Watson Coleman: “again, I remind my colleagues that it is a nomination with 10 hours of hearings, 2 business meetings, 35 staff…”

“again, I remind my colleagues that it is a nomination with 10 hours of hearings, 2 business meetings, 35 staff interviews with 29 different people, a thousand pages of transcripts and 800 pages of documents, the opportunity for the chairman and the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee to look at this information, and they came to the conclusions they came to. In the end, I think perhaps--I agree with my colleagues on crossing the line. I agree. You should not be harassing intelligence officials because of policy disagreements to the point where you drive them out of the job. But that just didn't happen here. In fact, Mr. President, if you look at the statement of Carl Ford, he himself in the minority report said this incident didn't turn into the politicization of intelligence. Carl Ford--and I was there and listened to the testimony--said this incident didn't turn into the politicization of intelligence. We can walk through this again and again. We had the discussion over Cuba and the issue of biological weapons capacity. Again, the allegation was made that somehow Mr. Bolton took views that were his own and disregarded the views of the administration in regard to Cuba. Carl Ford testified before the Foreign Relations Committee on March 19, 2002. He stated that the United States believes that Cuba has at least limited developmental offensive biological warfare and research capability--on and on. What does John Bolton say when he gives his speech?…”