By Associated Press | May 19, 2005
WASHINGTON -- John R. Bolton planned to ask then-CIA director George Tenet to help punish a government intelligence analyst who disagreed with Bolton, and then misled a Senate committee about the matter, a Democratic Senate report said yesterday.
Bolton pushed for months to have the analyst removed from his job or otherwise disciplined, but testified under oath at his confirmation hearing to be United Nations ambassador that he ''made no effort to have discipline imposed" on the man, according to details revealed for the first time in the report.
''Bolton's effort to minimize the significance of his efforts is disingenuous," said the report from Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The document is attached to a summary of Bolton's qualifications and an account of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's investigation prepared by its Republican chairman, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana.
The committee investigated allegations about Bolton's conduct for weeks before sending his name on to the full Senate for debate without the customary recommendation of approval. ''The end result of all this is that Secretary Bolton emerged looking better than when it began," Lugar wrote to the inquiry. ''There was no evidence to support the most serious charge, that Secretary Bolton sought to manipulate intelligence. He may have disagreed with intelligence findings but in the end, he always accepted the final judgment of the intelligence community."