"You have some Democrats who continue to raise unfounded allegations," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "Bolton testified for more than eight hours before the committee, responded to many follow-up questions in writing. . . . And we are happy to address any [other] questions the committee members might have. We look forward to him being confirmed and believe he will be."
Without naming Townsel, Biden quoted the charges she made in her "open letter" to the committee, which was released last weekend. After her client complained about the performance of the Kyrgyzstan project's chief contractor -- which hired Bolton as its lawyer -- she wrote: "Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel, throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman." Back in Kyrgyzstan, she said, Bolton told USAID officials "that I was under investigation for misuse of funds and likely was facing jail time. As US AID can confirm, nothing was further from the truth. . . . His behavior back in 1994 wasn't just unforgivable, it was pathological."
Townsel, who runs a public relations firm in Dallas, said in an interview yesterday that "no one asked me to send the letter, but when I saw he was nominated, I knew I had to share my experiences."
Another contractor who lives in Toronto spoke with committee aides and corroborated her account, committee sources said. Biden said the committee would continue to demand documents and e-mails from the State Department, the National Security Agency and the CIA that could corroborate other allegations.
Committee staff members said they have been inundated with allegations about Bolton since former State Department intelligence chief Carl W. Ford Jr., called Bolton a "serial abuser" in testimony last week. "Ford's testimony broke the dam," one Democratic staffer said.
On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told her senior staff she was disappointed about the stream of allegations and said she did not want any information coming out of the department that could adversely affect the nomination, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The committee released 25 pages of responses yesterday to follow-up questions Bolton had been asked concerning allegations he was abusive to other officials in and out of the State Department, overreached on policy issues and mishandled intelligence. In several instances, Bolton did not directly respond to the questions or left them unaddressed.
When he was asked whether he sought to remove a State Department lawyer from a case involving sanctions that he had imposed, Bolton recalled the legal dispute at issue but did not address whether he had made the personnel request.
Bolton, who delivered a stinging speech about North Korea in 2003 that nearly derailed regional negotiations on the country, did not respond to a question about whether he was "ever asked by Secretary Powell to refrain from making public comments about North Korea's nuclear issue."
Staff writer Jim VandeHei contributed to this report.
