Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded. Mr. President, I rise today to state what is obvious to the Chair and my colleagues, that I will oppose the nomination of John Bolton to be U.S.…
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, I rise today to state what is obvious to the Chair and my colleagues, that I will oppose the nomination of John Bolton to be U.S. representative to the United Nations. I regret, frankly, we are even debating this nomination while the administration continues to withhold relevant material about Mr. Bolton that the committee has requested, and for which no reasonable explanation has been given as to why it has not been provided other than they do not think the information is ``relevant'' to our inquiry. I will return to that issue later today.
The job to which Mr. Bolton has been nominated is one of the most important ambassadorships the President fills. It is, in fact, the most important one. In the past, it has often held Cabinet rank. Leading figures of their day have held that job, people such as Republican Henry Cabot Lodge, Democrat Adlai Stevenson, President George Herbert Walker Bush, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Holbrooke, Senator Jack Danforth. Aside from the President and the Secretary of State, the U.N. ambassador is the best known face of American diplomacy.
It is a job that in my view requires a person with diplomatic temperament, a person willing to listen to other points of view, and blessed with the power to be able to persuade, such as President Bush's father George Herbert Walker Bush was.
It is a job that requires a person of great credibility, such as Governor Adlai Stevenson.
It is a job that requires a person who is not an ideologue, such as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat who served a Republican President as ambassador to the United Nations.
And it is a job, in my view, that requires a person who has the complete confidence of the President of the United States and Secretary of State, such as Jeane Kirkpatrick did.
Mr. Bolton is not that person. He is no diplomat, as evidenced by his contempt for opposing views and his inability or unwillingness to listen. His credibility is in grave doubt, as evidenced by his repeated efforts to distort facts to fit preformed views. He is an ideologue--a bright ideologue, but nonetheless an ideologue, as evidenced by his long record both in and out of Government. And he lacks the trust and confidence of his superiors, as evidenced by the fact that the Secretary of State has felt the need to assure Senators in this Chamber that Mr. Bolton will be ``closely supervised.'' As one of our colleagues said, why in the Lord's name would you send someone to the United Nations who had to be ``closely supervised?''
The job of U.N. ambassador is important, to state the obvious, because of the many challenges the United States confronts in the year 2005. I would argue it is a more important post than at any time since 1962 and the Cuban missile crisis. We confront a monumental threat by radical Islamic fundamentalists bent on destroying America and our allies. We confront a radical regime in North Korea and a theocracy in Iran that seek nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. We confront the challenge of building democratic states in Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries that have known mostly dictatorship and suffering for generations. We confront the challenges of the AIDS pandemic, war and humanitarian catastrophes across the African continent, and the threat of instability in every continent.
Despite our vast economic and military power we cannot--or I should say more appropriately, we need not--face these challenges alone. America's security is enhanced when we work with our allies, and the United Nations is one of the places we can find them. Our security is enhanced when even those who are not considered our allies understand that the threat that we are concerned about is common to all of us, to them as well as us, to almost all nation states.
For better or worse, the United Nations is an essential forum for the advancement of U.S. foreign policy and national security interests in the year 2005--a troublesome forum but in fact a necessary forum. For better or worse, the U.N. Security Council makes decisions that affect international security and stability. Granted, they cannot make any decision without the United States signing off--we can veto it--but they have the ability to isolate us instead of isolating those who should be isolated.
For better or worse, the United Nations provides a means for the United States to gain international support for difficult missions it seeks to undertake, not only in our interest but in the interest of others, allowing us to share the cost and burdens with others and not put it all on the back of the American taxpayer.
The United Nations is not perfect, as the Presiding Officer well knows--far from it. It needs significant reform--again as the Presiding Officer knows. But let's not equate reform of the United Nations with John Bolton, as some of our colleagues have attempted to do. We have, under the leadership of Jesse Helms and with my help, passed the Helms- Biden legislation reforming portions of the United Nations. Much more needs to be done.
I would note that when we had John Danforth, an incredibly well respected ambassador, up until a couple of months ago, and before him Mr. Negroponte, there was not all this talk about the primary responsibility being reform. They were fully capable of dealing with reform.
I would point out that not even the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, believes John Bolton is necessary for reforming the United Nations. Four days after the Bolton nomination was announced, Dr. Rice appointed another person, Dr. Shirin Tahir-Kheli, ``to serve as the Secretary's senior advisor and chief interlocutor on United Nations reform.'' The State Department press release announcing the appointment made no mention of Mr. Bolton.
Mr. Bolton was not picked because his job was United Nations reform. That is the job of every U.S. ambassador to the U.N., or part of the job. No, this debate is not about U.N. reform or U.N. interests; it is about whether the appointment of Mr. Bolton is in the national interests of the United States of America. I firmly believe, as my friend from Ohio, Mr. Voinovich, does, that it is not in the U.S. interests.
There are four reasons to vote no on Mr. Bolton. Each, standing alone, in my view, would justify a negative vote, but taken together they provide an overwhelming case. What is even more extraordinary is that much of the evidence for this case comes from senior officials in the Bush administration who worked with Mr. Bolton. The bulk of the evidence to make the cases I am about to make came from senior Republican administration officials who worked with Mr. Bolton. They had nothing to gain and a good deal to lose by appearing before our committee, but everyone came voluntarily. No one had to be subpoenaed. We asked and they came.
The first reason Mr. Bolton should, in my view, be denied the ambassadorship to the United Nations is that Mr. Bolton repeatedly sought to remove intelligence analysts who disagreed with him. Mr. Bolton was not content to fight the normal policy battles. He had to crush people, even if they were just doing their jobs.
One analyst was Christian Westermann, an expert on biological and chemical weapons with a 20-year career in the U.S. Navy who worked in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research after retiring from the U.S. military.
In February of 2002, Mr. Westermann was asked by Mr. Bolton's staff, which is standard operating procedure, to begin the intelligence community clearance process for three sentences that Mr. Bolton wanted to put in a speech about the biological weapons effort of Cuba. The speech was not made
yet; the speech was in the making. What is a normal operating procedure in this State Department, the last State Department, and the ones before that, is that when a policymaker wishes to include in a speech intelligence data or assertions that the U.S. government or the intelligence community believes thus and so, it has to be cleared first by the intelligence community.
Mr. Westermann, the State Department's intelligence analyst for biological weapons, had two roles in this process of clearing these three sentences. One was to transmit the material to a clearance coordinator at the CIA who would then seek clearance from all the other intelligence agencies in the Government--Defense Intelligence, et cetera, a whole panoply of the intelligence community. The second function Mr. Westermann had as the intelligence officer at the State Department for biological weapons was to provide the substantive comments of his Bureau--that is, INR--on Mr. Bolton's text to this clearance coordinator; in other words, in addition to what the other intelligence agencies thought about these three sentences, to say what the intelligence analysts in the State Department thought about these three sentences.
