four years, how much progress have we made? and who was in charge? And now we are asked to promote him representing us to a world body? It just doesn't make sense to me. So I'm going to vote no on the nomination.

Biden: Let me state what is obvious. Our disagreement over Bolton in this committee...

I am confident that at some point our colleagues in the Intel committee that they looked at the information from the intercepts and they see no pattern for raising alarm. They will also tell you, they were not given what Mr. Bolton was given. They were redacted files. They did not have the name of "The American." And so, I don't have any doubt but it doesn't in any way that we are entitled to see what they saw, and they are entitled to see more. But facts are, we don't have that information.

I don't ever recall a nominee being put forward by the president that had so many people who worked for the president come forward and say that nominee should not be confirmed. I don't ever recall that.

Was Bolton looking for a Cuba mole? Here's my read of the tea leaves surrounding the NSA intercepts and the barest hints from the staff and media reports of the aftermath of the briefing Senate Intelligence committee received, and here's more from Steve Clemons. All eyes on the hearings starting at 10 this morning.

Check out Open Democracy's new Iran blog, Iran Scan, which has gone live....Here's my first post.

Senate Intelligence committee staff send word that tomorrow's Bolton hearings by their fellow Foreign Relations committee should be interesting. Senate Intel committee leadership were briefed yesterday on the NSA intercepts from which Bolton requested he be provided with the US persons identities on ten occasions. Senators Rockefeller and Roberts were apparently not told the names from the NSA intercepts; but go read the last two graphs of this wire report. An awful lot of fuss from Bolton's crew involving intelligence community resistance to their hype of a Cuba bioweapons threat, it seems.

Update: One legitimate justification for requesting the US identities from NSA intercepts involves counterintelligence concerns. Did Bolton's crew try to investigate Fulton Armstrong and/or Christian Westermann as spies for Cuba? There seems to be a bizarre degree of reluctance of Fleitz and Freedman now to explain the particular subject at issue or their reason for their heated communications about it or their current reluctance to discuss it. Such tactics would seem to constitute an unusually vicious way to attempt to retaliate against intel analysts with whom one disagrees...

What was Matthew Freedman's role in John Bolton's office? As Steve Clemons has already established at his site and we've elaborated on here, Freedman was a $110,000/year US tax-payer funded consultant to Bolton at the State Department with a top security clearance who simultaneously ran a private company with a private paid client roster he declined to share with the Senate Foreign Relations committee. When asked what his duties for Bolton included by SFRC staff, Freedman said he was "an intermittent part-time expert foreign-affairs consultant" -- one with a six figure salary from State plus the unnamed private paying clients. Christopher Dodd's top aide Janice O'Connell asked Bolton's acting chief of staff Frederick Fleitz, who had his own unusual arrangement whereby he worked simultaneously for the CIA's nonproliferation arm WINPAC while working for Bolton, why he sent an email to Freedman about Cuba intelligence, and strangely, neither Fleitz nor Freedman would answer.

Here's the exchange between O'Connell, other staff (Bruce Brown seems to be a State Department attorney "representing" Fleitz), and Fleitz:

Ms. O'Connell: Well, let's go to the -- Mr. Fleitz's e-mails to Matthew Freedman.

Mr. Mattler: Was that among the topics that has been agreed?

Ms. O'Connell: That's the one that I've put on the table. Mr. Fleitz, on February 13th, 2002 -- actually, you sent two [emails], one at 8:44 and another at 8:45 a.m. -- and it's forwarding Cuba information. It says, "Part of the paper trail. This early note is not truthful." Why would you send -- what was Mr. Freedman's -- what were his responsibilities in Mr. Bolton's office?

Mr. Brown: Janice, this is Bruce, you can ask Mr. Freedman. And we can schedule time this afternoon that you can ask Mr. Freedman that question.

Ms. O'Connell: Well, I'm asking Mr. Fleitz. He's the one that sent the memo.

Mr. Brown: I don't think Mr. Fleitz decided what Mr. Freedman's roles and responsibilities --

Ms. O'Connell: Well, he was acting chief of staff at one point.

Mr. Brown: Well, I know, but the -- but the person who delegates roles and responsibilities in the T office is Mr. Bolton.

Ms. O'Connell: I'm asking Mr. Fleitz why he sent the e-mail to Mr. Freedman. He's the one that typed Mr. Freedman's name into the e-mail. Why did he do that? Mr. Freedman told us what his responsibilities were, and, as I
recall, he didn't mention Cuba.

Mr. Brown: Mr. Fleitz doesn't want to answer that question. He thinks it's outside the scope, and I think maybe it's best -- that question is best posed --

Ms. O'Connell: Bruce, it's patently absurd that the person who sends the e-mail is not going to speak about it, but the recipient is.

Mr. Brown: I think what you want to know is what Freedman's role --

Ms. O'Connell: No, I want to know what Mr. Fleitz thought he was doing when he sent the e-mail. Why did he send it? Because he was his buddy and he likes to blog?

Mr. Brown: Mr. Fleitz --

Ms. O'Connell: I assume Mr. Fleitz is a busy man, and he sends e-mails for a purpose. Maybe I'm mistaken.

Mr. Fleitz: I think we're done. ..

Ms. O'Connell: So the record shows Mr. Fleitz is refusing to answer? ..

Mr. Brown: -- well, Mr. Fleitz thought about it, and we thought about it, and I think maybe perhaps these are questions that are probably best -- are best posed to Mr. Freedman.

Ms. O'Connell: That's laughable, Bruce.

Mr. McKeon: Can you at least give us a justification why Mr. Fleitz is not allowed to explain his own e-mails, or willing to? ...

[Whereupon, at 12:00 p.m, the hearing was adjourned.]

Can someone please explain to me what's going on here? What is Freedman's real role and why is Fleitz so reluctant to speak about it? I read the Freedman interview closely, go to the very last two pages, and he also refuses to answer why he might have been the recipient of the Fleitz email concerning Cuba intelligence/intelligence analysis. What's going on here? Clearly something pretty sensitive.

Update: When O'Connell asks Fleitz why he sent the email to Freedman, and he refuses to answer, she asks again, is it because he is your buddy and he blogs?
So, is O'Connell being sarcastic here, or...did Freedman blog?

Bolton was "absent without leave," lobbying for a high level post in the second Bush administration for the past half year. And apparently that effort prevented him from doing the job he was tasked with by the President preparing for the massive Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) occurring this month in New York, according to Newsweek:

But if the NPT needed so much fixing under U.S. leadership, why was the United States so shockingly unprepared when the treaty came up for its five-year review at a major conference in New York this month, in the view of many delegates? And why has the United States been losing control of the conference’s agenda this week to Iran and other countries—a potentially serious setback to U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran?

Part of the answer, several sources close to the negotiations tell NEWSWEEK, lies with Bolton, the undersecretary of State for arms control. Since last fall Bolton, Bush’s embattled nominee to be America’s ambassador to the United Nations, has aggressively lobbied for a senior job in the second Bush administration. During that time, Bolton did almost no diplomatic groundwork for the NPT conference, these officials say.

“John was absent without leave” when it came to implementing the agenda that the president laid out in his February 2004 speech, a former senior Bush official declares flatly. Another former government official with experience in nonproliferation agrees. “Everyone knew the conference was coming and that it would be contentious. But Bolton stopped all diplomacy on this six months ago,” this official said. “The White House and the National Security Council started worrying, wondering what was going on. So a few months ago the NSC had to step in and get things going themselves. The NPT regime is full of holes—it's very hard for the U.S. to meet our objectives—it takes diplomacy.”

Bolton blew it big for the President and the country in NY this month, letting Iran make it a forum for its agenda, and this is what we can expect again and again if he gets to NY.

