[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 7636-7637]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         JOHN BOLTON NOMINATION

  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I want to close on a couple of topics. The 
first one, because I sit on the Foreign Relations Committee, is the 
nomination of John Bolton to be our Ambassador to the United Nations. I 
do call on the President to rethink this nomination. Out of the 
thousands of strong, conservative Republicans who care about the world, 
there has to be somebody better than someone who has a pattern of not 
only abusing his staff, called a serial abuser by one witness, but 
also, and this is really threatening, trying to get them fired if they 
do not give him the information he wants.
  I am talking about false information and reaching down from the very 
high level at which he has been to the bottom of another agency that he 
did not even have direct line control over and trying to force not one 
but two and maybe three intelligence analysts to paint a picture that 
he wanted to use so that he could present a country as an imminent 
threat to this Nation, which could have led to some serious 
ramifications. Of all the people to pick now, it should not be someone 
who would try to politicize intelligence gathering.
  I received another letter on Friday, which I sent to both sides of 
the committee. I hope this will be looked at. It concerns a case where 
years ago John Bolton was trying to overturn a U.N. resolution--or have 
it modified--that dealt with infant formula in the developing nations. 
Some of my colleagues may remember that issue, where babies were dying 
throughout the developing world because they were mixing the baby 
formula with contaminated water, and the U.N. voted very strongly to 
stop distributing and selling that baby formula. According to this 
woman, who has a lot of credentials--an attorney who worked with John 
Bolton--she said that Bolton ordered her to contact these developing 
nations and tell them to back off and modify this resolution so that 
Nestle Company and others could sell their product in the developing 
world. And this is interesting--conscience clause--she said: My 
conscience does not allow me to do this because if one baby died as a 
result of what I did, I could not live with myself. There is a 
conscience clause in the agency that says if somebody has a conscience 
problem when given an assignment, they do not have to do it. Well, 
Bolton said, if you do not do this, you are fired, and he fired her on 
the spot, according to her. She is going to go under oath and testify 
to this. Then he found out he could not fire her because she was 
protected by Civil Service. She comes back to work, and what do they 
find? Her entire office had been moved. Where is it moved? To the 
basement of the building. No telephone. A desk and a chair. She loved 
her job, and she eventually got a telephone down there and worked 
around John Bolton and stayed there doing her work.
  This is yet another story. So we have a pattern of abusive behavior. 
Some of my friends on the other side of the aisle say, this is just the 
person we need for the U.N.--somebody tough. If you want someone in the 
U.N. who has a history of trying to change intelligence information--
and now the world knows it.
  As my ranking member Joe Biden has stated, this is the guy who may 
have to make the intelligence case against Iran. This is the guy who 
may have to make the intelligence case against North Korea with this 
background of using political pressure to get the kind of intelligence 
he wanted to build a case. This is not the right person. We do not want 
someone there who will politicize intelligence gathering. I don't think 
we want someone there who is such a hothead that it will turn a lot of 
people off.
  We have testimony from multiple sources. At first, my friends on the 
other side of the committee said it is an isolated incident; you are 
talking about one incident. We have incident after incident.
  Oh, he is just the person we need. We want someone tough. Tough is 
one thing. Tough and principled and committed is one thing. Abusing 
people is something else. A man is called a serial abuser by someone 
who has the credentials to know--e-mails back this up--trying to get 
people fired because they want to do their job.
  It was so bad that Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, had to 
actually go and talk to all these ``independent'' analysts; his message 
was, don't you worry about it. You continue to do your work. I thank 
him for that. The testimony is clear. He went there and told those 
analysts, don't you be bullied. I am using those words. But the message 
he had was, don't you worry about it. Do your work. Do your job. It is 
very clear.
  How refreshing it was to see Senator Voinovich, at the committee, 
listen to what Senator Biden, in particular, was saying. They had the 
information, chapter and verse, proof of why this is not a good 
appointment.
  I know the pressures that have come to bear on Senator Voinovich. It 
is not pleasant to be alone. I have been there. I know how it feels. 
But he is answering to his conscience. I think he did the Senate proud 
by doing that.
  Now we hear other colleagues on the committee saying maybe they need 
more time and more information.
  Again, this can all be avoided. There are so many other people who 
can do this job. I said before that John Bolton is very loyal to this 
conservative doctrine. There could be many positions for him in the 
administration. We need someone in the spirit of John Danforth--
Republican, conservative, wonderful former Senator who went to the 
United Nations, who immediately had the support and the credibility and 
the respect.
  In closing, I will talk about an issue I know the Presiding Officer 
has been very involved with, and that is the filibuster issue. As 
someone who once wanted to end a filibuster myself at an early stage, I 
now understand how foolish I was at that point. Why did I want it to 
end when I first came here as freshman? We had the majority and the 
Republicans were thwarting us. It was

[[Page 7637]]

very frustrating. We wanted to fix everything. I voted to say this 
filibuster has to go.
  Little did I realize that is the way the Senate is supposed to 
operate in a deliberative fashion. As one of the Founders said, the 
House is the cup. It gets hot. It is steaming. And when the issues get 
to the Senate, it is the saucer. They cool down. One of the ways to 
ensure that is to have extended debate.

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