Bolton debate ignores battle over intelligence
WASHINGTON -- The decades-long conservative mistrust of the CIA -- the fear that career intelligence analysts are too slow to recognize threats and too cautious in their estimates of enemy strength -- is the elephant in the hearing room as senators battle over John R. Bolton, President Bush's nominee to be US ambassador to the United Nations.
But the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which last week delayed consideration of Bolton's nomination to assess more evidence that he mistreated subordinates, seems reluctant even to acknowledge the elephant's presence, let alone try to hunt it down.
Bolton, who is accused of seeking retribution against two intelligence officers who questioned his assertion that Cuba has a biological weapons program, stands ready to broadcast his interpretations of US intelligence to the world as UN ambassador. But even some Democrats seem more comfortable attacking Bolton for his bullying style than for misusing intelligence to favor his hawkish view of Cuba.
After the well-documented intelligence failures surrounding the Iraq War, numerous committees have called for revamping the way intelligence is gathered, analyzed, and presented to the world. But all have tiptoed around the issue of when and whether it is appropriate for political appointees to put pressure on intelligence analysts. It is a crucial question, given that many conservatives strongly believe that career intelligence analysts in many goverment agencies, especially the CIA, wait too long to identify threats that, in the terrorism era, can blow up quickly.
But conservatives are reluctant to discuss this issue -- which was once a staple of their think tanks and policy boards -- because of the Bush administration's insistence that it did not go beyond the assessment of the CIA in depicting the dangers of Iraq. By denying that his team did anything but parrot the CIA, Bush may inadvertently be strengthening the view that no official should ever put his own gloss on the agency's findings.
Bolton, however, is a favorite of those who have long believed political leaders should look beyond the CIA for analysis of threats to the United States. In the 1970s, a group of neoconservatives, including outgoing Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, constructed their own ''Team B" analysis of Soviet military capabilities that was far more threatening than the CIA's conclusions. The CIA assessments turned out to be closer to the truth, but the hawks won the battle of history: Ronald Reagan's defense buildup, sold in part as a way of responding to ''Team B" estimates of Soviet strength, is credited with speeding the collapse of the Soviet Union.
More recently, conservatives have claimed that the CIA underestimated the progress of Iraq's weapons programs in 1991, and did not foresee the progress of North Korea's nuclear program.
In 2002, as undersecretary of state for arms control, Bolton wanted to declare that Cuba had a biological weapons program and could export weapons of mass destruction to rogue states. The State Department's top biological weapons specialist, Christian P. Westermann, sent Bolton's proposed speech to intelligence agencies for review, but included his own, more moderate wording as an alternative. Westermann claimed it was common practice to include alternative wording, but Bolton was enraged. A former assistant secretary of state, Carl W. Ford Jr., compared Bolton's dressing-down of Westermann to ''an 800-pound gorilla devouring a banana."
Bolton also tried to force the reassignment of a CIA officer, Fulton T. Armstrong, who disagreed with Bolton's claims about Cuba. At his confirmation hearing, Bolton said he meant to show his lack of confidence in Westermann and Armstrong, not punish them for disagreeing with him.
During the hearings, senators heard how intelligence agencies disagreed with Bolton's claims about Cuba, but he still tried to tell the world about a WMD threat that officially did not exist. Yet many senators chose to read the episode differently -- as a comment on Bolton's ''management style," in the words of Senator Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, rather than a hyping of intelligence.
Later, after a woman who worked with Bolton claimed he had thrown papers at her, other Republicans led by Ohio's George Voinovich began expressing concerns. But Voinovich, too, couched his objections solely in terms of how Bolton handled people, not intelligence.
After Iraq, the way the United States ascertains threats, and proves their existence, will be scrutinized around the world. The revelation of the Bolton hearings is just how far the government is from coming to grips with the Iraq intelligence failures, and how politicians are reluctant even to discuss how we should deal with the problem in the months and years ahead.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.