And there's more. Apparently, Bolton can't take credit not only for Libya's decision to abandon its WMD program, or for the Proliferation Security Initiative. From Newsweek:

Throughout the Bolton controversy, his backers in the Bush administration have argued that though he may need better people skills, he has been very effective as a public official. Yet some critics of Bolton say that his alleged mishandling of the NPT conference and other initiatives show that he has sometimes botched the administration’s business as well.

Bolton, for instance, often takes and is given credit for the administration’s Proliferation Security Initiative—an agreement to interdict suspected WMD shipments on the high seas—and the deal to dismantle Libya’s nuclear program (a deal that Bolton had sought to block). But the former senior Bush official who criticized Bolton’s performance on the NPT conference says that in fact Bolton’s successor, Robert Joseph, deserves most of the credit for those achievements. This official adds that it was Joseph, who was in charge of counterproliferation at the NSC, who had to pitch in when Bolton fumbled preparations for the NPT conference, as well. Bush, in his February 2004 speech, also sought to give new powers to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which enforces the treaty. But Bolton, says the former Bush official, “focused much more time and attention trying to deny Mohammed elBaradei a third term” as head of the IAEA. The effort failed, and it was considered another international humiliation for the United States. (Ironically, elBaradei has been one of Washington’s chief allies at the NPT conference, pushing for parts of the Bush agenda.)/p>

Now Biden is hinting there could be a Bolton vote delay if they don't get the NSA intercepts. Even if he's just screwing with the White House and Lugar, some might say it's well deserved. Meantime, the Intel committee leadership was briefed on the intercepts last night, but no word yet today how that translates for use to the Foreign Relations committee deciding on the Bolton nomination. I get a sense it's all still being negotiated.

Meantime, do check out my piece, before it gets superseded by events!

Huffington Post: "Survivor"? How 'bout it? Only the best bloggistas remain. It seems that would both solve the problem of too many posters with too many postings all over the place (some quite interesting), and draw on some of that Hollywood energy and Washington cut-throat politics that HuffPost brings together.

Meantime, Bolton observers, go read Larry David if you haven't yet. And check out my just-out Bolton piece.

And Steve Clemons has posted a couple dozen of the Senate Foreign Relations committee staff interviews on Bolton, here.

As of 8pm, when I talked to committee staff, the State Department had neither delivered the documents mentioned here, nor indicated to the Senate Foreign Relations committee in any way whether or when or what they plan to do about the Democrats' narrowed document request. Getting sort of late, with less than 40 hours before Thursday's hearing is supposed to begin, and with Lugar having pushed for all materials to be received by last Friday. Late Update: This is truly incredible. Former Nigeria and Ferdinand Marcos lobbyist Matthew Freedman maintains private paid outside clients while working as a Special Advisor with a $110,000 a year salary for Bolton at State? From the this transcript of the Freedman interview with SFRC staff:

Mr. Freedman: I first met Mr. Bolton when I worked at the Agency for International Development.

Mr. McKeon: And what is your -- as a consultant to Mr. Bolton's office, what is your function?

Mr. Freedman: Currently?

Mr. McKeon: Correct.

Mr. Freedman: I provide strategic advice to him, as well as management and administrative issues.

Mr. McKeon: Is it a -- strategic advice about press or strategic advice about policy of the office? I don't understand.

Mr. Freedman: Advice on a variety of issues that Mr. Bolton is involved in regarding various bureaus, things of that nature.

Mr. McKeon: And then, when you're not a consultant to the Department, what is your employment?

Mr. Freedman: I have my own independent consulting firm.

Ms. O'Connell: What's the name of it?

Mr. Freedman: Global Impact.

Ms. O'Connell: And do you have clients now, while you're still in the employ of the State Department?

Mr. Freedman: Yes, I do.

Ms. O'Connell: So, you do both? So, are you a part-time consultant?

Mr. Freedman: Yes. I'm an intermittent part-time expert foreign-affairs consultant.

Ms. O'Connell: But when you're being paid by the State Department, you also have other clients, as well?

Mr. Freedman: Yes.

Ms. O'Connell: And who are some of those clients?

Mr. Freedman: I'm not prepared to go into some of my clients. Some of them have confidentiality agreements on non-releasing of their -- of their information.

Does anybody else not find that incredible? He's a US tax payer funded consultant 200 days of the year with a six figure government salary in a bureau dealing with the most sensitive intelligence and national security matters on the planet, for which he is provided a top security clearance, and he will not disclose his private outside current clients to the Congressional committee that has a mandate to vet his boss's fitness for a post?

Hello?

This Experian business report below filed around March 2005 says that Freedman is the president of Global Impact Inc. based in Alexandria Virgnia, that strangely enough, has a co-president, Renee Acosta, who is also in charge of a charity with the same name, Global Impact, that manages the two largest federal giving programs in the US government, including for the Department of Defense. Not a small client!

Name: GLOBAL IMPACT INC

Address: 201 N UNION ST
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22314

Telephone: 703-299-XXXX

Experian File Number: E06431859

File Established: 11/1999

Industry: MGMT,PUBLIC RELATION

SIC:
8748 BUSINESS CONSULTING SERVICES, NEC

Years in Business: 5 - ACTUAL

Employees: 1 - 5

Business Type: CORPORATION

Owner Type: PRIVATELY HELD

Officers:

RENEE S. ACOSTA, PRESIDENT
H KENNETH FLEISHMAN, TREASURER
MATTHEW FREEDMAN, PRESIDENT

So Freedman runs the private, for-profit Global Impact, while maintaining a six figured top level security clearance post for Bolton, and while his co-president Ms. Acosta also runs the not-for-profit Global Impact, which manages "the two largest federal workplace giving campaigns" -- of the National Capital Area and the Department of Defense? So now I really wonder who Freedman's clients are -- perhaps some of the groups that want to get in on the federal giving of his co-president's same-named not-for-profit arm?

It sure sounds like Mr. Bolton and his retinue will be quite comfortable in the Oil-for-Food profit milieu...

Update II: So now the Senate Select Intelligence committee is interviewing Bolton chief of staff Frederick Fleitz, after being briefed on the NSA intercepts/identities Bolton requested? Interesting.

Late Update: Must-read piece from the Hill's Alex Bolton (no relation to John, we presume) about a little known, ramped up alternative intelligence shop in the State Department, whose director reported to Bolton:

The expansion of the bureau’s role, Democratic aides say, was intended to counteract skepticism expressed by State’s main intelligence analyst, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), over evidence the Bush administration relied on to argue that Saddam Hussein possessed a viable weapons-of-mass-destruction program.

Several Democrats are comparing the augmentation of the Bureau of Verification and Compliance’s responsibility for assessing intelligence to efforts by Douglas Feith, President Bush’s undersecretary for defense for policy, to create an independent intelligence shop within the Defense Department.

Go read....

Wednesday Update: A contact who knows Freedman calls to say a bit more about him. Freedman managed Republicans Abroad, made it very successful operation. Managed the transition for Powell for State, AID, OPIC -- Kind of guy who would be useful to Bolton because he knows "how all the wiring works and all the secretaries." Has a "very big client base," firm in Old Town, etc. "Has a great saying 'Never lose your clearance.'" Which provides access to certain types of clients and contracts, and is apparently quite lucrative, the contact says.

Enough about Freedman. How many other top security clearance-cleared consultants to the State Department, Pentagon, NSC maintain private client lists? While working close to 200 days of year for State? Where's Paul Volcker when you need him?

With the US tolerating until now their taking refuge in northern Iraq, the PKK is back in force, there and in Turkey, the WaPo's Karl Vick reports . This was a conflict that was pretty much for the history books just a couple years ago. Shameful way for the Bush administration to treat its friends, and explains some of the growing Turkish animosity towards the United States recently.

Going down to the wire. Here's Reuter's Carol Giacomo from one hour ago:

A top aide to John Bolton, President Bush's embattled nominee as U.N. envoy, threatened to diminish the role of the State Department's intelligence bureau because of a dispute over analyzing China's missile export controls, according to declassified e-mails...

