Official: Bush to Name Bolton to U.N.

Frustrated by Democrats, President Bush will circumvent the Senate on Monday and install embattled nominee John Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations, a senior administration official said.

Bush has the power to fill vacancies without Senate approval while Congress is in recess. Under the Constitution, a recess appointment during the lawmakers' August break would last until the next session of Congress, which begins in January 2007.

In advance of Bush's announcement, Democrats said Bolton would start his new job on the wrong foot in a recess appointment.

"He's damaged goods. This is a person who lacks credibility," Sen. Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record) of Connecticut, a senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday." Bush, he said, should think again before using a recess appointment to place Bolton at the United Nations while the Senate is on its traditional August break.

But Republicans appearing on Sunday's news shows said Bolton is the man the White House wants and he's the right person to represent the United States at the world body.

Bolton's appointment ends a five-month impasse between the administration and Senate Democrats.

The battle grabbed headlines last spring amid accusations that Bolton abused subordinates and twisted intelligence to shape his conservative ideology, and as White House and GOP leadership efforts to ram the nomination through the Senate fell short.

In recent weeks, it faded into the background as the Senate prepared to begin a nomination battle over John Roberts, the federal appeals judge that Bush chose to replace the retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor at the Supreme Court.

At Bolton's April confirmation hearing, Democrats raised additional questions about his demeanor and attitude toward lower-level government officials. Those questions came to dominate Bolton's confirmation battle, growing into numerous allegations that he had abused underlings or tried to browbeat intelligence analysts whose views differed from his own.

Despite lengthy investigations, it was never clear that Bolton did anything improper. Witnesses told the committee that Bolton lost his temper, tried to engineer the ouster of at least two intelligence analysts and otherwise threw his weight around. But Democrats were never able to establish that his actions crossed the line to out-and-out harassment or improper intimidation.

Separately, Democrats and the White House deadlocked over Bolton's acknowledged request for names of U.S officials whose communications were secretly picked up by the National Security Agency. Democrats said the material might show that Bolton conducted a witch hunt for analysts or others who disagreed with him.

The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee received a limited briefing on the contents of the messages Bolton saw, but were not told the names.

Democrats said that was not good enough, but later offered a compromise. After much back and forth, with the White House claiming Democrats had moved the goal posts, no other senator saw any of the material.

Last week, the administration telegraphed Bush's intention to put Bolton on the job.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the vacancy needed to be filled before the U.N. General Assembly's annual meeting in mid-September. Former Sen. John Danforth left the post in January.

In the face of objections from most Democrats and at least one Republican, Bush has steadfastly refused to withdraw Bolton's nomination — even after the Foreign Relations Committee sent it to the full Senate without the customary recommendation to approve it.

Though the debate over Bolton had largely faded from the headlines, critics raised fresh concerns this week when it surfaced that Bolton had neglected to tell Congress that he had been interviewed in 2003 in a government investigation into faulty prewar intelligence on Iraq.

In a letter released Friday, 35 Democratic senators and one independent, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont, urged Bush not to give Bolton a recess appointment.

"There's just too much unanswered about Bolton, and I think the president would make a truly serious mistake if he makes a recess appointment," Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record) of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview.