Senate Coverage -- (May '05)

Since "Free Republic is an online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web. We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America.", I and others think it's a good idea to centralize what the goes on in the Senate (or House).

So if you see something happening on the Senate/House floor and you don't want to start a new thread to ask if anyone else just heard what you heard, you can leave a short note on who said what and about what and I'll try and find it the next day in THE RECORD. Or if you see a thread that pertains to the Senate, House, or pretty much any GOV'T agency please link your thread here.

C-SPAN what a great thing. Where you can watch or listen live to most Government happenings.

C-SPAN 3 (most places web only) carries a variety of committee meetings live or other past programming.

A great thing about our Government is they make it really easy for the public to research what the Politicians are doing and saying (on the floor anyway).

THOMAS where you can see a RECORD of what Congress is doing each day. You can also search/read a verbatim text of what each Congressmen/women or Senator has said on the floor or submitted 'for the record.' [This is where the real juicy stuff can be found.]

NOMINATION OF JOHN ROBERT BOLTON TO BE THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO THE UNITED NATIONS -- (Senate - May 25, 2005)

Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, I deeply respect my colleague from Ohio, and I deeply respect the passion that he brings to his concern about this nomination.

I also bring passion and concern. I have been involved as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and have been looking at the U.N. and the oil for food scandal--a scandal which allowed Saddam Hussein to rebuild his military capacity, to bribe individuals close to the leadership of member states of the Security Council, to fund terrorism. I have looked at the U.N. over recent years, at the scandals of sexual abuse and child prostitution in Africa, where U.N. officials were not responded to for months and months. I have looked at the world in which we live, and the challenges we face, and I realize the United States cannot be the world's sole policeman, the world's sole humanitarian provider. We cannot do it on our own. We need partners and we need a U.N. that is strong and credible.

This President has made a decision that the person who can best do the heavy lifting that is required for U.N. reform is John Bolton. He does that by looking at the record of John Bolton. I respect the President for that commitment to reform the United Nations, and as I look at this dangerous world in which we live, I think it is essential that we seize this moment of opportunity now. I think it is essential that we confirm this nomination.

The reality is that John Bolton is a man of strong conviction. Clearly, there are some differences of perspective even in the State Department. There was an

editorial in the Washington Post on May 12 of this year in which the writer said:

The committee interviews have provided some colorful details without breaking new ground on what has long been a well-understood split in the first Bush administration, a split between those who saw themselves as the pragmatic diplomats, (the Powell camp) and those, like Mr. Bolton, who saw themselves as more willing to bruise feelings here and abroad in standing up for U.S. interests.

In the end, the Post concludes:

The nominee is intelligent and qualified; we still see no compelling reason to deny the president his choice.

Former Secretary of State--perhaps the model of the Secretaries of State--Lawrence Eagleburger, a career foreign service officer, said in an April 22 Washington Post op-ed:

The real reasons Bolton's opponents want to derail his nomination are his oft-repeated criticism of the United Nations and other international organizations, his rejection of the arguments of those who ignore or excuse the inexcusable (i.e., the election of Sudan to the Human Rights Commission) .....

And a couple weeks ago the election of Zimbabwe.

As to the charge that Bolton has been tough on subordinates, I can say only that in more than a decade of association with him at the State Department, I never saw or heard anything to support such a charge. Nor do I see anything wrong with his challenging intelligence analysts on their findings.

My colleague from Ohio and my colleagues across the aisle talked about an incident with an analyst--Westermann--in which Bolton had a speech that he was preparing on the issue of Cuba's capacity to develop biological weapons. That speech then was supposed to be sent to analysts in the process. That is the process--send it around to analysts and they come back and tell you whether you can say what you want to say. In the end, the speeches have to get cleared.

What happened with Mr. Westermann is this. What you have heard so far is that John Bolton was angry at Mr. Westermann. My colleague from Ohio said he was quite upset as to why he would change language. That is what happened. What happened is not that Westermann sent something around and then got it back, and then Bolton had a concern with the conclusion. What happened is that when Bolton gave the document with the language to Westermann, he sent it on. What he told Bolton's chief of staff was: I sent your language to the CIA intact and only at its source citations.

