OpEd on Rovegate....Bolton wiretapped El Baradei's office re: Niger

[maddezmom]

~snip~
Tenet said it "was a mistake" to have included the allegation in President George Bush's State of the Union speech in January. The previous October, Tenet called the White House to demand that a reference to the alleged Niger caper be deleted from a presidential speech. At that time, it was.

By the time Rove had his conversation with reporter Cooper, insisting that there was much to indicate an Iraqi-Niger nuclear connection, the White House knew this was untrue.

Indeed, by the time Wilson penned his account and Plame was later exposed, there was plenty to indicate that Iraq had no nuclear weapons program. And no weapons of mass destruction.

~snip~

ElBaradei was secretly wiretapped as part of an effort by State Department official John Bolton to force his removal as head of the atomic monitoring agency. The putsch failed when no other country would go along. No matter. Bush wants to promote Bolton to U.N. ambassador.

The president condones skulduggery against the leaders of international institutions who answer to the world, not to him.

more:http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1121336183836&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

[TexasProgresive]

1. I had a thought today about State Department memo-

That the original source to the WH of Plame's identity and job may be Bolton.

[maddezmom]

3. and remember the State Dept. still will not release papers

related to Bolton to Dem Senators.

[maddezmom]

4. from 6/13

But Republican and Democratic senators said the stalemate continued on Bolton's nomination over demands from Democrats that the White House provide information they said would shed more light on his suitability for the job.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050713/pl_nm/bush_bolton_dc_1

[MeDeMax]

8. now I can see why

if they do release the papers it would be exposed that he was spying on the very people he is supposed to go work with.

[maddezmom]

20. read Sy Hersh's article: Bolton was running his own intelligence agency

A few months after George Bush took office, Greg Thielmann, an expert on disarmament with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or INR, was assigned to be the daily intelligence liaison to John Bolton, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control, who is a prominent conservative. Thielmann understood that his posting had been mandated by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who thought that every important State Department bureau should be assigned a daily intelligence officer. “Bolton was the guy with whom I had to do business,” Thielmann said. “We were going to provide him with all the information he was entitled to see. That’s what being a professional intelligence officer is all about.”

But, Thielmann told me, “Bolton seemed to be troubled because INR was not telling him what he wanted to hear.” Thielmann soon found himself shut out of Bolton’s early-morning staff meetings. “I was intercepted at the door of his office and told, ‘The Under-Secretary doesn’t need you to attend this meeting anymore.’ ” When Thielmann protested that he was there to provide intelligence input, the aide said, “The Under-Secretary wants to keep this in the family.”

Eventually, Thielmann said, Bolton demanded that he and his staff have direct electronic access to sensitive intelligence, such as foreign-agent reports and electronic intercepts. In previous Administrations, such data had been made available to under-secretaries only after it was analyzed, usually in the specially secured offices of INR. The whole point of the intelligence system in place, according to Thielmann, was “to prevent raw intelligence from getting to people who would be misled.” Bolton, however, wanted his aides to receive and assign intelligence analyses and assessments using the raw data. In essence, the under-secretary would be running his own intelligence operation, without any guidance or support. “He surrounded himself with a hand-chosen group of loyalists, and found a way to get C.I.A. information directly,” Thielmann said.

In a subsequent interview, Bolton acknowledged that he had changed the procedures for handling intelligence, in an effort to extend the scope of the classified materials available to his office. “I found that there was lots of stuff that I wasn’t getting and that the INR analysts weren’t including,” he told me. “I didn’t want it filtered. I wanted to see everything—to be fully informed. If that puts someone’s nose out of joint, sorry about that.” Bolton told me that he wanted to reach out to the intelligence community but that Thielmann had “invited himself” to his daily staff meetings. “This was my meeting with the four assistant secretaries who report to me, in preparation for the Secretary’s 8:30 a.m. staff meeting,” Bolton said. “This was within my family of bureaus. There was no place for INR or anyone else—the Human Resources Bureau or the Office of Foreign Buildings.”

more: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact

[WhiteTara]

13. yep, me too

Bolton was the plumber of deep secrets.

[DemsUnited]

2. THANKS FOR POSTING THIS!!!!

As much as we all want to see Rove indicted (and I actually think he will be) this article lays out, clearly and succinctly, the REAL ISSUE!

If I knew how to nominate this, I would.

[I Have A Dream]

10. Hi, DemsUnited! To nominate a thread, you click on the...

'Recommend this topic for greatest page' in the bottom left corner of the originating post. Hope this helps!

:hi:

[DemsUnited]

11. Oh,THAT button, the one staring me right in the face

:dunce:

Thanks so much for letting me know so I could nominate this great article!

[MeDeMax]

5. I didn't know that

Bolton had wiretapped El Baradei, isn't that illegal ?

Don't UN officials get diplomatic protection against such intrusions into their privacy ?