In performing that latter function, Mr. Westermann proposed alternative language to the three sentences submitted by Mr. Bolton's staff, a standard means of trying to help a policymaker say something about classified matters so that the sources and methods are not compromised and so that the statement is consistent with the intelligence community's judgments on that point being spoken to. When Mr. Bolton found out that Mr. Westermann suggested alternative language, he hit the roof. He summoned Mr. Westermann to his office and gave him a tongue lashing.
Look, Mr. Westermann does not work directly for Mr. Bolton. There is within the State Department Mr. Bolton's operation, the people who work directly for him, and then there is the intelligence operation, INR, headed at the time by a guy named Carl Ford. At the bottom of the food chain is the guy in charge of biological weapons as an intelligence analyst; that is, Mr. Westermann.
Mr. Bolton summoned Mr. Westermann into his office and, according to Mr. Westermann, Bolton was ``red faced'' and yelling at him. When Mr. Westermann tried to explain what he had done, Mr. Bolton threw him out of his office.
Then, over the course of the next 6 months, Mr. Bolton tried on three separate occasions to have Mr. Westermann removed from his position. During the committee hearing, Mr. Bolton grudgingly conceded that he sought to remove Mr. Westermann from his portfolio, but he tried to minimize his involvement. Mr. Bolton suggested that he asked one of Mr. Westermann's supervisors to give Mr. Westermann a new portfolio, but then, he said, ``I shrugged my shoulders and moved on.'' But the evidence is clear that Mr. Bolton did not, as he said, ``move on.'' He tried twice more to remove Mr. Westermann, the biological weapons expert. A few days later, he tried to remove him, and then several months later.
My friend from Indiana--and as we say here, he is my friend--argues this does not matter. Mr. Westermann kept his job, no harm, no foul--my words. But the system had to work overtime to counteract the harmful effects of this episode. Don't take my word for it. Listen to Carl Ford, the former Assistant Secretary of State for INR, who says he supports the President and, in his words, is a huge fan of Vice President Cheney, and not anyone who has ever been accused of being a liberal Democrat.
Mr. Ford testified that the analysts in his Bureau were ``very negatively affected by this incident--they were scared.'' Ford said that after the Westermann incident, he tried to make the best of a bad situation by using the incident as a training vehicle to explain to his people how to handle similar situations if they came up. At Ford's request, Secretary Powell made a special trip to speak to the INR analysts, where Mr. Powell singled out Mr. Westermann and told the analysts they should continue to ``speak truth to power.'' They had to do this because Mr. Bolton was allergic to people delivering news that his proposed language was not supported by the evidence.
As one of Mr. Westermann's supervisors recounted, Mr. Bolton declared ``he wasn't going to be told what he could say by a mid-level munchkin analyst.'' At the U.N., the special representative has to listen to a lot of people who disagree with him and then report back faithfully on what they are saying. Is Mr. Bolton capable of doing that?
The second analyst Mr. Bolton tried to remove from his position is a more remarkable case for two reasons: The analyst worked in another agency; and his portfolio did not involve Mr. Bolton's area of responsibility, which was arms control and weapons of mass destruction.
The analyst was the National Intelligence Officer for Latin America. He disputed language on Cuba that was used in a speech Mr. Bolton had given, and that he then wanted to give again in congressional testimony.
During the committee hearing, Mr. Bolton again tried to minimize his actions, stating that his effort to remove this individual was ``one part of one conversation with one person, one time . . . and that was it, I let it go.''
The evidence shows that he did not let it go but, rather, that he and his staff actively discussed the removal of this National Intelligence Officer over the course of 4 months.
In early June of 2002, an aide to Mr. Bolton circulated a draft letter from Mr. Bolton and Ambassador Otto Reich, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America. The draft was addressed to Director of Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. George Tenet.
The draft letter urged the immediate replacement of the National Intelligence Officer and indicated that Bolton and Reich would take several measures on their own, including banning the National Intelligence Officer from official meetings at the State Department and from official travel in the Western Hemisphere.
A response to the e-mail from a colleague reported that he discussed the same matter with Mr. Bolton, whom he said ``would prefer at this point to handle this in person with [Mr.] Tenet.''
The following month--again, going to the issue of whether he tried to get this guy removed--Mr. Bolton traveled to the CIA headquarters to meet with Mr. Stuart Cohen, the Acting Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, where he asked that the National Intelligence Officer be removed from his position.
Mr. Cohen, the Acting Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, said he did not remember many details about the meeting with Mr. Bolton other than Mr. Bolton's intent was clear: He wanted the National Intelligence Officer for Latin America removed.
Later that month--again, remember, Mr. Bolton said: I did not try to get this guy. I let it alone--a senior aide to Mr. Bolton told a senior aide to Mr. Reich that Bolton wanted to meet Reich to ``discuss the draft letter to CIA on our favorite subject'' and said that ``John doesn't want this to slip any further.''
The next day, the same aide to Mr. Bolton e-mailed Secretary Reich and his aide and had a new draft to the letter. He said that the draft ``relies on John's tough talk with [Mr.] Cohen ``about the national intelligence officers.
So much for not trying to get him removed.
Two months later, in September, another draft letter urging the removal of the National Intelligence Officer was exchanged between Mr. Bolton's office and Mr. Reich's office.
Now, does that sound like he ``let it go,'' as he said he did? Remember, his staff said Mr. Bolton said he doesn't want to let this matter ``slip any further.'' If you ask me, this was more than ``one part of one conversation . . . one time,'' as Mr. Bolton said. It was a campaign, a vendetta, against a person Mr. Bolton had never met and whose work Mr. Bolton acknowledges he cannot recall ever reading, all because he questioned Mr. Bolton.
If this is how Mr. Bolton reacts to someone he has never met, how will he control himself in New York? Secretary Rice, the Secretary of State, told the Senator from Ohio that Mr. Bolton will be ``closely supervised.''
How much energy at the State Department will be diverted to supervising Mr. Bolton?
Thankfully, senior management at CIA had the good sense to rebuff Mr. Bolton's attempts to remove the National Intelligence Officer. The former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, John McLaughlin, remembers that when the issue was raised with him, he adamantly rejected it. Here is what the Deputy Director of the CIA said:
Well, we're not going to do that, absolutely not. No way.
End of story.
