Downing Street Memo Update - The Bolton Connection

The Washington Post's Jefferson Morley does a damn fine impression of a blogger today with a hyperlinked roundup of how the Downing Street Memo story is gaining impetus in the MSM. One part of the story I had missed concerns John Bolton, controversial nominee as US ambassador to the UN, which I will post in it's entirety.

Over the weekend, Charles Hanley, a special correspondent for the Associated Press, linked The Times's Downing Street memo to U.N. Ambassador nominee John Bolton's effort to get a U.N. weapons inspector fired.

"Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful, according to officials involved," Hanley said in a story published this weekend by The Guardian in London and carried by Canadian TV.

The dismissal, Hanley says, was part of the Bush administration effort to control intelligence findings on Iraq.

Jose Bustani, the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), "had to go" according to one of Bolton's aides, because he was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. The course of action favored by Bustani might "have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war," Hanley wrote.

Bustani was relieved of his position in April 2002 at an OPCW meeting attended by only one third of the group's member nations, according to the AP report.

"The Iraq connection to the OPCW affair comes as fresh evidence surfaces that the Bush administration was intent from early on to pursue military and not diplomatic action against Saddam Hussein's regime," Hanley wrote. He cited the Times's original Downing Street memo story, which reported that Blair told Bush that Britain would support a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq at a meeting in Crawford, Tex., in mid-April 2002.

"Two weeks later, Bustani was ousted, with British help," Hanley wrote.

The longer it goes on, the deeper the stench gets.

Rep. John Conyers participated in an online chat with Morley today and has details here. (A pity he picked the Huffington Post as the very fact that he did will hurt his case in some quarters of the blogosphere - maybe the Big Brass Alliance should offer him some web space instead.)

Morley's comments are...interesting:

When asked why there has been so little coverage of the Downing Street Minutes here in the United States, Morley replies: "I think some combination of cynicism, complacency and insulation has stifled the instincts of very good reporters. I also think there is also a failure of leadership at the senior editorial level. The issues raised by the Downing Street minutes are very serious. To pursue them is to invite confrontation. This means that 'beat' reporters cannot realistically pursue the story. I say all this way of explanation, not rationalization. There are several natural followup stories to the Downing Street memo that we should be pursuing right now."

Then later:

A reader asks whether a Post reporter will ask about the Downing Street Minutes during the joint Bush-Blair appearances in Washington this week. Morley's reply: "If Post reporters don't ask Blair about the memo, they have abdicated responsibility in my view."