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How DailyKos Helped Dems Attack Bolton
National Review ^ | 5/4/05 | Byron York

Posted on 05/04/2005 11:31:48 AM PDT by pookie18

A left-wing website rescues clueless Democrats in the confirmation fight.

When Melody Townsel, the Texas woman who claims that U.N.-ambassador nominee John Bolton chased her through a Moscow hotel, throwing things at her and "behaving like a madman," first tried to tell her story to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the committee showed no interest. It was only after she turned to the influential far-Left website DailyKos that Democrats on the committee realized Townsel might be a powerful weapon in their campaign to defeat the Bolton nomination.

The story began on Friday, April 8, when Townsel e-mailed her story to the committee. In an interview last night with National Review Online, she explained that she sent the letter, which described an alleged incident that occurred when she was working for an Agency for International Development subcontractor in Kyrgyzstan, to the committee's general e-mail address, and not to any particular senator. It was an explosive story. Bolton, she wrote,

proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel - throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman. For nearly two weeks, while I awaited fresh direction from my company and from US AID, John Bolton hounded me in such an appalling way that I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there. Mr. Bolton, of course, then routinely visited me there to pound on the door and shout threats.

One might have expected Democrats on the committee to take immediate notice. But days passed - including April 12, the day of Bolton's confirmation hearing - and Townsel heard nothing from the committee. "I got two form e-mails, one from [Democratic Sen. Joseph] Biden and one from someone I don't remember," Townsel says. "They said thank you very much for your comments."

A few more days passed, and then a week, and Townsel still heard nothing from the committee. Then, on Friday, April 15, with the committee's scheduled vote on Bolton just four days away, a friend of Townsel's, to whom she had told the story, asked if she could post Townsel's letter on DailyKos. The friend, who went by the name amyindallas, posted the letter with the comment that "[Townsel] described the incident in a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee members (who have thus far responded with a yawn), and I wanted to share it with a larger audience."

It worked. "Within a few hours, I started getting phone calls," Townsel told NRO, "one from the Senate and then the Senate again, both Democratic staffers." Democrats who had heretofore shown no interest in Townsel's story were suddenly very, very interested.

That evening, Townsel got a call from the liberal radio network Air America, and she soon found herself on the air. "I make no secret of the fact that I am an extremely liberal and vocal Democrat," Townsel, who was a member of the group Mothers Opposing Bush, said on Air America. But she claimed that her partisanship did not play a factor in her decision to speak out. Bolton, she said, had been "not just very difficult to deal with but abusive and confrontational and ended up sort of chucking some things in a meeting and pounding on hotel doors and trotting across hotel lobbies to get to me, and it was uncomfortable and kind of creepy." (A number of people involved in the matter, including Townsel's then-boss, have cast doubt on key parts of her story.)

By the next day, Saturday, April 16, Democrats sent Townsel's letter out to dozens of reporters. By Sunday morning, her story was in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Biden, whose office had blown Townsel off just a few days before, announced on Fox News Sunday that, "A former AID worker in Kyrgyzstan wrote an open letter to the committee...saying that she'd essentially been harassed by John Bolton...For me, that's an issue."

On Monday, April 18, the day before the scheduled (and later postponed) committee vote on Bolton, Townsel's friend, amyindallas, posted another message on DailyKos. "I want to thank everybody on Kos," she said, "for creating such a buzz about her letter that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had no choice but to at least hear her out." By Tuesday, Townsel's hometown paper, the Dallas Morning News, ran a story headlined, "Bolton Foes Hope E-Mail Alleging Abuse Sways UN Ambassador Vote."

And indeed, it appears that it did. At the April 19 committee meeting to vote on Bolton, Biden, the ranking Democrat on the committee, read at length from Townsel's letter. Later in the session, Ohio Sen. George Voinovich stunned his fellow Republicans by announcing that "I've heard enough today that I don't feel comfortable about voting for Mr. Bolton." The vote was postponed for three weeks.