In the e-mail exchange, made available to Reuters by Bolton's opponents, [Bolton's chief of staff Frederick] Fleitz said he was writing "on behalf of" Bolton and expressed his boss' "displeasure" with a memo the State Department's intelligence bureau wrote in rebuttal to an August 2002 CIA analysis of China's recently announced export control list...

The State Department's intelligence and research bureau (INR) attached its own separate -- opposing -- analysis of the Chinese controls when, according to established procedures, it transmitted the CIA memo to then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage...

Fleitz said Bolton's office considered the bureau's decision to attach its rebuttal to the CIA memo "a serious abuse of INR's liaison role."

"Actions of this type cannot help but undermine the bond of trust between (Bolton's office) and INR," he said in the e-mail to Thomas Fingar, then the bureau's No. 2 official.

"If (Bolton's office) cannot trust INR to follow established dissemination procedures, we may have to look for an alternate arrangement to send and relay (top secret) material, such as working directly with DS," the State Department's diplomatic security bureau, Fleitz added.

A Senate Democratic source said the State Department "sat on this e-mail for three weeks."

"The reason they didn't want us to see this e-mail is that it substantiates the pattern of behavior by John Bolton of cherry-picking and distorting intelligence and becoming angry ... when someone dares to disagree with the analytic judgment he has about an issue," said the source, who spoke anonymously.

Looks like Lugar is just going to have to postpone the vote, since State didn't cooperate with the timetable he set up to have all materials for review by May 6. Meantime, didn't I just read that the subject of this hostile Fleitz email, Thomas Fingar, was just appointed to be Negroponte's deputy intelligence czar? (Yes, indeed I did, thanks to reader KB for the link).

Several Senate Foreign Relations committee Bolton information requests to State and NSA still to come....Rockefeller and Roberts are supposed to be briefed on NSA stuff tonight, with Biden and Lugar supposed to be getting filled in tomorrow. It's all a bit late not to yet have this stuff in hand, isn't it? Meantime, Steve Clemons has the latest -- that State Department officials are worried enough that Bolton's nomination won't get through, they've lined up Paula Dobriansky as the back up choice. Late Monday Update: Rockefeller and Roberts have been briefed tonight by the NSA's Hayden, no comment until tomorrow. Not clear what if anything Biden and Lugar will get in that regard. Here's a late update from the AP. Sen. Boxer has written to Rice to complain that the State Department is stonewalling them.

Jack Abramoff's other "victim," Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney. The American Prospect's Art Levine has the story.

If you thought that country X was going to get nuclear weapons in four to five years, then you might propose one course of action, knowing that if it failed, you could always resort to higher-risk options later on. But if you thought that country X was going to get nuclear weapons in one to two years, and you thought it urgent to preempt that, you might be pushing for the option of last resort to be moved to the front burner -- seeing as it would take a bit of time to build your case, etc.

My question is, why among those who are most vocally sounding the alarm about Iran's imminent nuclear weapons and the urgent need to preempt that, do we find some of the same people proposing the slow-uncertain prospect of regime change in Iran as the best solution? After all, non violent regime change would be a wonderful thing, but it's not exactly something that can be made to order to fit Washington's security interests on a tidy timetable. It may even have to be run by real Iranians, who can't be rushed. Do these States-side regime change advocates know something we don't know? In other words, is it widely understood in certain communities that projections about when Iran is really estimated to get nuclear weapons are being exaggerated?

These are some of the thoughts I had reading this interesting piece by the NY Sun's Eli Lake today on Iran's "suspected" secret nuclear program. Worth reading.

And with that, let me say I am going to be among those group-blogging at Open Democracy's new Iran forum, IranScan, that should go live later this week and exist over the next couple months, along with such luminaries as Hossein Derakshan, better known as Hoder to the blogosphere, Persian Pilgrimages author Afshin Molavi of the New America Foundation, and others. As is evident, I am bringing no Iran expertise to the discussion but plan to serve as a kind of rapporteur from the Washington Iran policy debate, where the upcoming Iran elections are viewed to have such questionable legitimacy, they're hardly even a news topic. Check it out.

Update: Praktike and Eric Martin have some ideas about the above questions.

While the mystery remains of which US identities did John Bolton request from NSA intercepts, a matter that Senate Intelligence committee leaders are reportedly to be briefed on today, investigative journalist Murray Waas reports that one person whose private conversations Bolton was systematically asking for intercepts of was the IAEA's Mohammed ElBaradei:

That the NSA was intercepting the phone calls of IAEA officers, particularly ElBarbadei, is in and of itself hardly big news...

But Bolton differed from other consumers of the intelligence, according to two senior government officials familiar with the matter, in that when the intercepts proved all but useless to his cause to oust ElBarbadei from his IAEA post, he privately encouraged more aggressive intelligence gathering operations against the IAEA, the United Nations, and other international organizations.

Go read. The NYT has more on Bolton's bizarre fixation with ElBaradei, as witnessed by Powell's chief of staff Larry Wilkerson:

Mr. Wilkerson said that Mr. Bolton had been a major cause of tension and resentment at the highest levels of the State Department because of his temperament, his treatment of subordinates and the fact that he had "overstepped his bounds" on a number of occasions, including what Mr. Wilkerson called "his moves and gyrations" aimed at preventing Mohamed ElBaradei from being reappointed as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear monitoring body.

"Now, what do I mean by that?" Mr. Wilkerson said. "I mean, going out of his way to bad-mouth him, to make sure that everybody knew that the maximum power of the United States would be brought to bear against them if he were brought back in," Mr. Wilkerson said of Mr. Bolton's approach to Dr. ElBaradei.

Mr. Wilkerson also disputed one account that had been provided by Mr. Bolton, and said that it was Mr. Armitage, and not Mr. Bolton, who decided in the summer of 2003 to postpone Congressional testimony that Mr. Bolton had planned to give on Syria and that had touched off significant opposition from American intelligence agencies.

And Mary Curtius at the LA Times reports on the political considerations for the three Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations committee who have expressed reservations about Bolton, here.

The New Republic's Frank Foer has an interesting article excavating Jack Abramoffi's ties to the conservative media, in particular the Washington Times. John Judis reports in the same issue on DeLay's crumbling support in his home district. Garance Franke-Ruta has more, including the identity of some of the 100 people who visited the Mariana Islands "during the Abramoff junket period."

Behold, the much-anticipated Arianna Huffington mega-group blog-cocktail party has gone live.

Performing Janus-like double duty, Democracy Arsenal's Suzanne Nossel compiles a list of the top ten things the UN does well, and then, for the UN-skeptics over at Dan Drezner's site, a list of the things the UN does badly. Don't expect the right to give those on the moderate left who recognize the need for UN reform - and you know, actually have numerous ideas about how to go about it having worked there -- any credit. This is an idea they think they invented, along with the Community of Democracies, which lo and behold, was actually "invented" if by any one person, by Madeleine Albright, lately of Clinton administration fame.

Steve Clemons recounts a bizarre incident that puts in stark relief the degree to which Bolton resented and undermined the President's policy when he didn't agree with it, insulting allies in the process. And you know, the incident only involved the little matter of policy to Iran's nuclear program:

In the Fall of 2004, John Bolton was given the task of communicating U.S. admninistration policy on Iran -- and commenting on the prospect and process of European negotiations with Iran -- at a Washington meeting of certain G8 principals.

Normally at such U.S.-chaired meetings, there is lots of discussion, lots of investment in concensus-building, back and forth commentary, etc.

At this meeting, however, Bolton simply "quickly stated administration policy and that was it. He stopped. No more discussion. He gave 'one read' of the policy and refused to do more."

In other words -- and I have confirmed this bizarre incident -- John Bolton read the administration's policy from a prepared text, but he refused to distribute that text -- and he refused to read the statement again.

