Steve Clemons points to a
worrisome new development. Biden is about to make what appears to be a unilateral surrender on Bolton. Essentially, he wants the White House to limit its disclosures to a written statement assuring the foreign relations committee that Bolton did not misuse NSA intercepts to request information regarding three dozen or so "names of concern." Quoting the New York Times:
Senate Democrats have prepared a list of approximately three dozen "names of concern" and are asking the Bush administration for assurances that John R. Bolton did not misuse his access to highly classified intelligence to seek information about them.
The request is outlined in a letter sent Thursday by Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, two of the leaders of the Democratic opposition to Mr. Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations. The letter was sent to the senior Republican and Democratic senators on the Intelligence Committee, who have also been involved in negotiations with the Bush administration over access to information about Mr. Bolton's actions when he was an official at the State Department.
The letter did not identify those on the list, but Democratic aides said they included intelligence officials and others with whom Mr. Bolton had clashed. They said the Senate Democrats would provide the list to John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, if Mr. Negroponte made clear that he would provide appropriate information in response.
Clemons is concerned:
I fear that corroboration of names does little to show malfeasance on Bolton's part if there was such. Seeing the intercepts seems vital as far as I am concerned. But thus far, the White House has not "formally" responded on any of these modified Senate requests.
Furhermore, the documentation on Syria is vital -- and not being discussed as much as it should. This Syria material potentially shows a pattern of brinksmanship behavior by Bolton when it came to matters of promulgating false, unsupported claims on WMD programs in "countries of concern" to the U.S.
To me, it looks like Biden is afraid of an out and out showdown, so he is offering Bush and Cheney a meaningless "compromise," which still allows the White House to dictate exactly what information the Senate is allowed to view, and absolutely allows it to hide information which it believes is harmful.
Essentially, Biden is asking us to trust the word of the White House, on faith -- something we've been burned doing time and time agin.
Now, it's not entirely clear to me what's going on here, but I definitely sense trouble. Biden and Leahy and other key Democratic Senators have been waving the White Flag on Bolton the past couple of weeks, and it seems like all they're interested in doing here is saving face with the Media.
If you have a Democratic Senator or Senators in your State, contact them so you can tell them how you feel!
(btw -- thanks to Al Rogers for pointing me to this development)
Update [2005-6-11 17:18:55 by pontificator]: By the way, I am open to the possibility that this move by Biden is part of some grand strategy in a larger game to stop Bolton and the White House (sort of the way you might sacrifice a Bishop in Chess in order to checkmate your opponent). But, nevertheless, I'm worried that Biden and Co. think this is a losing battle, and they'd rather give up then fight it out.