Who Else Was John Bolton Spying Upon? The Left Coaster

reported last night, there are new developments in the John Bolton confirmation story; surrounding his direct efforts to fire the UN’s director of chemical weapons nonproliferation efforts. You’ll also recall that last week we ran with a story first reported by Douglas Jehl of the New York Times that John Bolton had specially requested copies of NSA intercepts, documents that the White House refuses to turn over to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The story by Jehl indicated that the reason why the White House was fighting tooth and nail to prevent the Senate from getting these copies, aside from the usual Cheneyesque “fuck Congress and the horses they rode in on” modus operandi, was because the intercepts contained the names of individuals and companies that might have been violating the ban on exporting weapons materials to China, and perhaps Libya and Iran. I presumed at the time, because I always assume the worst about Republicans and money, that the White House was preventing the Senate from getting these intercepts to protect GOP contributors and to prevent a major embarrassment to itself. 

As Mary reported last night, there are new developments in the John Bolton confirmation story; surrounding his direct efforts to fire the UN’s director of chemical weapons nonproliferation efforts. You’ll also recall that last week we ran with a story first reported by Douglas Jehl of the New York Times that John Bolton had specially requested copies of NSA intercepts, documents that the White House refuses to turn over to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The story by Jehl indicated that the reason why the White House was fighting tooth and nail to prevent the Senate from getting these copies, aside from the usual Cheneyesque “fuck Congress and the horses they rode in on” modus operandi, was because the intercepts contained the names of individuals and companies that might have been violating the ban on exporting weapons materials to China, and perhaps Libya and Iran. I presumed at the time, because I always assume the worst about Republicans and money, that the White House was preventing the Senate from getting these intercepts to protect GOP contributors and to prevent a major embarrassment to itself.