Boxer May Hang Bolton Vote on State Department Records

One day after a California senator threatened to delay a vote on John R. Bolton’s nomination to be U.N. ambassador until the State Department released certain records, the department said Friday that it would refuse any requests for additional documents.

The Bush administration’s position appeared to leave the fight over the controversial diplomat at a new standoff. But the ability of one senator to halt the proceedings remained unclear.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she would exercise her prerogative to put what is known as a hold on the Bolton nomination. When a senator places a hold, the majority leader is expected by Senate custom to try to resolve the senator’s concerns before proceeding to debate and a vote. It was unclear Friday what level of support Bolton would require if Boxer maintained the hold.

Boxer said that a simple majority, 51 votes, would be needed to begin debate. But a spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), said that the halt carried an implied threat of a filibuster, meaning that 60 votes would be needed to begin debate.

In any case, Boxer’s move amounted to a test of the level of Democratic opposition to Bolton. With 55 members, the Senate’s Republicans have sufficient support to win a straight party-line vote, but not enough to break a filibuster.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee cleared the way Thursday for Bolton’s nomination to reach the Senate floor for a confirmation vote, though the committee declined to endorse him. Boxer joined other Democrats on the committee in voting against allowing the nomination to advance.

In an interview Friday, Boxer said she was acting to hold off a vote in the full Senate because the administration had failed to deliver all the documents Democrats had sought in their investigation of Bolton.

But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the department had been “very forthcoming with the committee requests,” and stated: “We really don’t think we’re in a position to provide anything more before the floor vote.”

Boxer said she wanted the administration to hand over transcripts of National Security Agency intercepts without first removing names. Bolton, as undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, had sought the documents over the last four years. Democrats say they want to see the names of U.S. officials mentioned in the intercepts to determine whether Bolton requested them to gain the upper hand in bureaucratic infighting.

The intelligence community has revealed only versions of those intercepts to the chairman and ranking member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, and then only those in which names had been removed.

Boxer said her hold was also intended to pressure the administration to hand over documents relating to a State Department dispute over testimony Bolton gave the Senate on Syria and its development of unconventional weapons.

In addition, she said, she wanted information about a management consultant Bolton hired who continued to work for outside clients.

Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said that Democrats had not decided whether to filibuster Bolton’s nomination. Privately, Democratic strategists said senators believed that if they were locked in a filibuster fight with the Republican majority over judicial nominations, a likely prospect, the political cost would be too great if they also tried to block a presidential nomination to the United Nations with a filibuster.

“This is not an issue Democrats are prepared to die for,” said one senior Democratic leadership aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Democrats were not publicly discussing their strategy.