Mr. McLaughlin, at the CIA, explained why he so strongly opposed Mr. Bolton's proposal to get rid of this national intelligence officer. And I quote from Mr. McLaughlin, formerly at the CIA:
It's perfectly all right for a policymaker to express
disagreement with an . . . analyst, and it's perfectly all
right for them to . . . challenge their work vigorously. But
I think it's different to then request, because of the
disagreement, that the person be transferred. And . . .
unless there is malfeasance involved here--and, in this case,
I had high regard for the individual's work; therefore, I had
a strong negative reaction to the suggestion about moving
him.
He is speaking of the National Intelligence Officer.
That, all by itself, is reason to vote against Mr. Bolton--thoroughly outrageous conduct as it related to two intelligence officers who disagreed with him.
A second reason to oppose Mr. Bolton is that he frequently sought to stretch the intelligence--the available intelligence--to say things in speeches and in testimony that the intelligence community would not support. The committee report lays out this allegation in extensive detail, and it is there for every Senator to see. There is ample evidence that Mr. Bolton sought to cherry-pick, as one analyst said, cherry-pick intelligence; sought to game the system, to get the clearances he wanted, or simply sought to intimidate intelligence analysts to get them to say what he wanted.
Again, don't take my word for it. Take the word of an administration appointee, Mr. Robert Hutchings, the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 2003 to 2004. Chairman Hutchings said, in the summer of 2003, that Mr. Bolton prepared a speech on Syria and weapons of mass destruction that ``struck me as going well beyond . . . where the evidence would legitimately take us. And that was the judgment of the experts on my staff, as well.''
Now, remember, this is 2003. We had 160,000 troops in Iraq and in Afghanistan. There was all kinds of talk on the floor of the Senate and in the Nation about whether we would invade Syria next. There was all kinds of discussion and supposition that the weapons of mass destruction that were never found in Iraq--and we later learned had not existed after 1991 or 1995--had been smuggled, for hiding, into Syria. It was a very delicate moment, in which if, in fact, a senior administration official came forward and said there was evidence that there was a nuclear weapons program in Syria, we might have had a war.
Mr. Bolton wanted to make a speech about that, and here is the guy who headed up the National Intelligence Council, the chairman. He said that what Bolton wanted to say ``struck me as going well beyond . . . where the evidence would legitimately take us. And that was the judgment of the experts on my staff, as well.''
This is not minor stuff. I remind the American people and my colleagues that an awful lot of Senators voted to go to war in Iraq on the assertion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which now the administration itself acknowledges they did not have. Mr. Bolton, according to the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, wanted to say things about Syria and weapons of mass destruction that struck him and his experts as going beyond what could legitimately be stated.
Chairman Hutchings said that Bolton took ``isolated facts and made much more of them to build a case than I thought the intelligence warranted.''
Does that sound familiar to you? Remember aluminum tubes, offered by the Vice President as evidence that Iraq had a gas centrifuge system, had reconstituted their nuclear capability, when, in fact, the most informed elements of the intelligence community said those tubes-- because they were anodized--couldn't be used for a gas centrifuge system? Facts taken out of context to make a case that didn't exist got us into war prematurely.
Here we now have Mr. Bolton, when people are talking about going to war with Syria, and the head of the National Intelligence Council says Mr. Bolton took ``isolated facts and made much more of them to build a case than I thought the intelligence warranted. It was a sort of cherry-picking of little factoids and little isolated bits that were drawn out to present the starkest-possible case.''
Let me take you back to aluminum tubes, out of context, an isolated fact, drawn out to present the starkest possible case that Iraq had ``reconstituted its nuclear capability.''
There used to be an expression my dad used to say in World War II: Loose lips sink ships. Cherry-picking little factoids and little isolated bits drawn out to present the starkest-possible case can cause wars.
Listen to Larry Wilkinson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff, a military man himself. He told us that because of the problems that the State Department was having with Mr. Bolton's speeches not always being properly cleared by the State Department offices and officials--think of this now, the Chief of Staff, a military man himself, I think a colonel, working for the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then Secretary of State, said that because Mr. Bolton didn't properly clear his speeches with the appropriate authorities and experts within the State Department-- the Deputy Secretary of State, the No. 2 man, Secretary Armitage ``made a decision that John Bolton would not give any testimony, nor would he give any speech that wasn't cleared first by Rich [Armitage].''
Think of that. Here is the guy, head of the arms control and nonproliferation piece of the President's operation at the State Department who needs, as much as anyone, classified information and accurate intelligence, and he has to be told by the No. 2 man at the State Department that he is no longer authorized to make any speech without it first being cleared by the No. 2 man at the State Department. I don't do that with my senior staff. I don't have to. It is truly remarkable.
This may have occurred with one of the six other Presidents with whom I have served since I have been here, but if it has, I am unaware of it, and I would like to know.
Powell's Chief of Staff later told the New York Times, referring to what I just talked about--restrictions that Mr. Bolton could not make a speech without it being cleared by the No. 2 man at the State Department--that ``if anything, the [restrictions] got more stringent'' as time went on. ``No one else''--I assume he means in the entire State Department--``was subjected to these tight restrictions.''
Consider this: we have the chairman of the National Intelligence Organization, the Chief of Staff for the President, Secretary of State, the former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, the former head of an office within the CIA named Mr. Cohen, and the former head of the intelligence apparatus at the State Department--all of them, nary a Democratic appointee in the crowd, pointing out how Mr. Bolton overreached, cherry-picked, had to be disciplined, had to be overruled, had to be supervised. And here Mr. Bolton was, an Assistant Secretary of State, and we want to send him now to the No. 2 job in diplomacy after the Secretary of State?
Listen to Mr. Bolton's own loyal staff. After being told that the intelligence community could not support a statement Mr. Bolton wanted to make on Cuba, a member of Mr. Bolton's staff wrote to a CIA official and said that ``several heavy hitters are involved in this one, and they may choose to push ahead over the objections of the CIA and INR . . . unless there is a serious source and methods concern.''
We have all been around here. Let's translate that. This is Mr. Bolton's staff writing to a CIA official, when CIA is telling Mr. Bolton that he cannot say what he wants to say. Mr. Bolton's staff writes to the CIA official who said Mr. Bolton could not do that:
``Several heavy hitters are involved in this one.''
I am sure no staff on the floor of the Senate could possibly be intimidated to maybe reconsider a recommendation they made if, in fact, the Chief of Staff of the majority leader or the minority leader, or chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, or the ranking member sent out an e-mail or a letter to them saying: Look, Jack, I know what you said, but let me tell you something, there are several heavy hitters here who may go beyond you. Translated: Are you sure you want to say he cannot do this? You would have had to have your head in a rain barrel for the past 20 years not to understand what the message was that was being communicated.
