Bolton The Fixer

John Prados

June 09, 2005

John Prados is a senior fellow with the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. He is author of Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War (The New Press).

As the Bush administration pushes to secure confirmation by the United States Senate of John R. Bolton in his appointment as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, controversy continues to simmer—over failure to provide materials requested by the Foreign Relations Committee, over Bolton’s efforts to have intelligence officers fired for their views, over his arrogant management style.

But the truly important issue remains the one few have focused upon: Bolton’s role in making sure that the “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,” as British intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove told Tony Blair at a July 2002 meeting of the British Cabinet. Contrary to the mainstream narrative, Bolton’s was no private war with U.S. intelligence. Rather, his actions were crucial in creating the highly charged atmosphere in which the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies bit the bullet, ignored the gaps in their data and told Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the warhawks what they wanted to hear.