Bolton Bashing

Steve Clemons

March 22, 2005

From The Washington Note:

John Bolton and the Corruption of Think Tanks; David Brooks on Conservative Sleaze

I have found some more on John Bolton's think tank management controversy. Think tanks are usually organized as 501c3 organizations -- organized for the public good but increasingly they are becoming money laundering operations for lobbyists or corporate consulting shops. It seems that John Bolton helped the National Policy Forum move well down this path.

The National Policy Forum of which John Bolton was President was stripped of its non-profit 501c3 status. Foreign money, mega-conference fundraisers, inappropriate political activity, possibly laundering foreign funds into political activities. John Bolton was an architect of this insidious mess.

Many conservatives have genuine concerns about the management of the United Nation's after the "Oil-for-Food" scandal, even though it's clear that the U.S. delegation to the U.N. knew what was going on.

But Bolton is a guy whose own past management experience and the blurring of legal lines in his own organization sounds a lot like what Bernie Ebbers would have looked for in his team at WorldCom or Ken Lay at Enron.

Here is an excerpt of a much longer brief worth reading:

A decade later Bolton was again entangled in money laundering schemes to support Republican candidates, but this time it involved money channeled from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the Republican Party by way of a "think tank" linked to the Republican National Committee (RNC).