Mr. Bolton's staff was saying that Mr. Bolton might make statements in the name of the Government, or at least with the claim that they were supported by U.S. intelligence, despite the analysts' views that these statements were not justifiably based on the evidence. That is more than mere arrogance. It suggests a willingness to defraud the American people, and it suggests that there is a price that will be paid by you, you not-so-senior person, if you raise a ruckus about this.
That e-mail I described was not a one-time event. Mr. Bolton's staff later informed the intelligence community that they wanted to change the rules for reviewing proposed speeches to limit their objections to only those objections related to sources and method.
Let me translate that. I see my friend from Maryland on the floor. If he were an intelligence officer in the United States government who found out that another country was supporting an al-Qaida undertaking and my friend from Maryland was a CIA operative in that other country, if I were to expose the fact that that country was cooperating with the CIA, I might inadvertently disclose who the source of that intelligence is and, by doing so, maybe get my friend killed. Or if that information is picked up by a bugging device placed in a meeting room, if I were to say on the floor that we have a recording saying that Official A of Country A met with al-Qaida, clearly, they might be able to figure out how we knew that, what the method of picking up the information was.
So we are very fastidious in this Senate--those of us who deal with intelligence matters--not to ever reveal a source or a method, and even though the information revealed may not be so classified that we are told by the Agency you cannot say this for fear of revealing a source or a method of picking up this information, we do not disclose it.
There is a second type of intelligence, and that is the intelligence analysis that says: Syria does not have nuclear weapons. That is an analysis by experts in our intelligence community who reached the conclusion, from all kinds of sources and methods, that Syria doesn't have nuclear weapons, if that were the conclusion.
Now, Mr. Bolton had been stopped repeatedly by various intelligence agencies from saying things that the intelligence did not support. I am making this up. Let's assume Mr. Bolton wanted to say that Syria has nuclear weapons and the CIA analysis says it doesn't. Under the present rules, CIA can say to Mr. Bolton that he cannot say that. So what does Mr. Bolton do? He goes back and says to the intelligence community, through his staff, we want to change the rule. You cannot tell me, I say to my friend from Maryland, what I can say about whether or not they have nuclear weapons. I can say they do, even though you say they don't.
First, let me finish this point. But, his staff says, you can tell Mr. Bolton he cannot say it only if it will reveal a source or a method. In other words, his staff was seeking carte blanche to allow Mr. Bolton to cherry-pick, as the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council said, factoids in isolation to make a case that didn't exist.
I will yield to my friend for a question.
That is absolutely correct.
If I may interrupt the Senator, any administration official who wishes to purport that he speaks for the administration, which includes the intelligence community, has to have his or her statement cleared on that specific point, yes. That is standard operating procedure.
That is absolutely right. When an intelligence analyst said to him, on two occasions--Mr. Westermann being one--no, Mr. Secretary, you cannot say that because the intelligence community doesn't believe that, the intelligence community doesn't think what you are about to say is accurate, you cannot say it, what did Mr. Bolton do? He tried to get that intelligence analyst fired for doing nothing but his job and telling him, no, boss, you cannot say that; that is not what the intelligence community believes.
That is different than if Mr. Bolton had said: I am going to go out and say, You know, the intelligence community doesn't agree with me, but I, John Bolton, I believe these are the facts. He probably would get fired by the President for doing that, but that is not a violation of any procedure. He is not purporting to speak for the intelligence community when he does that.
If the Senator will yield, not only the community he worked for, but the entire community. This National Intelligence Officer, who remains nameless because he is undercover, did not give his own opinion. He gave the opinion of what was the consensus of the intelligence community.
The Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Mr. McLaughlin, said: No, my guy, my CIA officer is right; Mr. Bolton is wrong, and it is wrong to try to get him fired.
In addition to both of these intelligence analysts being backed up by their bosses at the highest level--one at INR, the intelligence operation within the State Department, and one in CIA--in addition to being backed up by them, they got backed up by the policymakers who are their bosses--the Secretary of State of the United States of America and the Deputy Secretary of State of the United States of America--both of whom were superior in terms of authority to Mr. Bolton.
So it is Mr. Bolton who was chastised by the Deputy Secretary of State as a consequence of these encounters, because the Deputy Secretary of State said: Hey, look, John, in addition to the analysts being correct, you are no longer authorized to make any speech that is not cleared by me; you are no
longer authorized to give any testimony before the Congress that is not cleared by me.
So not only were these analysts backed up by their superiors in the intelligence hierarchy, they were backed up by the policymakers.
Surely.
Let me restate in my own words, so the Senator from Maryland understands. Let's assume there is the country of Xanadu and an American is meeting with the President of Xanadu. In all probability, an American official is meeting with the President of Xanadu. The National Security Agency--with the ability to intercept conversations by multiple methods--picks up a conversation, or somebody's report of a conversation, between an American and the President of Xanadu. That gets reported back, based on subject matter, to the appropriate officer within the State Department or the Defense Department who they feel should know about this conversation because maybe the President said to the American: You know, we have right here in our country 47 al-Qaida operatives. That should go to the person who has that responsibility.
So a lot of stuff went to Mr. Bolton because he is the guy in charge of dealing with nonproliferation and other matters. He would get these NSA, National Security Agency, intercept reports. But in order to protect the identity of the American, for privacy reasons, he would get a statement and it would say: On such and such a date at such and such a time, the President of Xanadu met with an American. They discussed the following things. Here is what they said, here is the conversation.
That is what I understand to be--I know to be--the way in which NSA intercept reports treat a case involving an American.
At least in 10 instances. On 10 different occasions, when he got access to an NSA intercept that mentioned ``an American,'' Mr. Bolton went back to NSA, and, as I understand it--and I ask to be corrected by my staff--but as I understand it, Mr. Bolton has to say to the head of NSA: I want to know more about this intercept, and I want to know the name of the American in order to better understand the intercept. He did that 10 times.
To the best of our knowledge, he got the name of the American.
If the Senator will yield, that is correct. Not only did I ask that, but the chairman of the committee asked that, and it was resolved that we were not asking it to be made public, we were not asking those names to necessarily be made available to the whole Foreign Relations Committee, although that was the chairman's preference, and ultimately the chairman concluded it should not even be provided directly to me or the chairman, but it should be made available to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the ranking member or vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and they should decide how our committee would review the information.
I think the information should be provided to me and to Senator Lugar, as well, but the way this was parsed out, it was going to be that the National Security Agency was going to come and brief the Senate Intelligence Committee, of which I am no longer a member, and--I thought--tell them the names of these Americans. I might add further, the reason for that is, there are unsubstantiated--I emphasize ``unsubstantiated''--allegations that Mr. Bolton may have been seeking the names of these Americans to seek retribution; that it may have been intelligence analysts with whom he disagreed or policymakers against whom he was trying to make a case in terms of the direction of American foreign policy. I do not know that to be the case. The question is why did he need the names.
