Senate Panel Postpones Vote on Bush’s U.N. Nominee

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has postponed a vote on John R. Bolton, President Bush’s controversial nominee to be U.N. ambassador, as Democrats demanded additional witnesses be called to testify about Bolton’s treatment of intelligence analysts who disagreed with him.

Republicans had initially planned a vote on Bolton’s nomination for today. But Democrats, who have mounted a strenuous attack on Bolton’s suitability for the top U.N. post, threatened to block the vote, said Andy Fisher, spokesman for Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the committee chairman.

A meeting of the committee is scheduled for Tuesday, Fisher said. At least one Democratic senator has to attend for a vote to occur.

Bolton, who has served since 2001 as an undersecretary of State, has been criticized for his harsh judgments of the United Nations and for berating two intelligence analysts who refused to go along with his interpretation of intelligence.

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) wrote Lugar on Wednesday asking that three more witnesses be called for sworn testimony. Based on the evidence so far, “I believe that it is indisputable that Bolton attempted to have two intelligence analysts removed from their positions.”

Dodd wants the committee to subpoena Thomas Fingar and Neil Silver of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and Stuart Cohen, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

Democrats are trying to prove Bolton has engaged in a pattern of verbal abuse that has had a chilling effect on other intelligence analysts who feared retribution if their conclusions appeared to contradict Bush administration policy.

Critics of Bolton were bolstered by testimony from the State Department’s former intelligence chief, Carl W. Ford Jr., who said that Bolton was a “serial abuser” of underlings.

Partly at Bolton’s request, the Senate committee posted on its website more than 250 pages of transcripts of Senate staff interviews with four State Department witnesses, including Fingar, Silver and one of the State Department intelligence analysts who clashed with Bolton, Christian Westermann.

During two contentious days of the confirmation hearing, senators quoted from the interviews, which are not sworn testimony. The interviews detail Bolton’s attempt to gain clearance from intelligence officials at the State Department, Pentagon and CIA to use information about suspected Cuban biological weapons efforts in a prominent 2002 speech at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank.

The interviews indicate the intelligence officials -- including Westermann -- forced Bolton to tone down his harsh evaluation of Cuba’s intentions.

One of the staff interviews released Wednesday, with Bolton chief of staff Frederick Fleitz, appeared to support Bolton’s contention that he reprimanded analyst Westermann because he thought Westermann “was not straight” with him.

Fleitz, in the interview, said he believed Westermann had undercut Bolton with the CIA, then was untruthful about it. Westermann’s lack of candor, he argued, was behind the confrontation with Bolton.

Bolton has testified that he considered the matter closed after receiving an apologetic e-mail from Fingar, Westermann’s boss, saying that Westermann had “screwed up” and “it would not happen again.”

However, Fingar said in his interview with Senate aides that Westermann had done nothing wrong, but may have been politically insensitive in challenging Bolton’s proposed speech, given Bolton’s rank as an undersecretary. Ford reviewed the incident and also concluded Westermann had done nothing wrong.

An interview with Silver, another State Department official, appeared to contradict Bolton’s testimony that he considered the matter closed after receiving Fingar’s apology. Silver said that Bolton asked more than a year after the incident to remove Westermann from assignments dealing with biological weapons issues.

Little is known about the second case in which Bolton chastised an analyst. However, Bolton testified Monday that he suggested during a meeting with Cohen, the former National Intelligence Council chairman, that a CIA analyst who worked for Cohen be reassigned.