[Mb-civic] The General's Revenge

[Mike Blaxill]

The general's revenge
Colin Powell, no longer the loyal soldier, rises
up to help stop conservative hard-liner John
Bolton from becoming U.N. ambassador.

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By Sidney Blumenthal

April 28, 2005  |   From the redoubt of his
retirement, former Secretary of State Colin
Powell is beginning to exact revenge. His
sterling reputation was soiled when he lost most
of the important battles within the
administration during President Bush's first
term. Although he lamented that he had been
"deceived" into presenting false information
before the United Nations to justify the Iraq
war, he acted as the good soldier to the end,
giving every sign of desiring to fade away. But
now he has reemerged to conduct a campaign to
defeat Bush's nomination of conservative
hard-liner and former Undersecretary of State
John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations.


In seeking to prevent the bullying and
duplicitous ideologue from representing the
United States before the international
organization, Powell is engaging in hand-to-hand
combat with his successor. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice's first true test has not
arrived from abroad. Caught by Powell's flanking
movement, she is trapped in a crisis of
credibility, which she herself is deepening.


Powell's closest associate, his former deputy
Richard Armitage, is orchestrating much of the
action. Senators who are wavering on Bolton are
directed to call Powell, who briefs them on
Bolton's demerits. And Powell's former chief of
chief, Lawrence Wilkerson, has surfaced to give
an interview to the New York Times, declaring
that Bolton would be "an abysmal ambassador."
Other former Foreign Service officers have queued
up to provide ever uglier details of Bolton's
career as a "serial abuser" and "a quintessential
kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy," as Carl W. Ford
Jr., the former director of intelligence at the
State Department, described him before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.


Rice's response to the seemingly endless stream
of witnesses has been to order the State
Department's senior staff to stanch the flow of
adverse stories. "This whole building knows how
Bolton dealt with people," a dismayed senior
State Department official told me. "If she is
sending a different signal than Powell sent, that
will be difficult. The muzzle is being put on;
the damage is being done. To the extent it's
buttoned up here, it's dangerous for the
secretary. Powell and Armitage created an
environment of accountability about treatment of
the staff. Any kind of allegation that you did
things like Bolton was death in the Foreign
Service. Persons were removed. Now she's trying
to be a team player, trying to support someone
Powell ostracized."


Indeed, last year Powell and Rice had a
confrontation over an allegation that a National
Security Council officer close to Rice, Robert
Blackwill, had physically assaulted a female
Foreign Service officer. Initially, Rice tried to
protect him. But Powell and Armitage presented
the evidence to her and told her that if she
didn't discipline Blackwill the matter would be
made public. Blackwill was forced to resign. And
after Bolton attempted to coerce a State
Department intelligence officer to agree to an
unfounded report about nonexistent Cuban WMD,
Powell personally assembled the entire
intelligence staff to instruct them to ignore
Bolton.


When British Foreign Minister Jack Straw
complained to Powell that Bolton was obstructing
negotiations with Iran on its development of
nuclear weapons, Powell ordered that Bolton be
cut out of the process, telling an aide: "Get a
different view." The British also objected to
Bolton's interference in talks with Libya, and
again Powell removed Bolton. But much as he may
have wanted to, Powell could not dismiss Bolton
because of a powerful patron: Vice President Dick
Cheney.


The Bolton confirmation hearings have revealed
his constant efforts to undermine Powell on Iran
and Iraq, Syria, and North Korea. They have also
exposed a most curious incident that has
triggered the administration's stonewall reflex.
The Foreign Relations Committee discovered that
Bolton made a highly unusual request and gained
access to 10 intercepts by the National Security
Agency, which monitors worldwide communications,
of conversations involving past and present
government officials. Whose conversations did
Bolton secretly secure and why?


Staff members on the committee believe that
Bolton was likely spying on Powell, his senior
advisors, and other officials reporting to the
secretary of state on diplomatic initiatives that
Bolton opposed. If so, it is also possible that
Bolton was sharing this top-secret information
with his neoconservative allies in the Pentagon
and the vice president's office, with whom he was
in daily contact and well known to be working in
league against Powell. If the intercepts are ever
released, they may disclose whether Bolton was a
key figure in a counterintelligence operation run
inside the Bush administration against the
secretary of state, resembling the hunted
character played by Will Smith in "Enemy of the
State." Both Republican and Democratic senators
have demanded that the State Department, which
holds the NSA intercepts, turn them over to the
committee. But Rice so far has refused. What is
she hiding by her coverup?


Rice's rise has been dependent on her unwavering
devotion to the president; in the Bolton case,
she is again elevating loyalty to her leader
above all else. Will Powell lose once more? But
beyond the general's revenge, Rice's fealty,
Bolton's contempt or even presidential
prerogative, this episode also points to a
gathering storm over constitutional government.

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About the writer
Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior
advisor to President Clinton and the author of
"The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon
and the Guardian of London.