If the Senator will yield, to the best of my knowledge, there is absolutely no substantive reason why information that was provided to an Under Secretary of State down the food chain, and the Under Secretary of State's staff, to the best of my knowledge, why the information provided to them could not be provided to a Senator who has served 28 years, as the Senator has, in the Senate.
If my friend from Maryland will further yield, Senator Lugar, the Republican chairman of the committee, and I received a letter today dated May 25, addressed to both him and me, from the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, saying: It is important to note, however, that our committee did not interview Mr. Bolton, so I am unable to answer directly the question of why he--Mr. Bolton--felt it necessary for him--Mr. Bolton--to have the identity information--that is, the name of the Americans--in order to better understand the foreign intelligence contained in the report. Furthermore, based on the information available to me--the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee--I do not have a complete understanding of Mr. Bolton's handling of the identity information after he received it.
Continuing quoting: The committee--the Intelligence Committee--has learned during its interview of Mr. Frederick Fleitz, Mr. Bolton's acting chief of staff, that on at least one occasion Mr. Bolton is alleged to have shared the un-minimized identity information he received from the NSA with another individual in the State Department. In this instance, the NSA memorandum forwarding the requested identity--meaning the memorandum forwarding the names of the Americans to Mr. Bolton--to State/INR--that is the State Department's intelligence agency--included the following restriction: ``Request no further action be taken on this information without prior approval of
Yes, I will.
And his staff, yes.
And his staff.
If the Senator would yield, not only a refusal to provide them to our committee that has that responsibility, refusal to provide them even to the Intelligence Committee that is once removed from this process--the same information that was made available to one of several Under Secretaries in the State Department and his staff.
There is no institutional, constitutional, or previously asserted rationale that has been offered in denying access of the Intelligence Committee or, for that matter, the Foreign Relations Committee chairman and ranking member to this information. I do not remember the exact quote. It may apply to the information we are seeking on Syria--I am not sure--saying that they did not think it was relevant, but I do not recall.
I say to my friend from Maryland, there was no assertion on the part of the NSA, that I am aware of, that asserted that it was executive privilege or even that it was extremely sensitive. We have access to incredibly sensitive information. That is the reason we have an Intelligence Committee. That is the reason we on the Foreign Relations Committee have cross-pollination on that committee. So there is no reason--the Senator asked why they would deny it. The Senator's speculation is as good as mine. It seems to me they can end this thing very quickly. The only request being made is that Senator Lugar, Senator Roberts, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Rockefeller, and I sit down in a room on the fourth floor of this building that is totally secure, have someone from the National Security Agency come in and say: Here are the 10 intercept reports and the U.S. person names.
I know more about--I will date myself--I know more about the PSI of an SS-18 Soviet silo, which is highly classified information. Why am I not able to get information in the execution of my responsibilities under the Constitution that is available to a staff member of an Under Secretary of State? Members can guess for themselves. I do not know why. I know it is just not appropriate.
If the Senator will yield, I think Negroponte was nominated in May and confirmed in September.
Let me continue.
I will be about another 12 to 15 minutes.
Mr. President, while my friend from Maryland is here, I want to point out, first of all, the request is very limited. We are looking for the names in 10 reports. It is totally circumscribed, the request as relates to this issue which you so painstakingly went through, explaining what it was that worried everybody--and worries everybody--about Mr. Bolton and the use of intelligence information, even after he has been proscribed, prevented, from being able to speak without clearance, which is--you and I have been here a long time-- fairly remarkable. That may have happened to other people in the State Department. I can't recall it happening.
That's right. Now, after that occurs, or in the process of this occurring, Mr. Bolton's Chief of Staff contacts the CIA on a disputed issue about what can be said, and says--I don't know if you were here when I said this. To tell you the truth, I thought I knew all this, but I was surprised when my staff pointed this out. Mr. Bolton's acting Chief of Staff said Mr. Bolton wanted to make a statement on Cuba, and they didn't want to let him make that statement.
Mr. Bolton's staff gets back to the CIA and says: Several heavy hitters are involved in this one, and they may choose to push ahead over your objections and the objections of INR, unless there is serious source and method concerned.
Remember, going back to our discussions?
Then he, this staff member, goes and contacts the CIA and says: You know, we would like to change the ground rules. We can say the intelligence community thinks the following, even if you disagree. We don't have to clear it with you. The only thing we have to clear with you is whether or not we are exposing a source or a method. Let's have that new deal.
A complete departure. But the point I am trying to make is he keeps pushing the envelope, he keeps pushing the envelope.
Yes.
Right.
Right. I would argue it is being pushed by a person whom everyone would acknowledge is an ideologue, or at least confirmed in what his views are and who seeks facts to sustain his opinion.
Look, the big difference, I say to my friend from Maryland, is that every time he tried to do that, repeatedly tried to do that in his job, his present job--every time he tried to push the envelope, every time he tried to intimidate, fire, cajole an intelligence officer to change his reading to comport with his prejudice, there was somebody there to intervene to stop him beyond the intelligence officer. There was the intelligence officer's boss, the deputy head of the CIA; the head of INR; the Deputy Secretary of State, the No. 2 man; the Secretary of State. That was bad enough.
But now where is Bolton going? Bolton is going to be the equivalent of the Secretary of State at the U.N. Bolton has, I don't know how large the embassy is, but a very large contingent of Americans working for him in New York City--I am told there are about 150 people there. No one, in that operation, can control the day-to-day, moment-to-moment assertions he is making. No one can say: You cannot do that, John. He's his own boss.
Now there is only one person who can do that. Well, the President can always do that. There is only one other person who can do that, and that is the Secretary of State.
Go back to the comment our friend from Ohio made, our Republican friend, in the committee. He said, when he spoke to the Secretary of State, she said, and I am paraphrasing: Don't worry. We will control him. Acknowledging that even though you are sending this guy up to what has been a Cabinet-level position, another Cabinet-level officer is going to have to control him. I would respectfully suggest our Secretary of State has her hands full as it is, without having to babysit Mr. Bolton so he doesn't get America in trouble--America; I don't care about John Bolton; I don't even care about the U.N. in this regard; I care about America.
This isn't complicated. Anybody can figure this out. Everybody acknowledges this guy is a loose cannon. Everybody acknowledges this guy has done things that, if he were able to do them unfettered, not overruled, would have at least raised the ante in the tension and the possibility of conflict with at least Syria and Cuba, among other places. And everybody acknowledges that he so far stepped out of line in the State Department that the Republican head of the State Department, Colin Powell, had to go down to analysts and say, basically: Don't pay attention to him. You did the right thing.
