US: President George Bush's nominee as US ambassador to the United Nations tried to have an intelligence analyst fired for giving him information he did not want to hear, a former State Department official testified in the US Senate yesterday.
Carl Ford, who was chief of the department's bureau of intelligence and research, described the nominee, John Bolton, as a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" who serially abused analysts who disagreed with his hawkish views of Cuba's weapons capabilities.
Mr Bolton, a senior State Department official, denied trying to fire intelligence officials who disagreed with his conclusions. The testimony of Mr Ford, a self-described Republican and conservative who said he spoke out only after "much soul-searching", came on the second day of a Senate foreign relations committee hearing on the nomination.
Mr Ford asserted that Mr Bolton tried to sack an analyst, Christian Westermann, in 2002 when Mr Westermann disputed a claim Mr Bolton planned to make publicly that Cuba had a secret biological weapons programme.
The incident had a profound effect on other State Department intelligence analysts who "were scared" to come up against him, Mr Ford asserted.
"I have never seen anyone quite like Mr Bolton," he said. "He abuses his authority with little people. He would reach five or six levels down into the bureaucracy, bring an analyst into his office and give him a tongue-lashing. It's an 800-pound gorilla devouring a banana. The analyst was required to stand there and take it."
Another intelligence analyst who felt Mr Bolton's wrath was referred to at the hearing as "Mr Smith" to protect his identity, but Senator John Kerry seems to have disclosed his real name in questioning the nominee.
Senator Kerry asked Mr Bolton about his actions against an official called "Fulton Armstrong", to which Mr Bolton replied, "As I said, I had lost confidence in Mr Smith, and I conveyed that."
Senator Barbara Boxer accused the nominee of being a "bully" who harassed at least three specialised officials who disagreed with the extent of threats posed by Cuba and other countries. She said she thought he needed anger management at a minimum "and he does not deserve to be promoted".
Democrats need only one defector on the 10-8 Republican-dominated committee to impede the nomination, but Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, the one Republican who has voiced doubts about Bolton, noted yesterday that the analysts had all kept their jobs.
Senator Kerry has mounted an internet campaign asking voters in Rhode Island to lobby Mr Chafee on the issue, and Mr Chafee's office has reportedly been inundated with calls.
At a separate hearing, Mr Bush's nominee as the first US director of intelligence, John Negroponte, got an easier ride, and is expected to be voted through quickly.
The Washington Post yesterday published new material about Mr Negroponte's controversial term as ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985, an issue which delayed for months his confirmation as ambassador to the UN four years ago.
Human rights groups have alleged he did little to discourage Honduran death squads funded by the CIA, something Mr Negroponte has always denied. The Post said there was little evidence of his assertion that he used "quiet diplomacy" to discourage the most egregious human rights violations.