STOP BOLTON, He's Revoltin'!
stopbolton.org
[RGD aside: This man is a serial liar, criminal-minded fascist thug and whore for special interests. He won't represent real Americans, just the lunatic fringe.]
Rogue Policymaker and Serial Abuser
Under any administration, many principled Americans don’t agree with the President but continue to work as members of a team to promote the President's policies and U.S. interests. John Bolton, however, is not a team player. Bolton uses the government as a platform from which to promote his own radical views. Anyone who tries to stop him is to be harassed, intimidated, or removed.
This kind of conduct is unacceptable anywhere in government, but at the UN, it would be disastrous for U.S. interests. In the future, when we confront threats like terrorism, disease, and rogue states, we’ll need an Ambassador who everyone knows speaks for the President and the American people.
America should send its most trustworthy and reliable face to make our case to the world. John Bolton is an awful choice. If his record in public service is any indication, he is much more likely to make his own case than America's case at the UN.
Bolton's Record
The record (so far) on Bolton’s abuse of government authority:
* Attempted to “reassign” intelligence analysts who challenged his policy conclusions: John Bolton believed that Cuba was building biological weapons systems. The U.S. intelligence community did not. Bolton attempted to remove two intelligence analysts from their posts because of this disagreement. He told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he simply “lost confidence” in the analysts, Fulton Armstrong, a CIA Latin America analyst, and Christian Westerman, the top biological weapons expert in the State Department, because of procedural issues. Stuart Cohen and Carl Ford, their respective supervisors, recall instead that Bolton was furious that low-level analysts would dare challenge an appointee of the President on substantive matters. In fact, Ford, a staunch conservative Republican, testified to the Foreign Relations Committee that Bolton’s anger toward Westerman “sent a chill” through the intelligence community at the State Department; he added: "I’ve never seen anybody quite like Secretary Bolton. I don’t have a second, third or fourth in terms of the way that he abuses his power and authority with little people." Armstrong and Westerman only kept their jobs because CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin and Secretary of State Colin Powell intervened to protect them.
* Made unusual number of requests for transcripts of secret conversations involving high-level U.S. officials: As Under Secretary of State, Bolton requested and received the identities of 10 different U.S. officials whose conversations he read in top-secret National Security Agency intercepts. While it is not unheard of for U.S. officials to make these kinds of requests, ten “is unusually high for one person,” according to an intelligence official. Bolton did not acknowledge a request "for the names of the U.S. officials whose identities he sought, leaving some to believe that he was spying on his superiors and colleagues to advance his own agenda.
* Angered U.K. officials with maverick Iran policy: While Colin Powell and Richard Armitage were trying to make progress towards a common Iran policy for the U.S. and Britain, Bolton was espousing his own, unsupported views on Iran and disrupting U.S.-U.K. relations. British Foreign Minister Jack Straw complained about Bolton to Powell, who then circumvented Bolton and worked instead with the nonproliferation experts in his department.
* Tried to fire official for toning down Iraqi WMD language: Bolton tried to fire Rexon Ryu, a “rising star” in the State Department, claiming Ryu refused to transmit a cable Bolton wrote about weapons inspectors in Iraq. When Ryu’s superiors investigated the charge, they found it to be untrue. On the other hand, State Department officials revealed that Ryu had played an important role in toning down Powell’s speech to the UN on Iraqi weapons and removing some of the more controversial allegations.
* Did not forward crucial intelligence memos to the Secretary of State: On a number of occasions, Bolton blocked vital information from getting to Secretaries of State Powell and Condoleezza Rice, simply because they were not hawkish enough for his taste. The decision by Bolton to keep this information to himself often left Powell uninformed.
* Made dangerous speech on Korean weapons, then lied to Congress about approval: In 2003, Bolton delivered an inflammatory speech in Seoul, South Korea, that put nuclear negotiations with North Korea at risk. In his testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee, Bolton defended the speech, saying Thomas C. Hubbard, former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, approved it. Bolton claimed that Hubbard told him that the "speech had been helpful and done them some good." Hubbard’s response: "At the very least, he greatly, greatly exaggerated my comments." In fact, Hubbard rejected many controversial lines from the speech, many of which Bolton recited anyway.
* Allegedly promoted faulty intelligence on Iraqi nuclear program: According to Congressman Henry Waxman, Bolton was the key proponent of the now-discredited claim that Iraq was seeking to acquire uranium from Niger to build nuclear weapons. In a letter to Representative Christopher Shays, Waxman writes that Bolton saw to it that the claim was included in President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address and then covered his tracks by using State Department secrecy rules.
* Allegedly threatened and abused a USAID worker: Melody Townsel wrote a letter to Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar claiming that Bolton threatened her when she worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development. According to Townsel, whose story has been corroborated by a number of witnesses, Bolton chased her through a Moscow hotel, threatening her, throwing things at her, calling her names, and generally "behaving like a madman."
* Allegedly tried to fire a female employee for taking maternity leave: According to Sen. Chris Dodd, Bolton "threatened a woman who requested maternity leave” for health reasons at the Department of Justice. |
