Bolton to June Posted by Suzanne Nossel

With the Senate turning down a vote on cloture, the Bolton nomination gets kicked to June.  Others like Steve Clemons and Stygius are offering incredible play-by-play coverage.  On the merits of the nomination and the larger questions of UN reform, we've more or less said our piece here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

But here's the thing.  In its eleventh hour, the Bolton deliberation has morphed into something quite apart from a debate on the candidate's merits - its now a discussion about the scope of the Senate's obligation to advise and consent on the President's nominations.   It's the same issue that came to the fore earlier this week on the judicial filibusters.   This is the closing para of a letter Biden and Dodd sent to colleagues yesterday:

"The refusal of the Executive Branch to provide information relevant to the nomination is a threat to the Senate's constitutional power to advise and consent. The only way to protect that power is to continue to demand that the information be provided to the Senate. The only means of forcing the administration to cooperate is to prevent a final vote on the nomination today. We urge to you vote no on cloture,"

The Democrats, reluctant to call a filibuster on the merits, are now hanging their refusal to bring Bolton to a vote on the State Department and National Surveillance Agency's refusal to provide information requested by both Democrats and Republicans on the SFRC regarding Bolton's efforts to unmask nineteen Americans named in intelligence intercepts and on other missing information.  Details on the intercepts appear in this story. 

This comes down to a question of whether the White House can simply refuse to provide information that a Senate Committee legitimately requests in order to discharge its oversight duties.  In the foreign policy arena in particular, while I won't claim to understand exactly what the Democrats think they may find in the missing disclosures (or whether the fact that Sen. Jay Rockefeller on the Intelligence Committee has seen the information is decisive or not), the principle at stake is an important one. 

This Administration has a history of operating in secrecy and of providing partial information that can be misleading.  Many Senate Democrats felt they were duped by the White House en route to the Iraq invasion, and they are right not to let this happen again.

The Republicans have repeatedly analogized Bolton's personality and style to that of UN Ambassador and later Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (a comparison Moynihan's daughter Maura vigorously rejects).   

But Moynihan was a champion of transparency in government and a staunch critic of over-classification of documents and the restriction of information flow.  He ended a book entitled The Torment of Secrecy: The Background and Consequences of American Security Policy" with these words:

A case can be made that secrecy is for losers, for people who don't know how important information really is. The Soviet Union realized this too late. Openness is now a singular and singularly American advantage. We put it in peril by poking long in the mode of an age now past. It is time to dismantle government secrecy, this most pervasive of cold war era regulations. It is time to begin building the supports for the era of openness, which is already upon us.

Moynihan's words were invoked in debates around secrecy over U.S. policy in Iraq and the war on terror.

If Bolton's supporters truly want to uphold the tradition of Moynihan, they would give Senate Democrats the information that they and their Republican counterparts asked for and deserve. 

Comments

[rosignol]

Would you please read this?

http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/archives/004587.html

[figo]

It's the National Surveillance Agency (NSA), not the National Intelligence Agency. And the Democrats are demanding not only the NSA intercepts, but also internal State Department documents in regards to planned Congressional testimony Bolton was scheduled to deliver on Syrian WMD programs in the summer of 2003.

[libertarian soldier]

Actually its the National Security Agency. And both Roberts and Rockefeller (chair and vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee) have seen the documents and stated there is nothing in them affecting consideration of Bolton.
And to add my two cents about Bolton, he should be confirmed because:
He will always have forum to shoot his mouth off whether a public or private citizen
The days when the USUN ambassador was the face of the US to world died with the advent of 24 news, the internet, satellite TV, et al.
The diplomacy of USUN ambassador doesn't matter; regardless of how nice he is to his colleagues they will vote as decided in their capitals based on their countries interests
He will have much less impact on actual policy formulation and execution in the UN than at DoS, so the sooner he leaves the latter, the better.

[doc]

“…the Bolton nomination gets kicked to June.”

…can you say “recess appointment”?

[manoppello]

"It's the National Surveillance Agency (NSA), not the National Intelligence Agency."
"Actually its the National Security Agency. "

Under the new directoriate of Intelligence they all become the National Intelligence Agency. I'm not sure Moynihan meant this in a general sense. Perhaps in the
context of policy secrets. Technological secrets are easily compromised even
through excerpts. In THIS context it is important that the knowledge disseminated
about what we do not know and are not capable of that is as important as any
intercept leading to what we do know. Even small excerpts could lead to the immediate and catastrophic compromise of ELINT, COMINT, and HUMINT sources.

The problem is not the existence of such secrets, rather how and to whom they are accessible to. Accessibility to politicians, politicization, often leads to catastrophic consequences. Blocking access to FBI anti-terrorist teams may also
lead to catastrophic results such as 9-11. Obviously, filtering the information through ambitious politicians (LAWYERS) is unacceptable and risky, Therefore, the
notion of a "TOP" politician, one man in charge of all national intelligence that can "stove pipe" information to right places does not solve the problem and in fact may exacerbate it.

Intelligence reform requires less politicization and much more accountability.

[Stygius]

Thanks for the link, Suzanne.

So many of the pro-Bolton arguments hinge on either (a) he's lousy, but could be worse, (b) he's lousy, but so are lots of other people, or (c) he won't be able to do much at the UN anyway.

As far as advocacy goes, that's pretty light-weight stuff, as well as unintentional arguments AGAINST confirmation. My position has long been that someone who has done such a lousy job combating proliferation shouldn't be rewarded but fired, so long as we're actually serious about combating proliferation.

If we can do better, then shouldn't we?

[Jeff Owen]

Libertarian Soldier: Rockefeller has not seen the documents on Syria. They could prove that Bolton lied to Congress (again).

Lying under oath gets presidents impeached, why should UN nominees get away with it?

[doc]

"…can you say “recess appointment”?"

...i guess not.

[Dan Dean]

Could our foreign policy and affairs do worse? With Mr. Bolton the answer is, "absolutely yes"! How many years will it take to untangle/rectify the past four plus? I'm afraid Mr. Bolton is capable of further alienating Island America from the rest of the world...

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