What really happened, and what the record shows and demonstrates, is that what Westermann did is that he had sent it around, but he inserted language that basically said what Bolton wanted to say would not fly. So Bolton doesn't know, when he gets it back, that that piece is out. Clearly, he wanted to say it, but they said he could not. His concern with Westermann--and the testimony reflects this also--was not about policy. He said: I disagree with you going behind my back. I disagree with you not being honest with me, not telling me up front that in fact this is what you did rather than saying I circulated it, but I find out that, in effect, you lied to me.

John Bolton was angry and he said: I have lost confidence in someone who cannot be honest with me, who goes behind my back, and I have to find out about it from another source. That was the conversation he had with Westermann. What you hear and what is portrayed about Mr. Bolton is that somehow there is this pattern of abuse. What is cited is that he had this conversation with Westermann--by the way, after that conversation, Mr. Bolton did check with Westermann's superiors and got an e-mail. We heard about that e-mail. The e-mail said--and this is from Mr. Fingar, one of the superiors of Westermann:

We screwed up but not for base reasons. It won't happen again.

So Bolton finds out that he has been tooled by somebody who did not tell him the truth about what happened. He checks with his superior and gets an e-mail that says, by the way, we made a mistake, this will not happen again.

My colleague from Ohio says they were just doing that because they found out somebody was upset. But if you are looking at it from John Bolton's perspective, what you see is: I was angry because somebody did something which is confirmed by their source, the senior person there, that, in fact, what they did was wrong.

It is interesting because Fingar basically said it was not a big deal. As far as I am concerned, that closed it.

We get a representation somehow that did not close it, that John Bolton is going around pounding this issue and looking for retribution with Mr. Westermann. In fact, the report shows just the opposite.

What happened here is Bolton was upset. He went to the guy who caused the problem. He also tried contacting his superior. He was not around. He eventually got to Fingar who came back with an e-mail--I use his language--``We screwed up,'' and that is it. That is it.

Then we hear the testimony of Carl Ford, a long-term, good, loyal employee of the State Department, and we hear about Ford and his representations about Mr. Bolton. John Bolton's interaction with Carl Ford was a 2 or 3-minute conversation in front of a water fountain. So it was not a matter of somebody going around to get retribution and they are angry. That was it, literally Bolton ran into Ford at a water fountain. What Ford was upset about was that John Bolton went to his guy. It was his guy on his team. Ford was upset with that. I guess you have two guys with pretty strong feelings. But that was the conversation.

John Bolton did not call the Secretary of State, did not call the Deputy Secretary of State, did not call others in the Department, did not pursue it. If I am angry about something, really angry about something, I want to take care of it and I take care of it, particularly a guy like John Bolton. He is not a soft guy, no question about that. But the interaction regarding Westermann was bumping into someone at a water fountain and having an exchange. Westermann's boss basically said: Don't mess with my guys. And that is Mr. Ford. His experience with John Bolton is essentially that 2-minute conversation--that is it--I think until he leaves.

Then the only other conversation on the record that Mr. Bolton had about Mr. Westermann is a number of months later, he was visiting with another official within the agency and asked how

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are things going and is there anything that troubles you? Only when asked that question does he even bring up the incident again, and that is it.

So this image being portrayed about somehow hounding down a lower level employee--by the way, Westermann was a 20-year Navy veteran; he was not a kid wet behind his ears. I have to tell you, if it was the private sector, Mr. Westermann may have been fired for not being honest with his superior, for going behind somebody's back. That is what happened.

I want to go back to the Washington Post article, the Eagleburger comment. Here is what is really happening here. When John Bolton's name was put forward as the nomination by the President, my colleagues on the other side made it very clear they were going to oppose this nomination. The issue then was his comments he made about the United Nations. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle did not think John Bolton was respectful enough of the United Nations and he did not deserve to be confirmed. That was the issue. It was about policy differences between John Bolton and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

What happened is because that argument did not sell, they then began an examination of some of these interpersonal exchanges and what became the Westermann issue, what became a series of contacts with John Bolton, with legitimate concerns, characterized as a series of a pattern abuser.