Townsel, meanwhile, says she is surprised by the turn of events, saying she "didn't feel like we would get any response." But she did, and all because a liberal blog, like conservative websites in earlier controversies involving Dan Rather, Eason Jordan, and others, played a key role in another high-profile fight.


TOPICS: Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bolton; dailykos; davidbrock; demsrunningscared; dkos; goppartyofchickens; johnbolton; liar; limpfristed; mediamatters; melodytownsel; mob; momsopposingbush; mothersopposingbush; nukeoption; soros; thedailykos; un; ussenate
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To: Howlin
May 18, 2004

Mr. Reich originally had been George Bush's nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs in 2001. He had the votes to be confirmed. But Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd and his first lieutenant on the Senate foreign relations committee, Janice O'Connell, blamed Cold-War warrior Reich for the defeat of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas in the late 1980s and were determined to block his nomination.

Vicious mud slinging ensued. At least one sloppy, lazy "journalist" spread rumors that Mr. Reich had ties to a Cuban terrorist. Mr. Dodd also whispered to Senate colleagues that the nominee was going through a hostile divorce and hiding assets from his wife. None of the charges stuck for the simple reason that they lacked merit. Finally, Mr. Reich reports that Ms. O'Connell told another Hill staffer that she had a plan to make it financially impossible for him to take a government job by raising questions about the sale of his private consulting business. Under the terms of the deal, Mr. Reich was scheduled to receive payments over four years, something State Department lawyers told him was completely legal and ethical. But Mr. Reich tore up the contract anyway. Out of mud, Mr. Dodd simply refused to allow the confirmation hearings to proceed.

61 posted on 05/06/2005 7:18:47 PM PDT by kcvl
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To: kcvl

This is going to get real good.
Reich nailed her in public.


62 posted on 05/06/2005 7:42:18 PM PDT by mabelkitty
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To: kcvl
O'Connell impresses on State Department officials that she represents the permanent government whose word must be heeded by temporary presidential appointees.

Oh my. Suspected but to just have it stated so baldly...

63 posted on 05/06/2005 7:48:06 PM PDT by cyncooper
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To: mabelkitty

Yes he did. I wish I'd been paying closer attention at the beginning of the story on Fox today, but I did see him take to the mikes and I liked it.

A lot.


64 posted on 05/06/2005 7:52:24 PM PDT by cyncooper
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To: Dog

Ping over here and read the posts as some very enlightening articles are posted as well.


65 posted on 05/06/2005 7:59:37 PM PDT by cyncooper
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To: kcvl; mabelkitty

What a vile little man Dodd is.

Be sure to watch the rerun of Brit's show at midnight; it's the very first story. Otto Reich came straight out of his "meeting" today and blasted HER and Dodd and Biden and their staffs.


66 posted on 05/06/2005 8:40:03 PM PDT by Howlin (North Carolina, where beer kegs are registered and illegal aliens run free.)
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To: Howlin

Thanks, Howlin. Very interesting... I'll ping my list.


67 posted on 05/06/2005 8:41:32 PM PDT by nutmeg ("We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." - Hillary Clinton 6/28/04)
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To: StarFan; Dutchy; alisasny; BobFromNJ; BUNNY2003; Cacique; Clemenza; Coleus; cyborg; DKNY; ...
ping!

Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.

68 posted on 05/06/2005 8:42:50 PM PDT by nutmeg ("We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." - Hillary Clinton 6/28/04)
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To: Humidston

Keep reading; kcvl is pulling stuff out of his desk drawer, evidently.......LOL.


69 posted on 05/06/2005 8:45:26 PM PDT by Howlin (North Carolina, where beer kegs are registered and illegal aliens run free.)
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To: mabelkitty

There is a lot of evidence AmyinDallas is Amy Boardman Hunt

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1387441/posts?page=34#34


70 posted on 05/06/2005 8:47:45 PM PDT by finnman69 (cum puella incedit minore medio corpore sub quo manifestus globus, inflammare animos)
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To: kcvl

This is very disturbing. Very. How can a woman who isn't elected weild this much power in the name of a United States senator and pretty much ram through her own personal agenda?


