Nominee for U.N. ambassador under investigation [View All]

[ckramer]

Congressional investigators are probing a new allegation that President Bush's choice for United Nations ambassador once visited CIA headquarters to demand the removal of a top intelligence analyst who disagreed with him on Cuba's biological warfare capabilities.

Current and former senior U.S. intelligence officials denounced the alleged visit by Under Secretary of State John Bolton. They said it risked undermining the objectivity of intelligence judgments by sending a message that analysts who do not tell policy-makers what they want to hear would be punished.

The impartiality of U.S. intelligence judgments remains a highly charged issue because of assertions by some lawmakers that analysts were pressured to produce assessments on Iraq that supported Bush's case for war but turned out to be wrong. Several top-level inquiries have rejected those claims of political pressure.

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