And then the No. 2 man at the State Department, a former military man himself, says: By the way Mr. Bolton, no more speeches by you unless I sign off on them.
Now we are going to take this guy, we are going to send him to the single most important ambassadorial spot in all of America's interests, and to make us feel confident, the Secretary of State says: Don't worry, we will supervise him.
Come on.
Please.
It is as though I try to rob a bank and it turns out they shipped all the money out and there was no money there. I walk out and I get arrested. I say: Wait a minute, no harm, no foul, I didn't get any money. I went in to rob the bank, that is true, but I didn't get any money. So what is the problem? What is the problem?
Look, I told you about Mr. Bolton's staff, I assume with Mr. Bolton's authority, trying to get the intelligence community to change the groundrules. I gave the one example.
There is a second example. He did not just do this once. The e-mail I just described was not a one-time event. Later, Mr. Bolton's staff informed the intelligence community they wanted to change the rules for the review of Mr. Bolton's proposed speeches and to have the CIA and the intelligence community limit their objections only to matters related to the source and methods. They go on, in one meeting with intelligence analysts--a meeting Mr. Bolton called but he was unable to attend at the last minute--his staff informed the assembled analysts that Mr. Bolton wanted to hear only concerns relating to sources and methods from them or ideas that would strengthen his argument. But if his arguments were merely wrong, he did not want to hear about it.
Got that? I am not making this up. He, Bolton, calls the meeting of the CIA types, the INR types, to come into his office--he calls them into his office, and I guess he got called away and could not attend. But his staff says: The boss wants to make it clear there are only two things he wants to hear from you. If he wants to say the Moon is made of green cheese, the only thing he wants to hear from you is: You cannot say that because you will give away the fact that we have eyes. We have a source and a method that we do not want to release. Or he wants to hear from you how we can bolster the argument that the Moon is made of green cheese. But he does not want to hear from you if he is wrong. He does not want to hear from you if you do not believe the Moon is made of green cheese. That is none of your business. He does not want to hear that.
Look, I don't know how you define an ``ideologue.''
I think it is pretty close. It is like that famous expression in a different context of Justice Holmes. He said prejudice is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine upon it, the tighter it closes.
It seems the more information you gave Mr. Bolton that conflicted with his predetermined ideological notion, the less he wanted to hear it. If you persisted in giving it to him, which was your job, he would try to get you fired.
This is not a minor deal. At the very moment when whoever we have as our ambassador to the United Nations is going to be the man, unfortunately, or woman, who will have to stand up before the whole world and say, We have evidence that North Korea is about to do the following; or, We have evidence that Iran has pursued their nuclear option to a point they are violating the NPT--let me ask the Senator, are we going to send John Bolton to a place where we have already squandered our credibility by saying something that we did not know, or saying things we thought we knew that were wrong, are we going to send John Bolton up to be the guy to make a case relating to our national security?
I ask my friend a rhetorical question--if, in fact, we fail to convince the Security Council, if we fail to convince our allies and those with a common interest that a threat exists and they do not come along, what are our options? Our options are to do nothing about it or to act alone. That is what I mean when I say I am concerned about U.S. interests.
There is a story I first heard from Zbigniew Brzezinski that I have used many times since. The Senator knows it as well. During the Cuban missile crisis, the very time when Adlai Stevenson stood up and said, don't tell me that, we know the President of the United States, John Kennedy, desperately needed--although we could have done it alone-- desperately needed the support of the rest of our allies in the world for what we were about to do,
confront the Soviet Union. And he sent former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to Paris to meet with then-President Charles de Gaulle. I am told this is not an apocryphal story; it is historically accurate. Acheson walked in to the Presidential palace, the President's office, and made his case. Then, after making his case, allegedly, he leaned over to pick up the satellite photographs to show President de Gaulle that what he spoke of was absolutely true, and he had pictures to show it.
At that moment, paraphrasing, to the best of my knowledge, de Gaulle put up his hands and said: You need not show me the evidence. I know President Kennedy. And I know he could never tell us anything that could take us to war that wasn't true.
Do you think there is anyone, anyone, anyone--including our own delegation in the United Nations--who would accept an assertion from John Bolton on the same grounds?
Now, my friend, the chairman and others, will argue: Well, Joe, if it is that critical, he will not be making the case. That is probably true. It may be the Secretary of State making the case, who has great credibility. It may be the President of the United States. But there are a thousand little pieces that lead up to building coalitions that relate to our self-interest, based upon an ambassador privately sitting with another ambassador and assuring him that what he speaks is true.
This is absolutely the wrong man at the wrong time for the most important job in diplomacy that exists right now.
Mr. President, I ask my colleagues, is John Bolton a man in the tradition of Adlai Stevenson or Jack Danforth or any number of people I can name?
There is a third reason to oppose Mr. Bolton.
This is one that has animated the interest and concern of my friend from Ohio even more than it has me; and that is, that Mr. Bolton engages in abusive treatment of colleagues in the State Department, and he exercises frequent lapses of judgment in dealing with them.
Again, do not take my word for it. Carl Ford, the former Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence, described Mr. Bolton--and I am using Carl Ford's colorful language, I guess it is an Arkansas expression; he is from Arkansas--he said Mr. Bolton is a ``quintessential kiss-up, kick down kind of guy.''
He also objected, Mr. Ford did, in strong terms, to the treatment of one of his subordinates, Mr. Westermann. He said:
Secretary Bolton chose to reach five or six levels below
him in the bureaucracy, bring an analyst into his office, and
give him a tongue lashing. . . . he was so far over the line
that [it's] one of the sort of memorable moments in my 30-
plus year career.
Listen to Larry Wilkerson, Secretary Powell's chief of staff, who referred to Mr. Bolton--I am not making up these phrases--he referred to Bolton as a ``lousy leader.'' And he told the committee that he-- Wilkerson had an open-door policy. Some Senators and others have that policy. They literally keep their door open so anyone in the organization can feel free to walk in and say what is on their mind. He said his open-door policy--this is the chief of staff for the Secretary of State--he said his open-door policy led to a steady stream of senior officials who came into his office to complain about Mr. Bolton's behavior.
Listen to John Wolf, a career Foreign Service Officer for 35 years, who worked under Mr. Bolton as the Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation. Mr. Wolf said that Mr. Bolton blocked an assignment of a man he--Mr. Wolf--described as a ``truly outstanding civil servant,'' some 9 months after that civil servant made an inadvertent mistake.