He had read the statement once, fast -- and would not read it again.

And then, as they say, there was silence. . .total dumbfounded silence.

As it turned out, administration policy that Bolton was articulating, reluctantly as he did not support it, is that the administration was communicating to Europe that while it suspected and predicted that the negotiation process between the EU and Iran would fail, the U.S. would not object to what was underway.

The wording of the once-read statement of policy by Bolton was carefully crafted so as to give the Europeans license, from the American point of view, to proceed with Iran -- without formally attaching a positive expectation from the U.S. about the process.

Bolton didn't like the policy, so he wouldn't hand out copies of it. And he would only read the statement once. . .fast.

This is not mature behavior.

To say the least. Because if there's one issue where a little misunderstanding between the US and European allies is of negligable importance, it's Iran's nukes.

Update: Ari Berman compiles a scorecard of Bolton outrages. Stygius wonders what happened to Lugar's spine.

The US has such serious concerns about Iranian penetration of the leading two Iraqi Shiite political parties, Dawa and SCIRI, that it has to date refused to fully turn over one of the Iraqi intelligence services to Iraqis. The hand-picked top Iraqi Mukhabarat official reports to the CIA, Knight Ridder's Hannah Allam and Warren Strobel report:

While the CIA hasn't ruled out handing over the agency, an administration official involved in Iraq policy confirmed that the U.S. government has strong concerns about releasing the classified archives to the new government. The main worry is that Iran could score an intelligence coup by learning what the United States knows about Tehran's covert operations in Iraq. The official said the United States has evidence of aggressive Iranian attempts to penetrate Iraqi intelligence via the two strongest Shiite parties: SCIRI and Dawa, the party led by Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-
Jaafari.

Senior members of those parties, however, suspect the real reason behind U.S. reluctance to hand over the archives is that Americans don't want them to know the extent of U.S.-led spying on the Shiite politicians Iraqis risked their lives to vote into office.

Worth reading. (Thx to SO).

Douglas Jehl:

This weekend, the situation in North Korea is providing a new reminder that intelligence is rarely conclusive, and may thus be vulnerable to manipulation. While some in the Bush administration have been quick in recent days to cite what they described as new intelligence indications suggesting that North Korea's government may be close to staging its first test of a nuclear weapon, at least one intelligence agency was said to have spread word through the administration that its officials had seen nothing particularly new in satellite photographs and other reports.

Will John Bolton get confirmed? Here's what the Iowa trading group, TradeSport has on the odds. Perhaps someone should wager, will the vote even take place on the 12th, as currently scheduled?

Late Sunday Update: More from Doug Jehl:

The State Department is refusing to make public internal documents sought by Senate Democrats in their attempt to seek more information about repeated clashes between John R. Bolton and American intelligence agencies over Syria, administration officials say.

In rejecting the request, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said that the information involves "internal deliberations" and their disclosure could have a chilling effect on debates within the administration...

In formal interviews with the committee staff, at least three former senior intelligence officials have described the debate on Syria as the most prominent example of instances in which Mr. Bolton pressed to make public assertions that went beyond those supported by objective intelligence assessments.

And USA Today analyzes why Bush is fighting so hard for this nomination.

And don't miss Doonesbury:

The husband-and-wife team of Suzanne Nossel and David Greenberg, of Democracy Arsenal fame and Slate, respectively, are blogging up a storm at Dan Drezner's site, giving his moderate Republican readership a bit of well-reasoned culture shock, we take it. In play today, Bolton's politicization of intelligence and Greenberg's take on Tom Franks' new afterward to the paperback edition of What's the Matter With Kansas. Greenberg argues that Franks' recommendation that Dems return to economic populism as their central issue is not enough, when foreign policy was the most salient issue for voters in 2004, and I agree. Lots of fun to see people mixing it up across ideological lines over there.

Go read Kevin Drum on whether the lack of success to date resulting from the Bush administration approaches to dealing with North Korea's and Iran's nuclear programs will make conservatives reconsider the merits of pursuing bilateral negotiations. In it he highlights this piece by Juan Cole asking whether Iran will get a nuclear bomb that is getting some attention. Cole posits Iran will and there is not much effective that anyone can do to stop them. I know far less than the experts on all these issues, but I posit that the US will try to do something about it, and what's more, that a Kerry administration would have had its hand forced to do so as well.

If I had to put money on it, this is where I think things are headed -- events driven by Iran to a surprising degree. And keep in mind, I don't have the slightest regional expertise that should make anyone listen to me. I have spent the better part of a year, however, interviewing and listening to members of the Washington Iran policy community, and absorbing aspects of the debate. This is a rough-drawn sketch of the take-away. It's not what I advocate or not, just where I see things headed. I apologize to any experts on these issues who might be reading given indigestion by this decidedly non-expert-journalist's take.

The Bush administration really has no Iran policy. Riven with internal divisions over how to proceed with Iran and preoccupied with Iraq, it is completing an interagency policy review and is soon reaching the point of making some hard decisions. It seems first-off, that the US will give the European troika a deadline after which it will declare that their negotiations with Tehran over abandoning uranium enrichment and signing the NPT "additional protocols" have failed. There will then be a US-led effort to get Iran referred in noncompliance with the NPT to the UN Security Council; but an effective international sanctions regime will not materialize, in some part because of opposition from Russia and China, but not only them, and in large part because soaring oil prices make an oil embargo highly unlikely. As the Iran nuclear issue is kicked around and likely stalls at the UN, there is likely to be a half-hearted US/Congressional effort to support financially a Ukraine-style Iranian people power revolution against the Tehran regime. Perhaps covert elements of someone's plan involve encouraging ethnic unrest on Iran's borders, etc. in the hope of destabilizing the Tehran regime. But most of the people I talk to believe such efforts are unlikely to gain traction or move fast enough to preempt the prospect of the current Tehran regime from getting the bomb. So in the end, I believe it is likely that the Bush administration will face a choice before it leaves office on whether to conduct air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, possibly in tandem with a couple close allies. And I believe the administration will be under very strong pressure from internal elements and US domestic constituencies to preempt Iran getting a nuclear bomb. This is the option no one wants, and yet they don't-want-it less than they want to be seen to allow Iran to get a bomb.

(Interestingly, I also think had Kerry won, the path might not have been that different, after a detour through negotiations. Indeed, I think Kerry would have been under even more pressure than Bush to act decisively to preempt Iran from getting nuclear weapons, because of the perception that he and the Democrats are reluctant to use force. Kerry's team proposed testing Iran's intentions by offering to do a Clinton-North Korea style providing and removing of nuclear fuel, to see if Iran was really pursuing its nuclear program for peaceful purposes as it insists. Perhaps that would have worked, but I doubt it. As Fred Kaplan points out in this Slate piece, it's hard to believe (but not unfathomable, remember the miscalculations on Iraq's WMD after all) such an oil and gas rich country as Iran really is devoting such vast economic resources to pursue a nuclear program for energy purposes. I suppose we could be proved wrong. Ultimately, I believe Iran's intentions are not to have a nuclear program just for energy purposes, but that it wants a bomb.).

What could change this scenario? As far as I can tell, three things: Iranians succeed in changing their regime before it is perceived Iran is very close to getting the bomb (this would be a wonderful thing, but it doesn't seem likely to happen in a speedy time frame; a key strand of vocal neoconservative Iran hawks disagrees on this point); Iran is able to be persuaded off its current course, perhaps by some feat of an effective international sanctions regime being imposed (say, there's a 20% chance of this, maybe less); and thirdly, what I'll just call a surprise. Say, war in the Korean peninsula, or something that so drains remaining US crisis management abilities, that the US chooses to continue to kick this can down the road even further (possible, say 30%).