[maddezmom]

6. JOHN BOLTON PUSHED NIGER-URANIUM FIASCO AT STATE

Then Tried to Hide his Tracks and Staff Lied to Congress

I just received this March 1, 2005 letter written by House Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman to Representative Christopher Shays who chairs the Government Reform Committee's Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Security.

Waxman is basically blowing the whistle on the administration's extravagant use of "sensitive but unclassified" designations on official acts to block public access to and transparency of government policymaking.

On pages 5-7, Waxman reveals that John Bolton promulgated the Niger-Uranium fiction at the State Department despite rejection of this claim by State Department and CIA intelligence analysts.

Waxman then argues that not only did Bolton and his people then try and conceal Bolton's role in pushing the Niger-Uranium agenda by marking the material "sensitive but unclassified" and blocking it in case of a Freedom of Information Act request, the State Department actually LIED TO CONGRESS about John Bolton's role.

more:http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000370.html

[UpInArms]

15. Bolton's role in Iran-Contra

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000411.html

John Bolton has made a career out of defying Congress. During the Iran-Contra investigations, John Bolton refused to comply with Congessional demands for records. Bolton also believed that the Independent Counsel law was unconstitutional and did everything he could do preempt Congress's efforts to investigate Iran-Contra.

<snip>

January 19, 1989
White House Barred From Destroying Records

"We have filed suit only after prolonged negotiations during which no representative of the federal government, including counsels for the White House, National Security Council, and the National Archives, would assure us that these electronic materials would be retained at the end of the Reagan administration," said Scott Armstrong, founder of the National Security Archive, a non-profit group. "The Iran-Contra affair illustrated the importance of information stored in the PROFS system," Armstrong said in an affidavit. "Despite repeated attempts by NSC staff to shred the paper record and delete the computer record, the PROFS backup system on magnetic tape allowed investigators to reconstruct much of the Iran-Contra-related activity."

The computer tapes "are the only existing record of many important communications within the White House and specifically within the NSC at the close of the Reagan administration," Ms. Martin said in a memorandum filed in federal court. Destroying the tapes "will destroy an invaluable historical and political record that is available nowhere else and which Congress has on several occasions mandated be available to members of the public," Ms. Martin's memo said.

Assistant Attorney General John Bolton argued at the hearing that the destruction is "not some sinister conspiracy," but rather staffers in the Reagan administration staff trying to perform "house cleaning" chores so that the Bush administration can come in with "a clean slate. The archivist has given approval to erase these systems" and none of the information has "any relevance" or "anything to do with the Iran-Contra affair," said Bolton. Bolton said some material has already been deleted from the system, that the system is filled to capacity and that "it would be a grave impairment of the president's ability" to conduct the transition to a new administration "if the court were to intervene. When new people come in they have to have access to the system," said Bolton. A restraining order would impair the ability to get the administration "up and running," he said...

...more...

[geckosfeet]

16. Why wasn't he charged with obstruction or at least contempt? n/t

[loudsue]

19. THE SAME WAY they NOW destroy records of people's VOTES

The republicans have been at this for a long time. That's why we need FORENSIC COMPUTER ANALYSTS to conduct investigations of all vote tabulation machines used in this past election. We SHOULD HAVE done it in 2002, but it's a little too late now, and back then, nobody would listen!

Are we going to wait until 2006 to get mad all over again about how easily this cabal "erases" or "shreds" evidence? It's their M.O., and it's time the nation faced up to this fact.

:kick::kick::kick:

[enough]

7. Good article. Thanks for positing this.

U.S. pays bloody price for Rove's nasty politics
Leaks by Bush aide was meant to sustain the lies that led America into Iraq war, says Marie Cocco


WASHINGTON—Let us remember the real reason that White House political enforcer Karl Rove was chatting with selected reporters in the summer of 2003.

It was not necessarily to blow the cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

It was not, entirely, to mete out vicious retribution against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, for writing an op-ed article in The New York Times that discounted administration claims about an alleged Iraqi effort to acquire uranium from Niger.

The malevolence was more fundamental. Rove was trying to sustain the lies that led America into Iraq.

snip>

[90-percent]

9. marie cocco

I thought she wrote for NEWSDAY on Long Island, not wapo?

-85%

[Raksha]

12. Yikes!!! I didn't think anything could shock me anymore

when the Bush administration is involved, but something just did!

"ElBaradei was secretly wiretapped as part of an effort by State Department official John Bolton to force his removal as head of the atomic monitoring agency."

Unfreakinbelievable!

[WhiteTara]

14. great article

:kick:

[geckosfeet]

17. Its starting to look more and more to me,,, like Tenet was frustrated

with this WH and left for similar reasons as Powell: fundamental philosophical and ethical differences. Although I am not ready to absolve him for the load of crap that went into that state of the union address.

I guess at this point, I am starting to wonder when and how the indictments will come down.

Rove first ? Maybe Tenet? Will the prosecutor get them to implicate others or will they go down with the ship? Is that why Tenet got his medal?

[0007]

18. Tis time to put this monkey in a cage so no more damage can

be done and no more money spent on raping our country.