Bolton smear is the death rattle of left-fascist Cubaphilia

Bob Novak delivers the inside stuff again.


Janice O'Connell, the veteran Democratic staff expert on Western Hemisphere affairs, acted as though she were seeing an apparition at 2:30 p.m. last Friday. She was present with other Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers to question unfavorable witnesses about Under secretary of State John Bolton, President Bush's nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations. But outside the Dirksen Office Building's Room 419 appeared her archenemy: Otto Reich, coming not to bury Bolton, but to praise him.
O'Connell is only an aide to Sen. Christopher Dodd, but her effectiveness in making life difficult for enemies of Fidel Castro is legendary. She was largely responsible for blocking confirmation of Bush's 2001 nomination of Reich as assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs. Friday, Reich hoped to have his appearance before the Foreign Relations staffers become the hearing that Dodd and O'Connell had denied him. Even with Republicans in nominal control of the committee, however, Reich's complaint about the character assassination directed against him then and against Bolton now was removed from the record.

Wait a minute. Just who is in control of this committee?

O'Connell and the committee's Democratic chief counsel, Brian McKeon, had not expected Reich to be present Friday. ''Are you a volunteer?'' McKeon asked Reich, who replied he had been invited by the committee's Republican staff.
The dialogue was fierce and loud, once Reich's testimony began. Reich said that the systematic leaking of derogatory information about Bolton reminds him of O'Connell in 2001 putting out accusations made in supposedly secret interviews. ''That's irrelevant!'' O'Connell responded, moving that Reich's comments be stricken from the record. She moved that Reich be ruled out of order, and she usually gets her way inside the committee. Paul Foldi, the senior GOP staffer, ordered the comments, for which Reich had waited four years, be erased.

Oh, yeah. I forgot. The ones who know politics is a contact sport are in control. If you think the R's have the stones necessary to confirm honest judges to the Supreme Court, you are dreaming.