http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=63109&d=3&m=5&y=2005
Tuesday, 3, May, 2005 (24, Rabi` al-Awwal, 1426)
Bolton Exaggerated Syria & Cuba's Weapons
Barbara Ferguson, Arab News
WASHINGTON, 3 May 2005 - The real reason why John Bolton, President
George W. Bush's appointee as US ambassador to the United Nations, is intensely
disliked by State Department officials has nothing to do with the way he treats
his subordinates, but rather with the way he distorts intelligence information
for his political motives, a State Department official told Arab News
yesterday, while expressing disappointment that the US media has paid little
attention to this, the real issue.
This news corroborated what former intelligence officials have reported,
that Bolton repeatedly clashed with American intelligence officials in 2002 and
2003 as he sought to deliver warnings about Syrian and Cuban efforts to acquire
unconventional weapons which the CIA and other experts rejected as exaggerated.
Impartiality of US intelligence judgments remains a highly charged issue
because of assertions by some lawmakers that analysts were pressured to produce
assessments on Iraq that supported Bush's case for war but turned out to be
wrong.
Disagreement over Cuba's and Syria's alleged biological warfare
capabilities and allegations that inappropriate pressure was applied to
intelligence officers is another example of his use of distortion of
intelligence for his political aims, said the State Department official, who
said the CIA made it clear to Bolton that they did not have adequate
information for him to make such accusations, and were dismayed when Bolton
disregarded their advice and spoke about the countries' alleged biological
warfare capabilities.
It has also become known that congressional investigators are probing a
new allegation that President Bush's choice for UN ambassador once visited CIA
headquarters to demand the removal of a top intelligence analyst who disagreed
with him on Cuba's biological warfare capabilities.
Retired diplomats say that Bolton did try to get the analyst removed, who
was the Latin America expert on the National Intelligence Council.
The congressional investigators were told that Otto Reich, former
Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and Bolton
demanded that the national intelligence officer be removed from his position
during separate visits they made to CIA headquarters in 2002, the US officials
said. Instead, the officer was promoted.
Bolton repeated and strengthened previous allegations about Cuba's
alleged weapons of mass destruction program, and told Congress in written
testimony that the island "remains a terrorist and (biological weapons) threat
to the United States."
Such prolonged and heated disputes over Bolton's remarks were unusual
within government and that those disputes reflected what one former senior
official called a pattern in which Bolton sought to push his public assertions
beyond the views endorsed by intelligence agencies.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is also reviewing reports
involving Syria as part of its inquiries relating to Bolton's nomination.
Declassified e-mail messages from 2002 that were provided to the
committee by the State Department allude to one previously unknown episode.
One message, dated April 30, 2002, and sent by a senior State Department
intelligence official, dismissed as "a stretch" language about a possible
Syrian nuclear program that had been spelled out in a draft speech circulated
by Bolton's aides for approval. In the speech itself, delivered five days
later, Bolton made no reference to a Syrian nuclear program.
Until now, Senate Democrats leading the opposition to Bolton's nomination
have focused mostly on a 2002 dispute related to Cuba, in which Bolton has
acknowledged seeking the transfer of two intelligence officials with whom he
had differed. But Congressional staffers have told reporters of the clashes
over Syria as "an example,...not of Bolton's abusing people, but of trying to
exaggerate the intelligence to fit his policy views."
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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