Do you remember Barbara Boxer reading Dick Lugar the riot act at the end of the last Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing on John Bolton? She was determined to get a commitment from Lugar that the State Department would comply with the committee Democrats requests for information related to Bolton. Do you remember what Dick said?
Today we can see how far that trust should be extended….
Following the April 19 meeting, committee members prepared requests for additional interviews and information, including new interviews with former State Department legal counsel William Taft, former CIA official Alan Foley, and former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin and second interviews with Thomas Hubbard, former ambassador to South Korea, former acting chief of the National Intelligence Council Stuart Cohen, and Neil Silver, director of the strategic proliferation office. Additional information was requested regarding the identity of US officials associated with 10 NSA intercepts that Bolton requested and Bolton’s relationship to the development of information on Cuban bio weapons programs.
But today we learn that Lugar is throwing the trust under the bus:
The move was a blow to Democrats on the panel, who have focused on the dispute as a central part of their effort to defeat Bolton’s nomination as ambassador to the United Nations.
The Democrats contend Bolton improperly sought to toughen intelligence assessments of Syria as late as the summer of 2003, after the American failure to find illicit weapons in Iraq had raised alarms about the danger of inflated intelligence.
Of nine broad requests submitted Friday by Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, three were for records related at least in part to the Syria dispute. But in a letter sent to Rice yesterday about the document requests, the panel’s chairman, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, made no mention of the three requests related to Syria or another related to remarks Bolton delivered in 2001 on Sudan.
Lugar and Rice are not about to comply with the information requests made by the Democrats. Lugar has described these requests as only being marginally related to Bolton’s nomination. I completely disagree. If Bolton was trying to trump a case that Iraq’s WMD’s were transferred to Syria as a pretext for military action against Syria, that is way more than marginally relevant, especially in light of the CIA’s recent admission that is unlikely WMD were transferred to Syria. Bushco is hiding something that would be revealed if the SFR committee Dem’s information request was fully answered. I believe they are hiding evidence of a pattern of stovepiping intelligence to fit a desired outcome. Bolton is key to that stovepiping effort.
When Lugar said, “I guess we will just have to trust one another”, I knew he was lying. Add in Condiliar and what does that get you? A whole lot of nothing! I would certainly hope to hear the Dem panel members to start screaming loud and clear and the three key Repugs to do the same. If they have nothing to hide then why all the stalling? Every day this administration of liars, torturers and idiots assaults my soul. I’m sick and tired and I am once again writing to MY SENATOR, Mrs. Boxer. I suggest we all do the same. Faxes seem to get the most rapid response and phone calls too. lets flood the switch boards of Biden, Dodd, Boxer etc.
Lugar is a Bushco syncophat and if Bushco stopped too suddenly we all know where Lugar’s head would end up. I am shocked, No really I am shocked that a truly upstanding Repuglican like Lugar would say one thing out of one side of his mouth and then something totally different out of the other side of his mouth. I am surprised that Lugar hasn’t had to get some really intense therapy from his flip flopping, mealy mouthed, lying, trust me, the checks in the mail, I am from the government here to help you mentality. Oh wait he is a Repuglican, they never need therapy, God is on their side and will make every thing alright when God comes down and cleanses the earth of all the riff raff. Damn will that day be welcome when lying traitorous backstabbing Repugs are all sent to that place reserved for those that don’t understand what honesty, integrity and helping your fellow man really mean.
It was such a shock, a couple weeks ago (was it about that long ago?), to watch that committee meeting live on CSPAN, and see Lugar try to railroad the vote on Bolton right there and then. But for Voinovich that would have been the end of it.
Lugar was on a single track in that meeting, and he didn’t care who he ran over.
I lose more respect for Lugar every day. I know he hates Bolton, hates this nomination, and still he feels he has to push him through.
Get a principled thought, Lugar.
Lugar has no integrity. Is this what the voters of Indiana sent him to the Senate to do?
To me this is a signal that Bolton will make it out of committee.
Lugar needs to retire to his bean and tree farm in Indiana and leave government to those who have an original thought or have more than one brain cell. If this synchophat has had an original thought in the more than 28 yrs he has been a US Senator, I would be surprised. And surprise suprise, this person was a Rhodes Scholar. If only he would have an epiphany, that Bushco and his stalwart criminals really are out to destroy the US as a Democratic Republic and want to impart upon the US population a theocratic dictactorship. Well hell maybe Bushco offered him the position Grand Pubah of the great state of Indiania, he then can force all the residents of IND to listen to his boring voice, you Richard Lugar all the time radio. I can only hope that Bolton is derailed and if at all possible, kicked out of government as soon as possible.
How can requests for these interviews and this information be categorically denied unless there is classified data involved? It seems to me that the Democrats will have to demand that their requests be complied with. There must be legal recourse to this.