A lot of experts who know far more about these issues wouldn't seem to agree with my analysis or my predictions. Among them, Patrick Clawson and Henry Sokolski have written articles and a book suggesting there are a lot of options between the current European led negotiations and air strikes worth pursuing. Some of their proposals, described here, recommend measures to build an international coalition to isolate Iran and get diplomatic leverage, if not with Iran, then at least, with other countries on coming round to the US approach.

I guess the surprising thing to me about my take is that, it is so inconceivable to me that the Bush administration would choose at this point to engage in bilateral negotiations with Iran, that I wonder if Iran is too far gone to be deterrable diplomatically at this point at all. At this point, it seems too determined to get a bomb. Where US hardliners and I might have disagreed is on whether it was worth it to at least try, to make going down the limited list of higher risk and higher cost options truly a last resort.

Sunday Update: Belgravia Dispatch has elicited some interesting comments to these Iran musings, here. The always-cogent Praktike suggests we topple the mullahs with connectivity. And it occurred to me that I forgot to include in the above what about just buying off the mullahs, a la, a few bland "BP" looking folks landing in Tehran with bags of money, or more likely, Swiss bank account numbers ... All of the above suggests a kind of -- well, creativity -- that doesn't seem to flow in huge supplies in the second iteration of the Bush administration. Meantime, I see at Praktike's site the regime change meme has spread to perception of the Bush administration's policy options for Syria.

Highly disturbing story from my hometown, Kansas City. A beheaded three year old girl found dumped at an intersection there four years ago has now been identified as Erica Michelle Marie Green, known as "Precious Doe" by the authorities searching for her identity and killer, now identified as her stepfather. This is not the Kansas City I know, but it is one that my father is not unfamiliar with. He is a doctor at a hospital that was in the thick of the crack epidemic, drug and gang wars, urban decay. We lived in the suburbs only a ten minute drive away where these problems were as remote as if they were occuring in another country. He is conservative, one whose worldview is most shaped by the conviction that individuals need to take responsibility for themselves, a view hardwired into him from childhood by his own parents who had come of age in the Depression. So many times he has come home from the hospital thin lipped and pale and disgusted at someone shot in a drug dispute, someone dying from a disease exacerbated by their habits, at people who have let themselves become so obese that they don't fit in the machines to diagnose their ills. Sometimes I wondered to myself how someone with so much compassion could end up so alienated from the people he had committed to save. He so clearly perceived their maladies as not the outgrowth of poverty or race, but of refusing to take responsibility for oneself, refusing to take control of one's own life, or victims of living in neighborhoods that had become overtaken by such senseless crimes. It seemed obvious to me that certainly in the suburban world we lived in were a million examples of people as soft on themselves, but who were protected from a worse fate by cushions of family money, good schools, suburban safety, healthy environments, health insurance and just so much more opportunity and fall back options. Circumstances derived often not from their own hard work, but simply of birth. Why couldn't he see that, I wondered. Reading this story now from Washington DC about a horrible crime committed against a little girl in Kansas City at the hands of her own parents, a girl whose short life traversed the same path between Oklahoma and Kansas City as my father's, it's impossible not to share in a sense of horror and extreme alienation at parents who did not have the barest sense of responsibility to protect their own child, even from themselves.

Sunday Update: Hundreds pay their respects to Precious Doe at a church memorial service.

The WaPo's T. R. Reid profiles a Colorado politician to admire.

The Bush administration's bankrupt North Korea policy. The LA Times' Barbara Demick, "There's no Plan B to deter North Korea: Diplomacy has failed, and military action is unlikely. A nuclear test could occur soon." And David Ignatius on Pyongyang's Bomb:

Kim Jong Il is often seen as a reckless madman, as in President Bush's description of him last week as a "tyrant" and "dangerous person" who "starves his own people" and has "huge concentration camps." But Brown argues that however brutal Kim's policies are, he has pursued what in his context is a rational course. "Kim sees only two options -- Baghdad or Islamabad," says Brown. In other words, he can wait for an American attack or he can move quickly to show his nuclear cards -- hoping he can then bargain for a deal that ensures his regime's survival. In Brown's view, "the chance that Kim Jong Il will negotiate away his nuclear option is close to zero."

More from Slate's Fred Kaplan, about the lessons and perhaps miscalculations Iran is drawing from it all.

Voinovich still in play? Or perhaps he really meant it about the kitchen test -- he doesn't seem too anxious to meet with Bolton.

Maybe Sen. Pat Roberts should outsource that long-delayed investigation of administration influence on pre-war Iraq intelligence to Britain.

RFERL's Bill Samii offers a primer on Iran's upcoming presidential elections, and backgrounder biographical sketches on some of the leading prospective candidates, including the highly controversial Hashemi Rafsanjani. The 70 year old conservative Ayatollah and former Iranian president and Khomeini confidant hasn't yet made clear if he definitely intends to run, and Iran's clerical leaders aren't sure they will permit him to in any case. Iranian diaspora press reported that Rafsanjani was the subject of May Day worker protests at a Tehran stadium earlier this week.

Friday Morning Bolton Musings, from a reader:

1) The press coverage of Negroponte's role as NID and making a final ruling on the availability of the NSA intercepts to the Senate committees portray him as a disinterested observor. But folks should remember that Negroponte's nomination for UN Ambassador in 2001 was met with fierce resistance by Senator Dodd, who raised many questions about Negroponte's knowledge of death squads operating in Central America with formal Honduras government support when he was the U.S. Ambassador there in the early 1980's. I can't remember whether Dodd finally voted for or against the nomination, but his staff made the confirmation process prolonged and a little rocky. All of this may explain why Negroponte may feel compelled to take his sweet time with these NSA intercepts. Guess who is leading the charge for these requests -- none other than Chris Dodd?

2) The Lugar-Biden back and forth letters is very interesting. Committee comity must be breaking down if it is coming down to dueling letters and their very public release. You really wonder when Dick Lugar will finally realize that this nomination is tearing apart his prized Committee and ask himself, "Is it really worth it?"

3) Armitage wants to be Secretary of Defense. Lots of rumors that Rummy will be stepping down later this year, once the Quadrennial Defense Review process is complete. Armitage is on the short-list at the White House, from all accounts. He's a smart political operator, and he knows this statement will be remembered down the road.

What, Armitage's polite endorsement of Bolton isn't bubbling up from the bottom of his heart? I'm shocked.

A major showdown seems to be looming in the Senate Foreign Relations committee, as the clock ticks to the scheduled May 12 vote on Bolton's nomination. In short, the committee has still not yet received several key pieces of information from the State Department and the NSA, Sen. Lugar has suggested to Secretary Rice that certain pieces of information that would purportedly document Bolton's alleged exaggeration of Syria WMD intelligence are not priorities, and now Lugar, as well as Senate Select Intelligence committee leadership, are also getting snookered by the White House on the NSA intercepts. Steve Clemons has all the gory details. Meantime, Biden is now suggesting that if Lugar doesn't come through on his commitments to secure the material needed for a complete committee investigation by the time allowed, then he may not be held to his commitment to deliver the Democrats for a vote. Are there more shoes to drop? This is a regular centipede. Update: Bolton's new best friend? Richard Armitage. Read it for yourself.

So will President Bush be asking for the handover of former Liberian president Charles Taylor to face war crimes charges at the Special Court in Sierra Leone when he meets with Nigerian president Obasanjo today? His office wasn't sure when I talked to them yesterday. Incredible. Here's why he should. Update: Writing at the Counterterrorism Blog, blood diamonds expert Doug Farah says efforts to get Taylor extradited have gone "belly up."

I've expressed doubt here that this FBI investigation that led to charges against Larry Franklin yesterday has much if anything to do with espionage for Israel. I think it has more to do with the Washington politics and turf war of formulating Iran policy.

