Democrats To Get Some Bolton Data

At the State Department's urging, Senate Democrats narrowed their request for internal government documents bearing on John R. Bolton's fitness to be the United States' ambassador to the United Nations.

Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have threatened to force a delay in the panel's planned Thursday vote on Bolton unless they get the information they want. They planned a private strategy session Tuesday and were hoping to receive more material from the State Department later in the day, said Norm Kurz, a spokesman for the committee's senior Democrat, Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.

The movement on the documents could be a sign that the two sides were steering away from a new clash that would further delay the committee's vote, though Democrats said they had received nothing by early afternoon.

Last month, Republicans and Democrats on the GOP-led committee postponed the vote on Bolton to May 12 so they could investigate allegations that he abused underlings or colleagues and may have misused government intelligence to suit ideological ends.

Biden intends to go ahead with the vote, "so long as the other end of that bargain is held up — namely to provide the information, the documents, in a timely way," Kurz said.

A State Department spokesman said Monday that the department had given the Senate committee everything it planned to provide. But late Monday, Democrats pared back their request to focus on questions of whether Bolton misused government analyses about Syrian weapons capability, congressional aides said.

Separately, The New York Times reports that senior State Department officials were so angered by Bolton's public comments that they ordered two years ago that he be barred from making speeches unless they were cleared by superiors.

That's according to a transcript of an interview Lawrence S. Wilkerson, a longtime aide to former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, gave to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.

Wilkerson told the panel that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, the number two man in the department, had insisted on personally clearing all Bolton's speeches and testimony after unapproved comments Bolton made on North Korea and other sensitive issues caused "problems."

"The deputy made a decision, and communicated that decision to me, that John Bolton would not give any testimony, nor would he give any speech, that wasn't cleared first by Rich," Wilkerson said.

Wilkerson added in an e-mail message that the reins on Bolton "got more stringent" over time and that "No one else was subjected to these tight restrictions."

For his part, Armitage has backed Bolton's nomination, calling him "eminently qualified. He's one of the smartest guys in Washington."

Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., has predicted Bolton will win committee support by a 10-8 party-line vote and said there is no reason to postpone the vote a second time. Lugar put it off last month after a moderate Republican, Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, said the committee should investigate Bolton further.

Besides his testimony last month, Bolton has had 23 private meetings with senators and answered 157 written questions, according to the congressional affairs office figures. Democrats have complained that some of the answers were incomplete or brusque, and some were merely a yes or no without elaboration.

The Foreign Relations Committee interviewed 31 people, including 13 current State Department employees.

On Monday, 43 former U.S. ambassadors added their names to a letter signed earlier by 59 ex-ambassadors opposing the nomination. Most served in Republican administrations.