From
Boston Globe
White House officials declined yesterday to give senators the extra documents they are seeking regarding John R. Bolton, President Bush's choice to become ambassador to the United Nations, setting up a major standoff with Senate Democrats over the long-troubled nomination.
Senate Democrats want to see documents relating to Bolton's involvement in a report alleging that Syria possesses weapons of mass destruction. But the administration has said that such internal communications must be kept private to ensure candor within the administration's policy discussions.
Democrats also want 10 National Security Agency intelligence intercepts that Bolton requested, to determine whether Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, acted appropriately by asking for the names of Americans mentioned in the documents. The White House has allowed the chairman and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to review the intercepts, but only with the names of the 19 Americans mentioned in them blacked out.
Democrats are confident their party will maintain its insistence that the White House allow top-ranking senators to review the information Norm Kurz, a spokesman for Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Bush is putting politics above diplomacy by refusing to grant senators access to the information.
''If this administration was really serious about getting an ambassador in place at the UN to deal with reform or any other issue, they would have cooperated with the Senate long ago so that it could have all the information necessary to make a sound judgment on John Bolton's fitness to serve," Kurz said.