State Dept. Now Says Bolton
Lied
Yahoo News/AP
By MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press Writer
Fri Jul 29, 8:05 AM ET
WASHINGTON - John Bolton, President Bush's nominee for U.N.
ambassador, neglected to tell Congress he had been interviewed in
a government investigation into faulty prewar intelligence that
Iraq was seeking nuclear materials in Africa, the State
Department said.
Democratic senators said the admission should forestall Bush
from using his authority to give Bolton a temporary appointment
to the U.N. post, without Senate confirmation, when the Senate
goes on vacation in August.
Bolton was interviewed by the State Department inspector
general in 2003 as part of a joint investigation with the CIA
into prewar Iraqi attempts to buy nuclear materials from Niger,
State Department spokesman Noel Clay said Thursday.
His statement came hours after another State Department
official said Bolton had correctly answered a Senate
questionnaire when he wrote that he had not testified to a grand
jury or been interviewed by investigators in any inquiry over the
past five years.
Clay said Bolton "didn't recall being interviewed by the State
Department's inspector general" when he filled out the form.
"Therefore, his form, as submitted, was inaccurate," Clay said.
"He will correct it."
Bolton, former undersecretary for arms control and
international security, had no role in a separate criminal
investigation into the leak of an undercover CIA officer's
identity, Clay said.
The reversal followed persistent Democratic attempts, led by
Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record), D-Del., to question
Bolton's veracity just days before Bush could make Bolton's a
recess appointment, meaning he could occupy the U.N. post until
the end of next year when the current Congress ends.
"It seems unusual that Mr. Bolton would not remember his
involvement in such a serious matter," said Biden, the senior
Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "In my mind,
this raises more questions that need to be answered. I hope
President Bush will not make the mistake of recess appointing Mr.
Bolton."
Another Democrat, California Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio,
voting record), said a recess appointment would send "a horrible
message" and called on Bush to withdraw the nomination.
For months, Democrats have prevented the Senate from
confirming Bolton to the post, while demanding more information
from the Bush administration on Bolton's tenure as the State
Department's arms control chief. Some critics also have said
Bolton is temperamentally unsuited to the diplomatic post.
Bush has said that Bolton would be ideally suited to lead an
effort to overhaul the world body's bureaucracy and make it more
accountable.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other officials
Thursday refused to rule out a recess appointment for Bolton.
"What we can't be is without leadership at the United Nations,"
Rice said on the PBS' "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" program.
While the State Department and criminal investigations are
independent, they spring from the same source —
intelligence that Iraq was trying to buy materials in Africa to
produce nuclear weapons.
In the criminal probe, a federal grand jury is investigating
who leaked the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the news
media. Biden had earlier asked Rice about a report that Bolton
was among State undersecretaries who "gave testimony" about a
classified memo that has become an important piece of evidence in
the leak investigation.
Plame is the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who
was sent by the CIA in 2002 to check out the intelligence about
Iraqi nuclear intentions. Wilson could not verify it and his
public criticism of Bush's Iraq policy in July 2003 set in motion
a chain of events that led to an ongoing criminal investigation
and the jailing of a New York Times reporter who refused to
cooperate with it.
Syndicated columnist Robert Novak, citing unidentified Bush
administration officials, was the first to disclose in July 2003
that Plame worked for the CIA and suggested her husband for the
Niger trip. Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper wrote a subsequent
story and included her name.
It can be illegal to reveal the identity of an undercover CIA
officer. Wilson has accused the White House of trying to
discredit him because he accused the White House of twisting
intelligence to justify an Iraq invasion.
Bush political aide Karl Rove and vice presidential chief of
staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby were among Cooper's sources, he
reported following his grand jury appearance. They are among
several high-ranking administration officials who have given
grand jury testimony.
While Rove has not disputed that he told Cooper that Wilson's
wife worked for the agency, he has insisted through his lawyer
that he did not mention her by name.
Among the many mysteries in this case is that there was
apparently at least one other government official who disclosed
to a reporter that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Walter
Pincus, a Washington Post reporter, wrote in the summer edition
of the Nieman Foundation publication Nieman Reports that the
official talked to him two days before Novak's column
appeared.
Pincus did not disclose his source. But he said he has
cooperated with prosecutors and that his source also has been
interviewed.
Associated Press writers Anne Gearan, George Gedda and Liz
Sidoti contributed to this report.
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