As to the timing of when the investigation that led to Franklin charge began, and what prompted it, it's still a mystery. But Knight Ridder is emphatic that it began as early as 2002, possibly earlier, and that it led to interviews with officials in Rumsfeld's office and people in the executive branch. One wonders, what prompted it.

Secondly, what was Franklin doing with all those classified documents in his home? It is truly mysterious. One, two, three, you have a Sandy Berger situation, perhaps. But 83? Spanning intelligence collected over thirty years? That goes beyond systematic to highly suspicious. Can someone explain this?

In the end, as my colleague Jason Vest and I wrote back in November, the Franklin affair may turn out to be a story about the intense bureaucratic struggle inside and outside the Bush administration over Iran policy, and its intended influence target, the White House -- not so dissimilar to some of the fights we have seen revealed in the Bolton nomination saga.

"Frist begins to squeeze trigger," the Hill reports:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s (R-Tenn.) chief of staff has told conservative activist leaders and business-community representatives that Frist will soon trigger the so-called “nuclear option” to end threatened Democratic filibusters of President Bush’s judicial nominees this month.

The chief of staff, Eric Ueland, said the event will take place in “less than a month,” according to several people who attended a closed-door meeting late last week.

As a reader just wrote me, "If this is exercised, all bets are off on the Bolton nomination, no matter what happens at the Committee level..."

Former Pentagon Iran analyst Larry Franklin charged, the AP reports:

The FBI arrested a Pentagon analyst Wednesday on charges that he passed classified information on Iran to employees of a pro-Israel lobbying group.

Larry Franklin, 58, of Kearneysville, W.Va., turned himself in Wednesday morning, FBI spokeswoman Debra Weierman said. He was scheduled to make an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Virginia later in the day, Weierman said.

Yesterday the AP reported that the FBI questioned former Mossad official Uri Azad about this case. Here's some background to the case here.

Update: This noon AP piece adds:

Franklin's top secret security clearance was suspended in June 2004, the Justice Department said. He formerly worked in the office of policy undersecretary Douglas Feith.

The suspension followed a search of Franklin's West Virginia home that turned up 83 classified documents, according to an affidavit by FBI agent Catherine M. Hanna that was made public Wednesday.

Update II: Those 83 classified documents found in Franklin's home spanned three decades, Reuters reports:

In addition, according to the FBI affidavit, approximately 83 separate classified U.S. government documents were found during a search of Franklin's West Virginia home in June 2004. The dates of these documents spanned three decades. Of the 83 documents, 38 of them were top-secret, according to the affidavit signed by FBI agent Catherine Hanna.

A few points taken just from what's in the press. First off, it's important to note that this is not a charge of espionage. That's a rather large point. When the dust settles, there may be significantly less here regarding allegations of espionage for Israel than the first news reports from last August indicated. This may be more about inter-bureaucratic battles inside the Bush administration, specificially regarding US policy towards Iran. Secondly, with the information above about the classified documents Franklin reportedly had at home, why is the criminal complaint only on one count of passing classified info to unauthorized recipients? What about mishandling classified documents?

Corrections: I corrected a mistake I had above. Franklin was not, technically speaking, "indicted." He was "charged" with a criminal complaint, accompanied by an affidavit by FBI special agent C. Hanna. What's the difference? A valued reader and lawyer explains, that an indictment would come from a grand jury -- and this criminal complaint did not come from the grand jury, but directly from the prosecutor. We know there is a grand jury hearing aspects of this case, so this is worth noting.

Another correction: Franklin was charged on four counts, not one.

Late Wednesday Update: This Knight Ridder piece adds a key detail: the investigation that led to charges against Franklin today dates back to at least 2002. "According to officials with direct knowledge, the investigation has been under way since at least 2002 and it has involved FBI interviews with officials in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office and elsewhere in the executive branch."

Not just Curveball. Remember when the INC produced two women who claimed that they were Saddam's kept mistresses, and that one of them claimed she had personally witnessed a meeting between Saddam and Osama bin Laden? A reader reminds me, sending these links. Here's the Guardian's David Rose:

...Shaqraa, meanwhile, still spent time with Saddam. She says he wept when he was forced to withdraw from Kuwait, but that he is a man of personal courage: 'He does not fear America.' She claims he regarded the UN weapons inspectors with contempt.

She provides other insights into his character. He never reads books, she says, and despite his Islamic rhetoric, he drinks alcohol regularly. 'His goal is for his name to live for 1,000 years, as the new Arab hero, the second Saladin.'

Shaqraa left Baghdad early this year, when she managed to slip across Iraq's border with Jordan. There, she was picked up by agents of the INC's so-called 'information collection programme', in effect a private intelligence service which operates widely both in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

'When we first met her, she was terrified: alone, and with little idea of what to do,' says one of her INC rescuers, who asks not to be named. 'We found her a place to stay, organised protection and eventually, through circuitous means, we moved her to another country where her taped debrief took place.'...

Here's the tale of the other mistress who claimed she witnessed Saddam and Osama's meeting at Saddam's palace:

A woman claiming to have been Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's mistress for more than 30 years told ABC News that she witnessed at least one meeting between Saddam and top terror suspect Osama Bin Laden.

In an interview to be broadcast Thursday, Parisoula Lampsos, 54, said that during the mid-1980s, Bin Laden, blamed for the terror strike of September 11 that killed more than 3,000, visited one of Saddam's palaces in Iraq.

She alleged that the Iraqi leader's eldest son, Uday, told her the two met again about a decade later, an exchange that saw Saddam giving money to the Saudi-born millionaire exile.

"He give to Osama Bin Laden, he give to Palestine," she is quoted as saying in halting English...

Lampsos, who now lives in Lebanon, also offered details about Saddam's personal life. He apparently liked to drink alcohol and smoke cigars while watching videos of his enemies being tortured.

It seems the INC's arsenal of defectors who deceived the media and the US government was a fairly large central casting unit. As with Curveball, no doubt these INC-provided defectors' tales mixed elements of truth with lies. Where are they now? Does it even matter? Does it matter whether deliberate deception was employed by someone on the US government payroll, as Chalabi and the INC were, to advocate for a policy? I would argue you can't change history, but it's worth understanding exactly what really happened, and the US government and media haven't begun to fully unravel this.

On deadline and a bit exhausted, I attempted to outsource the intellectual heavylifting for the post I meant to write to Suzanne Nossel at DemocracyArsenal, who knows the territory much better. Go read why the Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations committee quickly came to consensus that Richard Holbrooke was the best choice for US ambassador to the UN, to the continued frustration of this Bolton supporter. Nossel, in turn, finds the pro-Bolton author did most of the work for her:

He reports that Holbrooke's one critic, Jesse Helms, "appeared to bond" with the incoming Ambassador over stories of childhood visits to the UN. He notes that Senators Daniel Moynihan (D-NY) and John Warner (R-VA) "lavished praise" on Holbrooke and that there was "nary a witness with any harsh words" for the nominee.

He contrasts this to Bolton's hearings where Democrats have shown antipathy and Republicans "apathy." He notes that Lugar seems "far more enthusiastic about Clinton's choice than Bush's."

And your point is? Democrats and Republicans agreed that because of his eminent qualifications and capabilities, there was little question that Holbrooke merited confirmation ... Now Democrats and some Republicans agree that based on his track record, there are serious grounds to believe Bolton should not be confirmed.

Well said, and let's not forget, Holbrooke was deserving of our and the Senators' respect for, among other things, using his position at the UN and before and afterwards for his peerless advocacy to stop genocide in Bosnia, to try to stop spiralling violence in Kosovo, to successfully broker a compromise to persuade GOP hardliners like Helms to pay UN back dues in return for a reduction in US assessed dues, and to enlist world leaders, corporations and nations to find new and creative solutions to deliver anti retroviral therapies to AIDs victims in the Third world -- goals that are remote to the anti-humanitarian, genocide-appeasing Bolton. There is just no comparison between the two nominees, one who has effectively employed his bullheadedness to save lives on a grand scale, the other to bully subordinates in the service of promoting only his narrow ideology.

