Intel: Did Bolton Try to Intimidate Spies?

[TacticalPeek]

Intel: Did Bolton Try to Intimidate Spies?

Bolton: Influencing intelligence?

By Mark Hosenball
Investigative Correspondent
Newsweek

April 11 issue - Bush critics in the Senate are hunting for evidence to derail or delay confirmation of State Department official John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Foreign Relations Committee staffers are looking into charges that Bolton attempted to intimidate or victimize two career intelligence officials for what he viewed as their insufficiently alarmist analyses of intel on purported Cuban biological weapons. Committee investigators have contacted both the State Department and the intel community seeking records and witnesses. But Bolton's opponents are unsure if they will be able to make their case in time for Bolton's confirmation hearing Thursday.

snip

. . . But State Department WMD analyst Christian Westermann testified that he tangled with Bolton about a speech on Cuban germ warfare. According to a Senate intel committee report, Westermann says he sent the CIA an e-mail proposing changes in Bolton's speech. Bolton later got a copy of the e-mail, "berated" Westermann and tried to have the analyst transferred. Westermann wasn't reassigned.

The second case Bolton's congressional critics are examining involves a senior intelligence-community Latin America analyst. Congressional and administration sources say Bush foreign-policy aides—including Bolton and Otto Reich, a top policymaker on Latin America—tried to have the analyst, who today serves undercover, fired. They then tried to block him from being promoted because they believed he was too soft on Cuba, and because he was once assigned to President Bill Clinton's National Security Council.

more
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7369509/site/newsweek





Pig.

[leveymg]

1. You push these people hard enough, and they will push back.

What recently "retired" intelligence professionals did in 1980, their colleagues can undo today.

They are professional regime changers, after all.

[swag]

2. FUCKING KICK!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7369509/site/newsweek/

from www.warandpiece.com:


Talk about political pressure on US intelligence analysts! Check out Mark Hosenball's latest on Bolton. Which part of trying to get an intel analyst transferred who disagreed with Bolton's pronouncements that Cuba was producing bioweapons couldn't be considered political "pressure?" And trying to get another one fired?

[struggle4progress]

3. kick