Bump In Road For U.N. Nominee

Vote On Bolton's Nomination For Ambassador Delayed By Allegations

(CBS/AP) 
Democrats also wanted more information about Bolton's dealings with a female employee during his time at the Justice Department in the late 1980s. The two clashed over the woman's request for extended maternity leave.

Bolton is a harsh critic of the United Nations bureaucracy and thus a provocative choice to be Washington's representative to the world body. Most of the allegations that have accompanied his nomination, however, concern his personal dealings and judgment.

The allegations attempted to paint Bolton as an imperious hothead who dressed down junior bureaucrats and withheld information from his superiors in his current job as the State Department's arms control chief.

There were repeated questions by senators at his confirmation hearing last week concerning what Bolton may have done to punish or pressure underlings who crossed him. A senior colleague called him a "serial abuser."

Bolton denied he did anything improper, but said he had "lost confidence" in two intelligence analysts who disagreed with him.

Bolton, 56, has served four years as arms control chief at the State Department, but he is not a diplomat by training. He was an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department under Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, and held other government jobs during the Reagan administration.

A Yale Law School graduate, Bolton has been a lawyer in private practice and an academic.

He is considered one of Mr. Bush's most conservative advisers on foreign policy, and one of the most caustic.

He has said, for example, that the loss of 10 stories from the United Nations headquarters building in New York would make no difference.

When the State Department was trying to move toward accommodation with North Korea over its nuclear program two years ago, Bolton called the country's leader, Kim Jong Il, a "tyrannical dictator."