71 posted on 05/06/2005 8:50:20 PM PDT by Howlin (North Carolina, where beer kegs are registered and illegal aliens run free.)
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To: Howlin

Who is this O'Connell chic

I just saw the 2nd air of Special Report and the claim she is the leaker???


72 posted on 05/06/2005 9:08:39 PM PDT by Mo1 (Hey GOP ---- Not one Dime till Republicans grow a Spine !!)
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To: Mo1

Read all this stuff kcvl has posted about Ms. O'Connell and Dodd; she's doing quite a bit of wheeling and dealing; and holding up nominiation.

Looks like a pattern to me; and patterns always have a reason.


73 posted on 05/06/2005 9:13:47 PM PDT by Howlin (North Carolina, where beer kegs are registered and illegal aliens run free.)
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To: Howlin

Thanks .. I'll go stalk her post


74 posted on 05/06/2005 9:35:45 PM PDT by Mo1 (Hey GOP ---- Not one Dime till Republicans grow a Spine !!)
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To: Mo1

They are on this thread.


75 posted on 05/06/2005 9:47:15 PM PDT by Howlin (North Carolina, where beer kegs are registered and illegal aliens run free.)
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To: kcvl; Howlin
Also helping to keep Chavez in power has been the attention of Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), at the time of the brief coup the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, and his chief foreign-policy aide, Janice O'Connell. Columnist Robert Novak wrote in April that Dodd and particularly O'Connell hold a grudge against Assistant Secretary of State Otto Reich, a conservative and anticommunist. This antagonism to Reich in particular, and conservatives generally, fuels Dodd's aggressive stance on U.S. policy in Latin America.

Chavez ???

Carter's Buddy???

Hmmmm .. besides Communism ... Oil?

76 posted on 05/06/2005 9:51:40 PM PDT by Mo1 (Hey GOP ---- Not one Dime till Republicans grow a Spine !!)
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To: kcvl
She approves personal service contracts by the U.S. mission in Cuba and recently warned a staffer there that his aggressive distribution of books and radios would get him kicked out of the country. O'Connell was instrumental in stalling the installation of Bush's nominee as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs: Cuban-born Otto Reich, a former ambassador to Venezuela

SHE approves personal service contracts ???

Don't mind me .. I'm still catching up and thinking out loud

But who is this women and WHY does she have so much say?

77 posted on 05/06/2005 9:58:31 PM PDT by Mo1 (Hey GOP ---- Not one Dime till Republicans grow a Spine !!)
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To: OXENinFLA

Just an FYI

But you might want to stalk kcvl's posted about Janice O'Connell and Chris Dodd

Very interesting stuff!!


78 posted on 05/06/2005 10:02:39 PM PDT by Mo1 (Hey GOP ---- Not one Dime till Republicans grow a Spine !!)
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To: kcvl; Howlin
Janice O'Connell has been with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since 1977, worked for Senator Frank Church, Senator Claiborne Pell, and since 1986 for Senator Dodd. Worked in opposition to Contra aid and military assistance to El Salvador, supported restoration of civilian rule in Haiti, worked on legislation to end sanctions on food and medicines to Cuba, and to lift travel restrictions on American travel to Cuba.

She worked for Frank Church???

The same Frank Church that dumbed down our intell agencies with his Committee???

79 posted on 05/06/2005 10:19:38 PM PDT by Mo1 (Hey GOP ---- Not one Dime till Republicans grow a Spine !!)
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To: Mo1

One and the same. Interesting, huh?


80 posted on 05/06/2005 10:24:29 PM PDT by Howlin (North Carolina, where beer kegs are registered and illegal aliens run free.)
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