If circumstances don’t change soon, can the Democrats stall the confirmation further? Isn’t there an issue of non-compliance the Chairman would have to answer to?
There has to be a Rule of Order here.
Jane, a lot depends on whether or not the Dems can keep the Republicans who are questioning Bolton’s ethics and temperment. If Voinovich, holds and Chaffee doesn’t move right, Lugar is going to have to do one of two things. Stop Bolton’s nomination in committee or get those documents and show the country what a purely putrid animal Bolton is and how he manipulated data and people to get his ends met, just another bushco syncophat who toes the party line. Destroy destroy destroy, We are the repuglicans you will be assimilated.
What’s the latest on the attacks on Voinovich — including the TV ads criticizing his delay of the vote, which were run in Ohio? Vicious, imo. Par for the course for the GOP these days, sadly. Voinovich must have endured a hell of a lot of angry mail from his constituents … how dare he not vote for Bolton?
I wonder what’s been said to Lugar that he’d throw all collegiality out the window.
Lapin, you and I have a rich history of some extraordinary senators from our state. Warren Magnuson — and I’ve said this before here, and apologize for repeating myself, but i feel it so deeply matters …
Warren Magnuson accomplished such great things in the Senate. And he never had an enemy on either side. He got along with all, and finessed things so that there was a bit of wheeling and dealing, and a good deal of accord.
Maggie would be so very upset about the current state of Congress.
And that reminds me: I must find a copy of the bio of Magnuson that came out a few years ago.
Don’t forget Scoop Jackson…
Heh.
Here are a couple reviews of the book I’d like to get:
Scates, a longtime political reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, has written what will undoubtedly stand as the definitive political biography of one of this century’s key movers and shakers. Magnuson is a curiously overlooked figure — perhaps because he never ran for president, was never majority leader, etc., and tended to let his record speak for him — yet he arguably wielded as much power as many presidents ever did, especially late in his career. He was a curious, complex mix of pork-barrel, backroom dealmaker and old-line Democratic idealist. As Scates reports, Walter Mondale once said of Magnuson, “He is scrupulously fair with federal funds; one half for Washington state, one half for the rest of the country.” Yet his leadership on pro-consumer legislation is probably the finest of any senator, ever. Scates has done his homework, with the result that the book is girded by research and generously peppered with first-hand comments by those who knew, worked for, and worked against Maggie. He also does a good job connecting Magnuson’s activities and accomplishments with the larger political and social scene. And while Scates’s prose rarely soars, the book is highly readable and admirably thorough. All in all, a very worthy piece of work.
—————————
For years, Washington was well served in the U.S. Senate by “Scoop and Maggie,” that is, Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Warren Magnuson. However, while Jackson twice sought the presidency and has been the subject of at least two biographies, Magnuson has been largely forgotten. In fact, he was never a household word nationwide. Fortunately, journalist Shelby Scates has given Maggie the kind of work his memory deserves and his admirers have wanted. This very well researched and documented biography goes back to Magnuson’s roots in North Dakota, to his activism in the leftist Washington Commonwealth Federation in the 30’s, to his long and distinguished congressional career, and, finally, to his narrow defeat in the Reagan revoluntion of 1980. The lover of liquor and beautiful women always managed to remain a dedicated senator who was respected, even loved, by his colleagues. Maggie looked like a good ol’ boy, but was a diehard liberal who advocated civil rights, consumer rights, and worker rights. America is a better place because of Warren Magnuson. Our knowledge of him would have been remiss, were in not for this book.
—————————
40 used & new from $7.00
Warren G. Magnuson and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century America (Emil and Kathleen Sick Lecture-Book Series in Western History and Biography)
by Shelby Scates
They sought information on Bolton’s roles in the ouster of a CIA analyst in a dispute over Cuba, in having a State Department lawyer removed from an assignment, in denying an assignment to a State Department officer with whom he had clashed, in seeking information about American officials mentioned in conversations intercepted by the National Security Agency, and in a dispute related to China’s missile program.
Close one door, open another. Closing down the requests means Democrats can justifiably bring in information from other sources. We now know from British and American records the arguments based on WMD were known to be bogus at the time. The gun is smoking. I have faith they’ll place it in his hands.
“Today’s the deadline for Senate Foreign Relations staffers to wrap up their investigation of claims against UN ambassador nominee Bolton, per the agreement reached earlier between chair Dick Lugar and ranking Democrat Joe Biden. That agreement also called for a committee vote on Bolton for May 12. But tense negotiations over getting Democrats some documents they want from the State Department could jeopardize the scheduled vote, NBC’s Ken Strickland reports. More on this below.”
For more: Today’s edition of First Read is available now at http://www.FirstRead.MSNBC.com !
What’s up with this?
The Washington Times reports that Sen. George Voinovich (R), whose concerns led to the delay in the Bolton committee vote, “has not heeded White House calls to privately question the nominee about his concerns.”