There were concerns raised about North Korea and about John Bolton's comments regarding North Korea, somehow that he was straying off message, that he was saying things that should not have been said, that he gave a speech in July 2000 in which I think he called Kim Jong Il, the North Korean President, a tyrant, which, by the way, he is. The comment was he was straying off message, that he was saying things that should not have been said.

I have a copy of a letter from former Secretary of State Colin Powell. It is dated August 26, 2003, when he was Secretary of State. He is sending a letter to Jon Kyl of the Senate. He says:

Dear Jon, I am pleased to reply to your recent letter concerning John Bolton's speech in Korea and our reaction.

Undersecretary's Bolton speech was fully cleared within the Department. It was consistent with Administration policy, did not really break new ground with regard to our disdain for the North Korean leadership and, as such, was official.

`` ..... and, as such, was official.'' ``Fully cleared,'' ``was official.''

If one sat here and listened to what was said before, one would think somehow this guy was off there on his own saying things that were disruptive to policy.

That is not the way it works. For the public who may not understand, when we have a senior State Department official making speeches in North Korea, making speeches about Cuba and its policy regarding procurement of biological weapons, these speeches are cleared. There is a process. There is not a single instance in the record where John Bolton is somehow substantiated for having said things that were not policy, said things that were disruptive of policy.

At times did he challenge analysts? Yes, he did, and that is probably a pretty good thing to do. Analysts do not speak from a holy mountain. They come in with a perspective. We have seen enough history now in the last couple of years where analysts had a perspective and they were wrong. John Bolton challenged analysts, but in the end, each and every time, what he did was he delivered the message he was supposed to be delivering.

There was a question concerning Libya and the allegation, by the way, in Newsweek--an allegation in Newsweek. My colleagues quote Newsweek as if it is the Holy Bible. Newsweek--credible reporting that he was sidelined, and then there was a conversation, an anonymous source, that somehow the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was complaining to Powell about John Bolton. The anonymous source, according to a Bush official, told them that Secretary of State Powell's Under Secretary for Arms Control was making it impossible to reach allied agreement on Iran's nuclear program. Powell turned to an aide and said: Get a different view on the problem, Bolton is being too tough. Jack Straw flatly rejects this. Here is what Straw's press spokesman is saying:

Conversations between the Foreign Secretary and our U.S. counterpart are private and we do not normally comment on their content. However, the Foreign Secretary has no recollection whatsoever of telling the U.S. administration or any other whom it should or should not put in charge of its business. John Bolton held a senior position in counterproliferation arms control in the last administration and senior UK officials worked closely with him on a range of issues.

The bottom line is Mr. Powell never told Mr. Bolton he was being too tough in dealing with our European allies. Mr. Bolton has continued to represent the Bush administration's firm position that Iran has yet to make their strategic decision not to pursue nuclear weapons capability and, therefore, Iran's violation of its commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty should be referred to the United Nations Security Council.

There was another concern about an article 98 issue. The allegation was that somehow Mr. Bolton blocked military aid for Eastern European NATO candidate countries, even though there are article 98 restrictions, concerns for not agreeing to take U.S. servicemen to the International Criminal Court, have been waived. Bolton wanted to pressure them to sign the article 98 agreements.

Rich Armitage, the No. 2 person at the State Department under Colin Powell, has refuted this claim. He said: I did not consider this unusual at all. Different fiefdoms at State often have different positions and Deputy Secretaries resolve them. It was part and parcel of daily life. Again, allegation made and claim simply not true.

I could go on. I would just like to touch upon a few more. One of them had to do with an allegation that Mr. Bolton, before he worked for the State Department, was involved in a situation where he yelled at a colleague, a woman whom he worked with. I think this conversation was supposed to have taken place in Moscow at the time. This individual said that Bolton had yelled and screamed at her, chased her around.

We had a full committee hearing. The allegation was raised. It was raised in front of the press, raised in front of the media that somehow John Bolton--there was a source that said this woman had complained. It ended up that this woman, a very political woman, one of the leaders of Mothers Against Bush, a liberal activist, had made the claim on liberal Air America. Under questioning, when asked about whether she had been chased or harassed by Mr. Bolton, her testimony was: Well, I may have overstated that.

