According to an article in today's International Herald Tribune, the reason the White House won't turn over to the Senate the Bolton documents they've asked for is that the documents contain evidence that the White House may be covering up acts of treason (acts that we can conclude were almost certainly by campaign contributors).
U.S. Firms said to be named in withheld Bolton documents
More after the flip....
UPDATED to reflect that we don't know for certain that the acts were treasonous and that the likelihood that this is done on behalf of campaign contributors is implicit, not explicit, in the article.
WASHINGTON Some of the information that the White House has refused to provide to Congress for its review of the nomination of John Bolton includes the names of American companies mentioned in intelligence reports on commerce with China and other countries covered by export restrictions, say government officials who have been briefed on the documents....
...The fact that the documents also included the names of American companies, and that the subject had to do with possible violations of American export restrictions, provides a new clue as to why the White House might be rebuffing the congressional requests.
emphasis mine
Those countries are covered by export restrictions because they are considered enemeies of the United States, thus, trading with them is tantamount to treason.
The names of the Americans and the companies remain highly classified, but they were provided to Bolton by the National Security Agency in response to special requests he made as under secretary of state for arms control. The Democrats who forced the postponement last week of a vote on Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations argued that the Senate should insist on access to the same information that was provided to Bolton.
But the White House has said that Congress has "all the information it needs" to decide on Bolton's nomination, and at his news conference on Tuesday, President George W. Bush dismissed the document request as "just another stall tactic by his opponents in Congress."
The administration has allowed the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee to review copies of the 10 intelligence reports, based on conversations intercepted by the National Security Agency, about which Bolton requested the additional information. But the names of American people and companies had been deleted from those reports, and the administration has refused to provide Senate leaders with the names, even though they were obtained by Bolton.
(emphasis mine)
Clearly the White House has made a decision to protect the people on the list. The President has personally gotten involved with the stonewalling... hopefully the media will doggedly ask why? (don't worry, I'm not holding my breath).
Moreover, they appear to again be spitting on the Senate -- allowing Bolton, who had no real intelligence role, to have information that they won't even give to the Republican Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. I wonder if there will ever be a point at which Republican Senators decide they've had enough of being treateed as irrellevant. (Again, not holding my breath).
The government officials.... would not say what countries other than China might have been the subject of the reports, but noted that Bolton's responsibilities also included monitoring efforts to prevent Iran, Libya and other countries from acquiring dangerous weapons.
...As under secretary of state for arms control, Bolton had responsibilities that included efforts to enforce sanctions designed to combat problems posed by weapons proliferation. Illegal trade with China was a principal focus of his attention, but he was also the senior official responsible for the Proliferation Security Initiative, an effort to enlist countries around the world in intercepting suspicious shipments.
(emphasis mine)
So if I understand this correctly:
--The US has names of individuals and companies who violated the export ban, sending technology and/or weaponry (we don't know what) to rogue nations.
--John Bolton, in his capacity as supervisor of the effort to make sure that these nations didn't get WMD (not just technology), was given a list of these compaines and individuals.
--The US has not, to my knowledge, prosecuted any of those companies or individuals
--Many companies and inidivuals involved in stuff like this in the past are close Bush contributors and confidants (like Halliburton and Rumsfeld).
--Now, Bush and the White House are refusing to even release the names of the people involved who they chose not to prosecute.
So the logical question that we must demand an answer to is:
Which campaign contributors are the Bush Administration trying to protect from disclosure and prosecution for violating the law that says you can't export technology to rogue nations?
By the way, I was surprised not to find a diary already on this. My apologies if I missed one.