Bolton Vote Delayed

Posted on April 20, 2005

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to postpone until next month the vote on John Bolton's bid to become Ambassador to the U.N. Senator Lugar, the chairman of the panel caved in after a suprise defection by Republican George V. Voinovich of Ohio. Realizing that if he took a vote on Tuesday, Bolton was dead in the water, Lugar postponed the vote to give the White House more time to twist Voinovich's arm. The testimony was pretty damning: Bolton was accused of witholding information from Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, of harassing and abusing his employees and of mishandling intelligence. But the most bizarre behavior reported was from Bolton's time in the private sector.

Sen. Biden of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the committee, read from a letter [Melody Townsel, a former contract worker for the United States Agency for International Development] had sent the committee, although he did not name her.
Ms. Townsel, whose allegations had begun to emerge in the news media , has said that for two weeks in 1994, when Mr. Bolton was working as a private lawyer for a subcontractor that clashed with her employer, he harassed her in a Moscow hotel, falsely claiming that she had misused funds and could face jail.
"'Mr. Bolton,'" Mr. Biden read from the letter, "proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel, throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door, and genuinely behaving like a madman. I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there. Mr Bolton then routinely visited me to pound on the door and shout threats.'"
Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, said today that Mr. Bolton's alleged comments to Ms. Townsel about possibly facing jail were "absolute lies."

After hearing about the crazed, more youthful, Bolton barrelling down the halls of a Russian hotel screaming and threatening Ms. Townsel, Senator Voinovich had had enough, explaining his change of heart by saying, "My conscience got me. I wanted more information about this individual, and I didn't feel comfortable voting for him." Scott McClellan has threatened to quickly be in touch with the Senator to "put his concerns to rest."

So if Kofi Annan does something that Ambassador Bolton doesn't like, will he chase Mr. Annan down the halls of the United Nations screaming obscenities in a sort of "Fear Factor at the U.N."? And will it be televised?