We then get letters from the president of the company that held the contract for which this woman worked. He said: I certainly did not hear contemporaneously from any other employee in Moscow that anything occurred between Mr. Bolton and Ms. Townsel in Moscow. Consequently, it is difficult to understand how she could make such accusations with any veracity. He then went on to talk about some of her conduct and was very concerned about that. He concluded that he found Bolton to be very intelligent, hard working, loyal, ethical, and there was nothing to this. Ultimately, my colleagues on the other side kind of dropped that but after it was made public, after they discussed it in public, though I believe they had in their hands the same letters, the same rebuttal. That is one of the problems. There are individuals who--John Bolton, by the way, has been before this Senate three and perhaps four times. He has been before this body, been scrutinized, been confirmed three to four times. Now we reach a point, and maybe it is the atmosphere around here, maybe the partisan divide has gotten so great, but what starts out with a concern over policy then slips into attacks on the personal. People's character is disparaged, even though there is no basis for it, disparaged publicly, disparaged in the media.

Folks then rely upon credible reporting in Newsweek magazine, when the sources then who are close to the issue come back and say that credible reporting simply is not very credible. People go through a ringer. If I was listening to some of these allegations, I would come to some conclusions about character, but then when one looks, for instance, at the Westermann incident and hears about serial abuse, they find out it was one conversation because

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Mr. Bolton believed he got stabbed in the back; that the other conversation took place over a water fountain and that was it, except when asked, about 6 months later, ``Is there anything that bothered you?'' and he said, ``He has not bothered me.'' But we get a characterization of temperament and loss of temper and somehow being impolitic. It is simply not credible.

I was there for just about every portion of every hearing and heard all the evidence. For all of these claims that are made, if one looks, as they say, at the rest of the story, they find out that they are not credible.

It really gets back perhaps to where we started, that in the end this is about policy. We should end where it began. There are those who simply disagree with Mr. Bolton's approach. When I say ``approach,'' Mr. Bolton has made it very clear that he believes in the institution; that he is committed. He made the commitment--and I am going to take him at his word--to work with the institution. That is what he is going to do.

I think we have to take him at his word, and we have to accept the fact that the President believes that U.N. reform is important and Mr. Bolton has the capacity to do the job. He negotiated the Treaty of Moscow, negotiated the U.N. reversing its position on a resolution that had been in place a number of years which said Israel was a racist state. Everybody said that would be impossible to change, and John Bolton provided the leadership to get the U.N. to reverse itself on that issue. He clearly has the qualifications and the skills. He has the support of the President. He has the support of the Secretary of State. He has my support. I know how important this job is. I know we have this window of opportunity and we have to seize it.

I was a former prosecutor, and I know how it works. In Minnesota, the prosecution gives a closing argument and the defense goes after. There is no prosecution rebuttal. So I would often go in front of the jury and I would say: What you have to watch out for is the ``rabbits in the hat'' approach, that what you are going to hear come out on the

other side is they are going to unleash a number of rabbits that are going to come running out of that hat.

In this case, the first rabbit is of positions on the U.N.; the second rabbit is of policy positions; the third rabbit is saying things that should not have been said; the fourth rabbit is personal behavior, et cetera, hoping that somebody on the jury chases one of those rabbits. Instead, what we need folks to do is keep their eye on the main thing. The main thing, as Steve Covey said: One thing is keep the main thing the main thing.

The main thing is that this President has a belief that this U.N. needs reform. The main thing is that John Bolton has a long and distinguished record of service to this country and an ability to get things done. He has the toughness it is going to take to get 191 nations to stop putting Zimbabwe and Sudan on the Human Rights Commission. He has that ability. He has the confidence of the President. In the end, elections matter. The President of the United States won the election. He has chosen someone to carry out that vision, and that person has the record and the ability to do that. There is nothing in this record that undermines that. There is nothing in this record that he ever said he changed intelligence. There is nothing in this record that he ever got anybody fired.

What is in this record is a distinguished record that has been attacked, savaged, and abused. I hope that does not have the chilling effect on others who want to serve this country.

John Bolton is willing to serve this country. He deserves the right to do that, and I hope that my colleagues agree and they support his confirmation.

I yield the floor.

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