Meantime, Stygius and Steve Clemons have several posts highlighting excerpts from the staff interview transcripts and the latest Bolton media coverage.

Ahmad Chalabi is surely a busy man, what with running Iraq's oil ministry being only his latest political venture. But he has taken the time to read and respond to the Columbia Journalism Review's July/August 2004 article, "How Chalabi Played the Press", in a letter here (via Romenesko). What's really worth reading are the responses from the LA Times' Bob Drogin and Knight-Ridder's Jonathan Landay to the Chalabi letter, which asserts that the INC had nothing to do with "Curveball," a point backed up by the Silberman-Robb commission report. Landay's letter is worth reading in full:

Mr. Chalabi is correct that on April 3, 2004, Knight Ridder published a story that quoted anonymous U.S. officials as saying that the Iraqi National Congress supplied the Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball." He is also right that the Silberman-Robb commission found that the defector wasn't connected to the INC.

He fails to mention, however, that a defector who was provided by the INC and later determined to have been a fabricator was used to corroborate Curveball’s false claims about Iraqi mobile biological warfare facilities. Chalabi also neglects to acknowledge that after learning that the Silberman-Robb commission had concluded that the INC had not provided Curveball, Knight Ridder reported that on March 29, 2005 -- two days before the Silberman-Robb report was released.

Further, Chalabi is wrong to assert that in its extensive reporting on pre-war Iraqi intelligence, Knight Ridder portrayed his organization as "the main source of U.S. intelligence on Saddam." In fact, much of our reporting was about the intense clashes between U.S. officials who wanted to use information provided by the INC and others who were deeply suspicious of INC-supplied information.

Chalabi also claims that the Silberman-Robb commission found that INC-related sources had a minimal impact on the Bush administration's pre-war assessments. This is true only with respect to the formal intelligence assessments the commission was charged with examining. His assertion sidesteps two equally critical issues:

* The commission did not examine the use of INC-supplied defectors’ claims by the Bush administration, which also was receiving some materials directly from the INC's U.S.-funded Information Gathering Program -- unfiltered for accuracy by the Intelligence Community. In a June 26, 2002, letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee staff, the INC itself reported that it was providing information directly to a senior official in the office of the vice president and to another one in the office of the secretary of defense.

* Nor did the commission examine the impact on U.S. and international public opinion of the multitude of media stories alleging that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was training terrorists, stories that were based on interviews with defectors and other information that the INC supplied to print and electronic news media. The INC’s own June 26, 2002, letter lists 108 stories containing information it fed to journalists during a five-month period beginning in October 2001. Much of that information, it later turned out, was exaggerated or fabricated.

A case in point: When President Bush addressed the United Nations General Assembly on September 12, 2002, the White House released a background paper titled "A Decade of Deception and Defiance" on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorism. This paper was distributed to foreign governments, members of U.S. and international journalists, and it remains available to the general public on the White House Web site . The first item in the chapter entitled "Saddam Hussein’s Development of Weapons of Mass Destruction" is a claim by an INC-supplied defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri, a chemical engineer, that he had visited twenty secret nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons sites. The White House published this claim even though DIA and CIA interrogators nine months earlier had rejected Mr. Saeed as unreliable after he flunked a lie detector test by the CIA in Thailand. When he was brought back to Iraq by the Iraq Survey Group after the war, Mr. Saeed was unable to identify a single WMD facility. Mr. Saeed’s claim was also the focus of the lead story in The New York Times on Dec. 20, 2001, and was picked up and reproduced by other media outlets.

In a chapter entitled "Saddam Hussein’s Support for International Terrorism," the White House paper claimed that, "Former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret terrorist training facility in Iraq known as Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations." This allegation came from two INC-supplied defectors, Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami, a former Iraqi army captain, and Brig. Gen. Abu Zeinab al Quairy, the purported commander of the training facility. Both men were rejected as unreliable by U.S. intelligence professionals. Nevertheless, the White House published their claims. Their claims, including suggestions that the September 11 hijackers may have been trained at the alleged facility, also appeared in the American and British media. After the invasion, the only training facility found at Salman Pak was determined by U.S. officials to have been used by Iraqi counter-terrorism units.

We could cite other examples of exaggerated and bogus INC-supplieddefector claims appearing in official U.S. government materials and American and international news media. Chalabi and his organization insist that they did their best to check the backgrounds and claims by defectors before passing them on to American officials. That may well be true. But Chalabi is wrong to suggest that the Silberman-Robb report absolves him or the INC of responsibility for the dissemination of erroneous or fabricated information about Iraqi weapons programs and ties to terrorism that some officials in the Bush administration used in making their case for pre-emptive war. Knight Ridder stands by its reporting on pre-war intelligence, and we will continue to report on the subject.

Chalabi's supporters are all too eager to brush under the rug the inconvenient fact of the other INC supplied defectors who did deceive the US government and international media about Saddam's WMD programs, and connections to al Qaeda, including Sabah Khalifa Khodada Alami, Brig. Gen. Abu Zeinab al Quairy, and Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri.

Meantime, has anyone really resolved what Chalabi's former intel chief Aras Habib Karim has been doing in Iran for the past year, until his recent barely noticed return to Baghdad? How did the whole defector scheme work exactly anyhow?

Late Update: Chalabi deputy prime minister and acting oil minister in new government. Not bad!

In the continuing saga of the Bush administration's kicking up of its most controversial personnel, Bill Luti, the big boss of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, has been promoted to a White House position. From the White House press release today:

Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Stephen J. Hadley announced today, the appointment of William J. Luti as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Defense Policy and Strategy.

Most recently, Dr. Luti served as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs.Prior to joining the Defense Department, Dr. Luti served as a Special Advisor for National Security Affairs to Vice President Cheney. He previously served for 26 years as a naval officer in a wide variety of operational and policy positions including command of an aviation squadron, an amphibious assault ship and an amphibious ready group.

Or maybe this is just a favor to Cheney after Bolton's nomination ran into choppy waters?

Meantime, you may want to read Jeff Goldberg's kind of non-expose on Doug "I never heard of Ahmad Chalabi" Feith's home library. I suppose it answers the question of, on the eve of his leaving the Pentagon, how does Feith think history will remember him. But one wishes, with Goldberg's amazing access to Feith, he would have done more with this.

(Thx to SW).

Bush backtracking on Darfur. Read Kristof and Tom Malinowski.

Go read Marc Lynch, a.k.a. Abu Aardvark on the Bush administration's double standards on Mideast governance:

There's also some big double standards problems. Most Arabs are deeply cynical about American intentions, and they can't help but notice when "useful" Arab countries get a pass. Tunisia invites Ariel Sharon to come visit, and the Bush administration has not a word to say when a human rights activist is sent to jail for publishing an article on the internet describing torture in the Tunisian prisons. Heck, the administration doesn't even seem to consider it a problem that the regional office of the Middle East Partnership Initiative is based in a country which the State Department describes as having an extremely poor human rights record, where "members of the security forces tortured and physically abused prisoners and detainees... [and] arbitrarily arrested and detained individuals."

Nor did the Bush administration have a word to say about Jordan, where King Abdullah's regime spent much of the last year getting more and more repressive. It got bad enough that Abdullah finally sacked his prime minister and appointied a new "reformist" PM a month ago, but - amazingly - no Bush official has yet said a single word in public about it (you can read all you want, and more, about Jordan here)... Places like Tunisia and Jordan really hurt America's image as a credible democracy promoter among Arabs, who pay attention to such things.