And Mr. Wolf says that Mr. Bolton asked him to remove two other officials because of disagreements Mr. Bolton had over policy, and that Mr. Bolton ``tended not to be enthusiastic about alternative views.''
If that is not a quintessentially State Department, career Foreign Service Officer phrase: he ``tended not to be enthusiastic about alternative views.''
Listen to Will Taft, a man whose name became known here in the investigations relating to Abu Ghraib and the treaties that were discussed about the treatment of prisoners. Mr. Taft served in the State Department as legal adviser under Secretary Powell during the tenure of Mr. Bolton. And before that, he was general counsel in two other Government Departments, as well as Deputy Secretary of Defense, and formerly an ambassador to NATO--significant positions.
Mr. Taft told our committee he had to take the extraordinary step of going to his boss--Mr. Taft's boss--to rein in Mr. Bolton after Bolton refused to work with the State Department attorney on a lawsuit in which the State Department was a defendant.
This resulted--I will skip a little bit here--this incident caused the Deputy Secretary of State, Mr. Armitage, to write to Mr. Bolton a memo reminding him that the rules applied to him, as well as others in the State Department, and that he was required--Mr. Bolton was required--to work with State Department lawyers.
There is a fourth reason, beyond his treatment of individuals--and I could go on for another hour citing examples of his alleged mistreatment of subordinates and colleagues at the State Department and in other endeavors--there is a fourth reason that, all by itself, would justify Mr. Bolton not being confirmed; and that is, Mr. Bolton gave testimony to the Foreign Relations Committee under oath that at best was misleading.
Again, do not take my word for it. It is true that I think Mr. Bolton should not go to the United Nations, and I am of a different party. But do not take my word for it. Listen to Tom Hubbard, referred to by the chairman earlier today. Mr. Hubbard is a retired Foreign Service Officer whose last post was as Ambassador to South Korea. During our hearing on April 11, Senator Chafee asked Mr. Bolton about a speech that Mr. Bolton gave in Seoul, South Korea, in 2003.
Let me give you some context. This was on the eve of the President's initiative to begin what is referred to as the Six-Party Talks: the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, the United States, and China--a very delicate moment. Mr. Bolton has made it clear, in many speeches he has made, what he thinks of Kim Jong Il, and that is not inappropriate. And he has made it pretty clear that he rejected the idea proffered by me, and I believe even by Senator Lugar, and by other Senators here, several years ago that we should talk to the North Koreans--not negotiate, talk with them--and find out what it would take to make a deal and let them know what our bottom line was.
Mr. Bolton is not the architect of, but a disciple of, the policy of containing and putting the North Korean regime in a position where he thinks if enough pressure is put on them they would topple. And we are going back to when he was making a speech in Seoul, South Korea, in 2003, on the eve of the first Six-Party Talks.
The speech was filled with inflammatory rhetoric, even though it may be true, about the North Korean leadership. The result of him having given the speech was that the talks were almost scuttled.
Mr. Bolton, in reply to Senator Chafee of our committee regarding that speech, said:
I can tell you [Senator] what our Ambassador to South
Korea, Tom Hubbard, said after the speech.
Meaning his speech.
He said [to me], ``Thanks a lot for that speech, John.
It'll help us a lot out here.''
Got this, now: He makes what is termed an inflammatory speech. He is asked: Wasn't that inflammatory, and didn't that cause us real trouble in pursuing the foreign policy objectives of the President to get these talks underway? And Bolton, in effect, says: No. And then the Senator, in effect, says: Well, didn't our Ambassador to South Korea think it was damaging? And he says: No. He not only didn't think it was damaging, he said to me: ``Thanks a lot for that speech, John. It'll help us a lot out here.''
Now, you would draw from that exchange that this speech was totally consistent with the administration's policy, that it was something that was helpful, and that Bolton was doing a good job.
Now, we didn't call Ambassador Hubbard. I may be mistaken, but I think the Republican majority staff got a call from Mr. Hubbard, the former ambassador to South Korea, who I guess saw this on C-SPAN. I don't know what
exactly prompted it. Maybe he read it in the newspaper. And he says: I want to talk to you guys. And in an interview which was totally appropriate, without minority staff there, he paints a very different story, accurately reported by the majority staff.
Ambassador Hubbard remembers that little exchange about the Bolton 2003 speech on the eve of the Six-Party Talks quite differently. The day after the committee hearing, Hubbard voluntarily contacted the committee to make clear that he disagreed at the time with the tone of the speech and thought the speech was unhelpful to the negotiating process and--this is the important part--and that he, Bolton, surely knew that, that I, Hubbard, thought it was unhelpful and was damaging.
Hubbard then told the Los Angeles Times that although he had talked to Mr. Bolton and thanked him for removing from his speech some of the attacks on South Korea. Remember this now, the speech was about North Korea. The only thing the ambassador was able to convince Bolton to do was take out some of the stuff that attacked our ally South Korea, whom, I might note parenthetically, if, God forbid, there is a war, we need on our side. We have 30,000 American troops there. Bolton is making a speech characterized as an inflammatory speech about North Korea and is going to attack our ally South Korea, as well.
And our ambassador says: Please don't do that stuff about South Korea. And so Hubbard says: It is true. I thanked him for removing some of the attacks he was about to make on South Korea.
Then he went on to say, but ``it's a gross exaggeration to elevate that [statement] to praise for the entire speech and approval of it.''
I don't know how you can comport how those two statements work out. Bolton saying: Remember that the ambassador said, thanks a lot for that speech, John. It helps us a lot out here. And the ambassador is saying that Mr. Bolton knows better. That is a gross exaggeration.
In other testimony, Mr. Bolton frequently tried to claim he had not sought to fire or discipline the INR intelligence analyst, Mr. Westermann.
He said:
I never sought to have [him] fired.
He later said:
I, in no sense, sought to have any discipline imposed on
Mr. Westermann.
And finally, he said:
I didn't try to have Mr. Westermann removed.
This is incredibly disingenuous. It is just not true. The record is clear that Bolton sought on three occasions that I referenced earlier to have Mr. Westermann removed from his position and given another portfolio. And by the way, you don't get another portfolio. If the only job you do in a restaurant is cook and they say you can't cook anymore, there are not many jobs left for you. This guy's expertise was dealing with chemical and biological weapons. Mr. Bolton wanted him taken off the case.
As a lawyer, Mr. Bolton surely knows that civil servants have job protections and can't be readily fired. By asking repeatedly that this man be moved from his established area of expertise, he was endangering the man's career and sending a message of intimidation that was heard loud and clear throughout the Intelligence and Research Bureau. Mr. Bolton did not have the honesty or the courage to admit that fact to the Foreign Relations Committee. Where is this straight talker we hear so much about?
