Bolton Hearing To Be “Interesting”: 10AM ET

Dean Pajevic

20 years ago

NEW: CSPAN TV is showing Bolton hrng, split-screen. (Well, it was.)

“Bolton is the poster child of what the diplomatic corps should not be.” (But he’ll vote him out of committee. Sigh.)

(Note: Voinovich’s speech is far deeper and more profound about our country’s foreign policy than that quote.) CNN/MSNBC covering it live now. MSNBC: “Stunning remarks this morning.” ~~VOINOVICH has guts! Will vote NO!~~ (ALERT: CSPAN3 (wtf?). Listen/watch via CSPAN online. CSPAN3 (video/audio). Laura at War and Piece wrote, “Senate Intelligence committee staff send word that tomorrow’s Bolton hearings by their fellow Foreign Relations committee should be interesting …” More below, with a NEW poll:

Intel committee leadership were briefed yesterday on the NSA intercepts from which Bolton requested the identity of US persons on ten occasions. Senators Rockefeller and Roberts were apparently not told the names from the NSA intercepts; but 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 portray Fulton Armstrong and/or Christian Westermann as spies for Cuba? There seems to be a bizarre degree of extreme reluctance of Fleitz, Freedman and Bolton’s backers now to explain the particular subject at issue or their reason for their heated communications about it or their reluctance to discuss it. Such a witchhunt would constitute an unusually vicious way to attempt to retaliate against intel analysts one disagrees with, wouldn’t it?

Posted by Laura at May 11, 2005 10:14 PM

So, I’m guessing it’ll be on CSPAN2 starting at 10:00 tomorrow (05.12.05) morning.

Here’s the formal announcement of tomorrow’s hearing:

10 a.m.

Foreign Relations

Business meeting to consider the nominations of

John Robert Bolton, of Maryland, to be the U.S.

Representative to the United Nations, with the

rank and status of Ambassador, and the U.S.

Representative in the Security Council of the

United Nations, and to be U.S. Representative to

the Sessions of the General Assembly of the

United Nations during his tenure of service as

U.S. Representative to the United Nations.

SD-419

Update [2005-5-12 6:36:43 by susanhbu]: From NBC First Read, May 12:

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee maybe votes on Bolton, maybe not — depending on how Joe Biden feels about the State Department’s response to his request for additional records. If there is a vote, NBC’s Ken Strickland says all eyes will be on George Voinovich, who appears to be the only committee Republican who remains genuinely undecided; other Republicans on the committee who had earlier expressed reservations about Bolton — Chafee, Hagel, and Murkowski — have at a minimum said they’re inclined to support him. Strickland says that if Voinovich were to vote against Bolton, leaving the panel in a 9-9 tie, the likely result would be the panel sending the nomination to the floor with no recommendation.

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