It got worse last week. The pictures of Bush kissing Crown Prince Abdullah and walking hand in hand with the Saudi leader reinforced this impression for Arabs. The op-ed pages of the Arab press have been filled to the brim the last week with pieces extolling (or damning) the return to normal American-Saudi relations. Whatever the Realist reasons for cozying up to the Saudis - oil prices, their newly helpful attitude on terrorism - it's got nothing to do with Arab democracy, and Arabs see that. Remember, they already don't trust this administration, so there's a big hurdle... and scenes like the Crawford love-fest raise it even higher.

Not to mention, Kuwait.

The Boston Globe's Farah Stockman recalls when John Bolton collapsed the Biological Weapons Treaty to the surprise of US allies:

In December 2001, at a conference on biological weapons, John R. Bolton stunned his fellow diplomats by insisting, without warning, that the nations of the world abandon their years-long effort to enforce the global treaty on germ warfare, according to conference participants...

The Geneva meeting, which was supposed to close with a statement of cooperation, ended abruptly in chaos and anger shortly after the American position was announced. Allies from the European Union were so furious that a planned meeting with US delegates did not take place.

This is no doubt what Bolton's supporters hope he will engineer as a repeat performance if he gets to the UN on issue after issue. As a reader knowledgeable about US nonproliferation efforts writes, "Many of us agreed with Bolton that the draft protocol was problematic and was not acceptable in its current form. But instead of further negotiations to seek a compromise, Bolton chose to simply call for the termination of the international mandate to negotiate a protocol, enraging everyone in December."

According to the Globe piece, Bolton's opposition to the BWC treaty was in part because he didn't want the US to have to submit to the kind of verification measures that would have strengthened it. But interestingly enough, just a few months after Bolton's December 2001 pyrotechnics killing the bioweapons treaty at the UN, US investigators came to believe that the anthrax attacks that had killed five Americans in October 2001 were the work of a US bioterrorist, one most likely connected to the US government bioweapons program. America's bioweapons secrets that Bolton wants to protect haven't done us any favors.

Update: What's more, the reader adds, Bolton later seemed to regret the loss of some of the BW verification protocols he killed:

Another interesting irony: Bolton in 2001 argued that international inspections would not work vis-a-vis biological weapons programs, because they are too easily concealed and can be disguised as dual-use technology. Accordingly, he argued that any verification protocol would simply give the world "false hope" that it had constrained the problem.

Yet, in May 2002, during the now infamous row over the hardline Cuba speech he wanted to deliver at the Heritage Foundation, Bolton included in his original draft a proposal to place international inspectors in Cuba to ensure that it was not operating a BW program. Christian Westermann, the IC analyst whom Bolton wanted to get rid of, had to remind Bolton that official U.S. policy, e.g. the policy Bolton himself established, did not place much value in international inspections to monitor BW proliferation and hence this proposal should be removed from the speech.

Talk about pathological...

Another revised Bolton memo. This sent along from US News & World Report by reader DI:

Senate Aides Examining Bolton's Handling Of Israel Memo.

U.S. News and World Report (5/9) reports that Senate aides are looking into [how] Bolton, "as under secretary of state for arms control, handled a State Department review of a July 2002 missile strike on a Gaza City building that killed the military leader of the Palestinian extremist group Hamas and 14 others. Several offices of the State Department, including the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and the legal office, believed Israel may have violated U.S. arms-export laws by using an American-made F-16 jet in the attack. Bolton disagreed, and officials drafted a 'split memo' for Secretary of State Colin Powell, laying out both positions.

But late one evening, sources say, just before the memo went to Powell's office, Bolton recalled it and allegedly replaced it with a new memo, omitting the assessment that Israel may have violated the law. Powell never learned that some of his staffers took a different view, according to officials."

Update -- "Clear Case of Insubordination": A well-informed reader responds to the information above:

Split memos, while not common, are meant to portray to a Secretary of the fact there is not consensus inside the Department on a given issue and lay out both sides. For Bolton to have replaced a split memo at the last minute with a memo portraying only one unified recommendation is to essentially cheat the process -- that's a clear case of insubordination.

Jack Abramoff's ties to Malaysia's Mahatir raising eyebrows, the Forward's E.J. Kessler reports:

Reports of business dealings between embattled Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the government of a Malaysian leader known for antisemitic speeches are drawing flak from Democrats and raising eyebrows among Jewish communal officials.

According to press reports, Abramoff once worked for the government of former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, after the Southeast Asian leader accused "the Jews" in 1997 of conspiring to drive down his country's currency. Abramoff, a longtime conservative activist and Orthodox Jewish philanthropist who supports right-wing Israeli causes, was paid indirectly in 2001 by Mahathir's government, at a time when the premier was seeking to improve Malaysia's image in America, according to reports in The Washington Post and Time magazine.

The reports that Abramoff had lobbied for the Mahathir regime and that DeLay had dined with Mahathir at a "fancy dinner" in Kuala Lumpur in 2001 provided an opportunity for Democrats to attack them for political hypocrisy. Republicans had used Mahathir in attacks on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry that were aimed at the Jewish community...

Congress passed a resolution condemning the speech. Bush administration officials said that the president rebuked Mahathir privately, but the Malaysian leader denied that any such conversation took place.

This week, a sponsor of the congressional resolution condemning Mahathir, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, chief deputy GOP whip and one of DeLay's top defenders, did not return requests for comment submitted to an aide.

I bet he didn't. I still think Abramoff should have faced charges for serving as an apartheid South African intelligence asset (although it seems such sympathies were not exactly rare in 'the movement'). How many words for fraud and scumbag can there be? (Thx to reader SCJ for the link.)

The real nuclear option. As international leaders gather today in New York for the first time in five years to review the thirty-five year old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). it is becoming alarmingly more apparent by the day that the Bush administration's policies towards nuclear-aspiring Iran and North Korea are incoherent and failing, in no small part because the administration is internally divided and loathe to be seen to be "managing" problems with rogue states but doesn't seem to have any better solutions. What's the result, then, today? Keep doing the same thing, only louder, Derek Chollet argues:

One would think that given all this – and given the obvious flaws in the NPT that allow states to acquire the technologies needed to produce nuclear weapons capabilities legally– the United States would be heading into this important meeting with an ambitious, bold agenda to reform and strengthen the NPT for the 21st century.

Nope.

Instead, it appears that the Administration wants to use the conference to defend its failing policies toward North Korea and Iran...

It’s bad enough that the Bush team lacks either the will or the way to deal with specific WMD threats like North Korea -- its broader approach to non-proliferation is uninspired and unimaginative. And who is going to pay the price? Us.

Wade Boese has more in a piece today in The American Prospect, in which he argues, it's complicated for the Bush administration to tell other countries that they are obliged to halt their programs when the Bush administration is pursuing development of new nuclear weapons, including tactical nuclear weapons:

The international goodwill the administration should have been able to derive from its nuclear-reduction plans has been offset not only by its rejection of some of the 13 steps but also by U.S. exploration of new and modified nuclear weapons, such as so-called bunker busters to destroy targets deep underground. Coupled with this research have been initiatives to revamp the U.S. nuclear complex so it is more capable of preserving existing weapons and, if necessary, producing and testing new ones...

What many other countries want, however, is for the United States to do a better job of meeting its own obligations. Measures that the administration could compromise on without diminishing U.S. security include abandoning research into new and modified nuclear warheads, reporting regularly on its nuclear holdings, destroying excess nuclear warheads instead of storing them, reversing its opposition to the treaty banning nuclear testing, and reassuring NPT states-parties without nuclear weapons that the United States would never use its nuclear stockpile against them. Progress on even one or two of these items would have a positive impact on the conference.

Without making any of these accommodations, though, the administration will have a hard time building consensus on stricter conditions under which countries can use nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes and withdraw from the NPT.

Very hard problems made harder by an administration that is unwilling to be seen to be managing them.

Natan Sharansky quits Israeli government in protest over disengagement plan.

North Korea seems to have test fired another short-range missile today, the AP reports.

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.