The President has said that in his second term, one of his priorities is ``to defend our security and spread freedom by building effective multinational and multilateral institutions and supporting effective multilateral action.'' If this is a serious objective, he sure is sending the wrong man to put together these kinds of coalitions.
It is manifestly not in our interest to send John Bolton to the United Nations.
It is not in our interest to have a person who is ``a lousy leader'' in charge of a mission of 150 professionals who need leadership.
It is not in our national interest to have a conservative ideologue who doesn't listen to others trying to rebuild frayed alliances at the United Nations.
It is not in our national interest to have a man with a reputation as a bully trying to construct coalitions necessary to achieve U.N. reform.
It is not in our interest to have someone with a reputation for taking factoids out of context, exaggerating intelligence information, as our spokesman in New York during the crises to come with Iran and North Korea, when we will have to convince the world to take action to stop nuclear weapons programs.
Is this the best the President of the United States can do? Is this the best among the many tough-minded, articulate, conservative Republican foreign policy experts?
The record presented by the Foreign Relations Committee is clear. The documents we have uncovered; the interviews with those who had to pick up the pieces at INR and CIA, in the office of the Secretary of State, and in South Korea; the testimony of former Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford, a conservative Republican; all of this record has given us clear warning that Mr. Bolton is the wrong man for this job.
Mr. Bolton's nomination is not--I emphasize ``not''--in the interest of the United States of America. I don't know that I have ever said this before on the floor, but I believe that if this were a secret ballot, Mr. Bolton would not get 40 votes in the Senate. I believe the President knows that. I wish the President had taken another look at this and found us someone--I am not being facetious and I am not the first one to say this, I say to my friend from Virginia, the single best guy we could send to the United Nations right now at this critical moment is former President Bush. I cannot think of anybody better. He would get absolutely unanimous support on this side of the aisle.
Mr. Bolton is no George Herbert Walker Bush. I guess not many people are. But this guy should not be going to the U.N.
I yield the floor.
Parliamentary inquiry: Is that for today?
And there is additional time tomorrow, is that correct?
I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, I will answer the question. Let me say to my friend that regarding Federalist No. 76, I suffer from teaching the subject. For the last 16 years, I have taught a course in the separation of powers. I wrote a treatise, an entire book, on this subject. There is another phrase in Federalist No. 76 the Senator didn't read that I think is appropriate to mention.
Federalist No. 76 was about the issue--remember, the Federalist Papers were trying to convince a public that didn't have a television set or a radio that their legislative body should ratify the Constitution. It was sort of pamphleteering. That is what they were doing. They were taking arguments against the Constitution and framing them, setting them up, knocking them down, and making the case. The issue in Federalist No. 76 was whether the President would have undue influence on the Senate. Would he not be able to pressure the Senate because he was chief executive officer? Hamilton said: Don't worry about that. He went on to explain that there could be no better system than the one that was arrived at.
The compromise he is talking about, by the way, is the Connecticut Compromise. It was not until shortly before that the Founders decided-- this is the only reason this got resolved--that the great State of Virginia with, I think, the first or second largest population at the time, could only have two Senators, and the small State of Delaware would have two Senators. That was the Connecticut Compromise. That is what it was about.
The reason it came about was that is they wanted to make sure that the minority would be able to be protected. He used the phrase--and I compliment and associate myself with my friend from Virginia; I know that is not why he sought recognition and why he asked the question, but what he did yesterday with Senator Byrd is what Alexander Hamilton was talking about--Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 76 used the following phrase in rebutting the argument that the President would be able to pressure the Senate. He said there will always be a sufficient number of men of rectitude to prevent that from happening. The Senator from Virginia demonstrated yesterday that there always is a sufficient number of men of rectitude--he and Senator Byrd--in averting a showdown that may have literally, not figuratively----
It is true.
The Senator from Virginia, Mr. Warner, and Senator Byrd were the catalyst that came along and rescued something that had been attempted and written off, at least by the six Democrats with whom I had been talking, as failed until the two of them came along. This in no way is to denigrate the significant efforts of the others.
The reason I say this is that, in the debates in the Constitutional Convention on this nominating process, on three occasions I believe it was Governor Wilson of Pennsylvania--I am not positive of that--proposed a motion that the President of the United States should have the power alone to appoint his Cabinet and inferior officers in the court. It never got, to the best of my knowledge, more than seven votes. The only consideration that almost passed twice was that only the Senate, without the President even in on the deal, could make those appointments. If we look at the constitutional history, the President was an afterthought in the nominating process. That is what Madison's notes show. That is what the history of the debate in the State legislative bodies shows.
So here we are, the Connecticut Compromise comes along guaranteeing that small States will be able to have an impact on these choices, but go back and look, and I think it is Federalist 77--do not hold me to that--but it is Hamilton's treatise on why there was a need
to have the Senate involved in choosing not only judges but appointments to the Federal Government. There was the fear that what happened in the British Parliament would be repeated; that, in fact, the King and the leaders of the majority would appoint incompetent people, such as their brothers-in-law, their friends, to be surrounding them in their Cabinets, in the lesser offices of the Federal Government.
So it was a genuine concern and a clear understanding--I think the phrase in Federalist 76 is; this is off the top of my head--if by this we are limiting the President, so be it; that is our intention.
To the specific question, yes, there is more deference given to the President of the United States in the appointment of his Cabinet than there is to his appointments to the Supreme Court, district court, any lower court, or any other appointed office in the Government. But the single exception that was intended by the Framers, if you read what they said, in terms of even appointing those around him, if the persons he would pick, notwithstanding that they would reflect the President's political views, if the appointment inures to the detriment of the United States, they should be opposed.
There have not been many occasions when I have opposed nominees to the President's Cabinet or Cabinet-level positions, and I imagine there have not been many my friend from Virginia has opposed. But I opposed two in the Clinton administration. I opposed one in the Carter administration. I think I opposed two in the Reagan administration. In each case, my opposition--and this would be only the second one I have opposed in this administration--is because the appointment of that individual, notwithstanding the fact that he or she is the choice of the President, would have the effect of negatively affecting the standing, security, or well-being of the United States.
So there are exceptions, and I would argue Mr. Bolton, as my friend from Ohio, I suspect, is going to make a compelling case, falls into the category of, yes, the President gets who he wants, unless the appointment of that person would inure to the detriment of the United States.
That is the central point I am trying to make. I understand my friend does not agree with me, but I honestly believe Mr. Bolton going to the U.N. will inure to the detriment of the United States, notwithstanding the President's judgment that it would not do that.
That is right; I acknowledge that.
If the Senator will yield, I am confident that is true about the Senator.
If the Senator will yield, I respect that difference.